Margot Cleveland: Emails In Case of Pro-Life Activist Targeted by FBI Stasi Raid Are Chilling

It couldn't get worse. Except it did.

Heffron, the lawyer for the pro-life activist whose home was swarmed by a Threat Level Omega force of SWAT-outfitted agents, had previously written to the prosecutor, Eve, that he would accept a summons for arrest.

Eve ignored that email and sent the stormtroopers.

Why accept a peaceable arrest when you can storm a home filled with children while brandishing overkill levels of firepower? The FBI has one playbook, and that playbook is Branch Davidian.*

First, Heffron's email to Eve, in which he noted he would "accept a summons on my client's behalf, rather put Mr. Houck and his family through needless disruption," was dated June 9, 2022, but Eve's sole response to that email came on Sept. 23, 2022 -- when Eve wrote Heffron to inform him that "this morning, [Houck] was taken into custody by FBI agents and is being transported to the Philadelphia FBI office for processing." So the first response Houck's attorney received from the U.S. attorney's office, following two phone calls and an email, came more than three months later to advise him that his client had already been arrested.

Professor Cleveland points out that this prosecutor, Eve, also handled some of the January 6 cases, and wonders if Eve might have been responsible for the Soviet police state tactics there as well.

She points out that this case is very weak: A similar case was dismissed by another federal judge.

In that case, the court held that a FACE Act claim could not succeed because there was no evidence that force was used "because" the escort was providing so-called reproductive health services. Instead, the force resulted from a "mutual argument" between the individuals. Stressing these legal principles, Heffron concluded his letter by suggesting that, particularly under the circumstances of the case, it "should not go forward."

In other words: Some federal laws criminalize an assault on a federal employee in the performance of his federal duties. But they don't criminalize any attack on a federal employee. A wife who murders her mailman husband is not subject to charges under laws against killing a federal officer in the course of his duties. She didn't kill him for that reason, to impede his duties. She just knocked off her husband.

Similarly, even if you grant the constitutionality of this law, which... I have doubts, it still only criminalizes pushing or hitting one of these escorts when he's actually in the process of doing the job of "escorting" abortion-seeking women to the clinic. It doesn't generally make anyone who gets into a fight with them subject to charges under federal law. You wouldn't be charged under F.A.C.E. if you got into a fight with one of these "escorts" over a dispute about a pool game. They're not surrounded permanently by a halo of federal protection, only when doing the specific thing the federal law (presumes, dubiously) to protect.

In this case, it seems to be the case that there was a mutual argument and Houck warned this guy to get out of his son's face. That was the cause of the pushing, not the "escorting." So this law just doesn't apply.

So this case is already very weak.

And they send in a battalion of black-clad M-16-toting SWAT agents to take down a pastor for pushing a guy when his seven young children are home to arrest him for this piece of shit charge that will probably be dismissed before it goes to trial?

Hey, remember when Andrew McCarthy and the rest of the Usual Suspects lined up as character witnesses behind Merrick Garland, vouching for his character and probity as beyond reproach? And castigating anyone who doubted him as a mere partisan ruffian and low-minded thug?

Professor Cleveland then reports the facts of the original police complaint, filed by the victim himself, comparing that to the New and Improved "facts" claimed by the DOJ. The original police complaint did not say that the "victim" was escorting anyone to an abortion center, and was only "waiting for clients," which disqualifies this case from a F.A.C.E. charge. The New and Improved DOJ "facts" now claim he already had two clients with him and was in the process of escorting them to the clinic -- strange he didn't remember that at the time of the incident. Maybe he was pushed so hard his brain stopped working for a while.

The original police report also says that this incident took place on a corner away from the abortion clinic. The DOJ complaint helpfully re-locates the incident to be "in front of" the abortion clinic.

Given the reputation the DOJ has earned as straight-arrow square-jawed Priests of Truth and Justice, you know which report I put my full faith and credit in.

The "victim" also didn't even show up for a required hearing iso n the state case you know this was a really serious "crime" in his mind. The case was rightly dismissed, so the DOJ swooped in to resurrect it.

Maybe they're lying about where the pushing took place to move it closer to the abortion clinic so that they can argue that even if he wasn't exactly escorting clients yet, hey, he was pretty close to the clinic, so... close enough for horse-shoes and hand-grenades, judge!

Read the whole thing.

Margot concludes that whatever happens, Biden and Merrick Garland -- who, remember, was vouched for by various members of Conservative, Inc. and the Company Men Faction of the GOP Establishment -- have gotten what they intended: they have intimidated their political opponents.

Because we now understand that we are being targeted by the State Secret Police.

Why do they want us to understand this?

You know why.

You know why they knock in the night.

* The FBI can lie and say "We sent in 40 agents in assault armor and full tactical weapons kit with 20 armored vehicles because we were afraid he would shoot at us if we didn't present overwhelming force."

This is a lie.

How do I know? Because his lawyer offered to accept a summons and turn his his client for a peaceable arrest and they refused this (by completely blowing the offer off).

If they were afraid of a violent confrontation, they would have accepted that option, wouldn't they have?

Was the FBI also afraid that Roger Stone would go Rambo on them?

Or did they just want the Hero Video on CNN?

The FBI must be defunded. There is no longer any question. There is no longer any argument.

I don't care about what "threats" it protects us against. They are a larger threat to the citizens of the United States than any "threat" they supposedly protect against.

I suppose this might have been the DOJ's call. But in that case, the FBI "followed orders."

And we all know about the Nuremberg Trials, don't we?

posted by Ace at 04:39 PM

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