The far left rioters who acted out on Trump’s inauguration day have gotten a very lucky break. They’re getting away with all the bad behavior millions of Americans witnessed on TV and the internet. There will be no consequences because all remaining charges have been dropped.
See our prior coverage:
It’s all over now.
Keith L. Alexander of the Los Angeles Times reports:
Federal prosecutors dismiss all remaining Inauguration Day rioting casesFederal prosecutors on Friday said they would dismiss rioting charges against all remaining defendants arrested after destructive Inauguration Day protests, bringing to a close a controversial case that led to allegations of government overreach.Prosecutors began filing paperwork Friday afternoon to formally drop the cases against 38 people who had been awaiting trial.The vandalism of downtown businesses on the day President Trump was sworn in stretched over 16 blocks as part of a disturbance called DisruptJ20. Members of a large group of protesters set small fires and used bricks and crowbars to smash storefronts.In all, 234 people were arrested and charged with rioting. Of them, 21 defendants pleaded guilty before trial. But prosecutors had been unable to secure convictions at trial against others in the group…At a second trial involving another handful of defendants, jurors either acquitted the defendants or were unable to reach a unanimous verdict. Over time, prosecutors dismissed more of the cases.Following the two trials, jurors told reporters they were unable to unanimously reach guilty verdicts because they weren’t convinced the defendants participated in vandalism. In some instances, prosecutors showed video they said showed some of those arrested smashing windows. But jurors said the images were not clear enough to know for sure.
Andrew Blake of the Washington Times has more:
“Obviously it’s a huge relief to have these charges dropped after an 18-month nightmare,” said defendant Michael Webermann. “However, it’s hard not to feel cynical about the enormous amount of power that prosecutors have to overcharge people, disrupt their lives, and then drop cases before having to face any consequences in court,” he told the Huffington Post.Only one of the 21 people to plead guilty, Dane Powell, has served jail time, The Washington Post reported. He was sentenced last July to four months behind bars after pleading guilty to to rioting and assaulting a police officer.
Zoe Tillman of BuzzFeed has also been following this story:
The dismissals conclude more than a year and a half of litigation over prosecutions that the defendants, their lawyers, and free speech advocates said represented overreach by the government, warning that they would chill First Amendment–protected activity going forward under the Trump administration.
Hopefully, the left will feel the same way about the First Amendment the next time a conservative is supposed to speak at UC Berkeley.
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