Welcome to America run by the Left. USSR 2.0, complete with empty shelves and jackbooted KGB.
Now, the Justice Department is asking for leniency for the few 2020 rioters actually facing federal charges.
ake, for example, the case of Montez Lee, Jr. On May 28, 2020, Lee, a Black Lives Matter protester, broke into Max It Pawn Shop in Minneapolis, poured gasoline throughout the store, and set it on fire.
A few days later, the mother of Oscar Stewart contacted law enforcement to report her son missing. Stewart's abandoned car was parked next to the pawn shop. It took authorities several weeks to identify the charred remains of Stewart, another black man, found inside the shop. The Hennepin County coroner ruled Stewart's death a homicide. (It's unclear if Stewart was a fellow rioter or an employee.)
Justice Department prosecutors, however, did not agree with that conclusion: Lee was charged with arson, not murder. And despite a lengthy criminal record including assault and burglary, the government offered Lee a deal to plead guilty to one count of arson, which he accepted in July.
Based on sentencing guidelines, the Justice Department calculated that the judge could sentence Lee to up to 240 months in prison. But a federal prosecutor asked the court to slice nearly eight years off his jail time. Why? Because Lee, unlike the government's view of January 6 defendants, was engaged in a political protest those now in charge deem commendable.
"Lee credibly states that he was in the streets to protest unlawful police violence against black men, and there is no basis to disbelieve this statement," assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Calhoun-Lopez wrote in November. "There appear to have been many people in those days looking only to exploit the chaos and disorder in the interests of personal gain or random violence. There appear also to have been many people who felt angry, frustrated, and disenfranchised, and who were attempting, in many cases in an unacceptably reckless and dangerous manner, to give voice to those feelings. Mr. Lee appears to be squarely in this latter category."
Calhoun-Lopez further argued against the judge considering deterrence in Lee's case since "the events of late May of 2020 were informed by forces that have been present in this country since its inception."
Therefore, the government concluded, Lee should be sentenced to 144 months in prison rather than 240 months.
But even that sentence was too long for Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright, a Minnesota district court judge appointed by Barack Obama in 2016. Wright, now a leading candidate to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, instead sentenced Lee to 120 months in prison. "You are more than the person that destroyed that business by fire," Wright told Lee in court on January 14. "You are more than the person who set that fire that killed a man."
Federal prosecutors and judges have no similar sympathies for January 6 protesters. To the contrary, the Justice Department and D.C. District Court judge consider Americans charged with low-level misdemeanors on January 6, 2021 to be domestic terrorists.
amgreatness.com
Now, the Justice Department is asking for leniency for the few 2020 rioters actually facing federal charges.
ake, for example, the case of Montez Lee, Jr. On May 28, 2020, Lee, a Black Lives Matter protester, broke into Max It Pawn Shop in Minneapolis, poured gasoline throughout the store, and set it on fire.
A few days later, the mother of Oscar Stewart contacted law enforcement to report her son missing. Stewart's abandoned car was parked next to the pawn shop. It took authorities several weeks to identify the charred remains of Stewart, another black man, found inside the shop. The Hennepin County coroner ruled Stewart's death a homicide. (It's unclear if Stewart was a fellow rioter or an employee.)
Justice Department prosecutors, however, did not agree with that conclusion: Lee was charged with arson, not murder. And despite a lengthy criminal record including assault and burglary, the government offered Lee a deal to plead guilty to one count of arson, which he accepted in July.
Based on sentencing guidelines, the Justice Department calculated that the judge could sentence Lee to up to 240 months in prison. But a federal prosecutor asked the court to slice nearly eight years off his jail time. Why? Because Lee, unlike the government's view of January 6 defendants, was engaged in a political protest those now in charge deem commendable.
"Lee credibly states that he was in the streets to protest unlawful police violence against black men, and there is no basis to disbelieve this statement," assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Calhoun-Lopez wrote in November. "There appear to have been many people in those days looking only to exploit the chaos and disorder in the interests of personal gain or random violence. There appear also to have been many people who felt angry, frustrated, and disenfranchised, and who were attempting, in many cases in an unacceptably reckless and dangerous manner, to give voice to those feelings. Mr. Lee appears to be squarely in this latter category."
Calhoun-Lopez further argued against the judge considering deterrence in Lee's case since "the events of late May of 2020 were informed by forces that have been present in this country since its inception."
Therefore, the government concluded, Lee should be sentenced to 144 months in prison rather than 240 months.
But even that sentence was too long for Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright, a Minnesota district court judge appointed by Barack Obama in 2016. Wright, now a leading candidate to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, instead sentenced Lee to 120 months in prison. "You are more than the person that destroyed that business by fire," Wright told Lee in court on January 14. "You are more than the person who set that fire that killed a man."
Federal prosecutors and judges have no similar sympathies for January 6 protesters. To the contrary, the Justice Department and D.C. District Court judge consider Americans charged with low-level misdemeanors on January 6, 2021 to be domestic terrorists.
Justice Department Continues to Go Easy on 2020 Rioters › American Greatness
No matter how much the Biden regime and news media want Americans to forget what happened during the “social justice” protests of 2020, the public remembers. A poll taken last summer shows…
amgreatness.com
