On September 2, 2021, I appeared on the Todd Herman radio show. Todd has been a great friend of Legal Insurrection for many years, including frequent shout-outs to Legal Insurrection when he was a substitute host for Rush Limbaugh.
The interview was long, almost 20 minutes, and was pretty clearly broken down into two distinct segments — the prosecution of Jan. 6 defendants in comparision to Black Lives Matter riots and looting, and second, Critical Race Theory. I’ll address the segment on Jan. 6 now, and CRT in a later post.
The Jan. 6 segment concerned an Associated Press article, Records rebut claims of unequal treatment of Jan. 6 rioters. I responded on Twitter (via my personal account which I only activated a week ago) as follows:
Complete garbage analysis by @aedurkinricher, doesn’t compare comparable crimes, ignores how many not charged during BLM riots v. charges against even non-violent Jan 6 participants
The entire podcast is embedded below. The segment on the Jan. 6 prosecutions starts at 1:15 (or click here for audio file of this segment only), the part relating to CRT starts at 8:40 (or click here for audio file of that segment only).
Todd Herman (01:14):
…Today’s in fact, the day the Lord has made, and these are the times through which God has decided we shall live time, times such as these, it says in the book of Esther. By my reading of the word, God was pretty happy with all the different flavors of human beings he created, and it was good. And yet racism being installed in the minds of our kids. One, man, I think deserves massive credit for unveiling and fighting this at every single level. The left pick the wrong man to try to cancel, I said it at the time. Professor William Jacobson joins us legalinsurrection.com. Professor it’s been too long. Welcome back to the Todd Herman show.
Professor William Jacobson, Cornell Law School and Legal Insurrection Foundation (01:54):
Thanks for having me back.
Herman (01:55):
Oh yeah. And feel free to speak as loudly as I do. I want everybody to hear your voice, Professor. You so commonly, I read your site three to four times a day and have noticed your focus on critical race theory. I want to thank you for that. You took a part a piece of, well, some might say journalism of written by Alana Dirkenricher for the Associated Press. She wrote some Republicans claimed the DOJ is treating Jan six defendants harshly because of the political views while letting people involved in violence. During last year’s racial injustice protest off easy. Our review of court records tells a different story. Professor, I’m just going to shut up and let you just also the sec, this from my audience,
Jacobson (02:39):
Well, this was a classic example of comparing apples and oranges. There’s two very different circumstances. They did not try to compare the severity of the particular crimes and they did not try to compare the law enforcement effort.
What you had with Black Lives matter is only the worst of the worst offenders, you know, people who’ve set fire to police stations and things like that, being prosecuted.
You didn’t have everybody who was in attendance during a riot be prosecuted, but that is what you’re having with January 6th. So for January 6th, you have some people who did commit violence. And I don’t think anybody really is complaining about those people being prosecuted. If they hit a policemen or sprayed a policemen in the face with mace or something like that. But you also have people who are merely there. You have people who were being prosecuted, who were even never entered into the Capitol building.
And that’s the difference. So she’s trying to say, well, the punishments were just as bad for the Black Lives Matter protesters, but those are the people who actually committed violence. With January 6th, the people being prosecuted, and most of them haven’t even reached the sentencing stage yet, are people mostly who did not commit a violent act. So it’s completely comparing apples to oranges.
There is no question that the effort made, and the feds acknowledge this, the effort made to prosecute anybody in any way connected to what happened on January 6th, is extraordinary at the federal level. They have enormous, they’re putting all their resources. They’re asking the public’s help to identify people. And again, nobody’s complaining about that for the people who committed violence, but if you just happen to attend a protest and you’re standing outside the Capitol and you didn’t hit anybody and you didn’t commit an act of violence, you shouldn’t be prosecuted for that, but people are being prosecuted.
It would be the equivalent of everybody in the March at the Black Lives Matter protest being prosecuted because some percentage of the people committed violence. So it’s completely apples and oranges.
The attempt to destroy the lives of people who did not commit a violent crime. And of course what the feds are doing. I was reading about one. I think it was a DEA agent who never entered the Capitol. And he’s being prosecuted. And they found a law to prosecute him, destruction to the Capitol grounds, that he was standing on the grass. And he somehow destroyed the grass. That’s what they are prosecuting him for, you don’t see that you don’t see that with the Black Lives Matter protests? Nor sould you, if somebody’s just standing on the street protesting. They shouldn’t be prosecuted. You shouldn’t be looking for a crime. Oh, well you were jaywalking. So we’re going to now prosecute you for jaywalking because you were at this protest. So it’s completely disproportionate. The AP article was in my mind completely intellectually dishonest.
Herman (05:54):
Well, I couldn’t agree more. Professor William Jacobson’s with us, legalinsurrection.com. It’s a daily, in fact multi – I read it multiple times a day. I suggest you do the same.
I would say this still professor. I think you and I can both agree that it’s incredibly credibly sad and tragic that, uh, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, Inc. Patrice Cuhlor is now imprisoned. One would say in her $2 million home in Topanga Canyon, California, where she erected a fence to keep the hoards out. I feel so sad for her given that view and the temperature and the neighborhood. I just shed tears. And on that comment, I want to bring this back to the, I want to ask you a lawyerly question.
Professor. There were lawyers who followed Antifa and black lives matter incorporated around this country and were there to bail them out. Our Kamala Harris helped raise money for them. I’ve seen Rudy Giuliani, disbarred. I’ve seen now people who made claims of election fraud that they’re facing disbarment or at least censure. Is it okay from an illegal ethical perspective to have groups of lawyers saying we are here to bail rioters out, or even people who attempt to murder cops has happened in multiple occasions, night after night in Portland, and sadly attempted to burn cops to death as well. What, what are the ethical implications of lawyers doing that for people?
Jacobson (07:14):
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I mean, lawyers should be protecting the constitutional rights of their clients. So if what they’re doing is asserting a claim, that under the law, under the statute, under whatever it happens to be, this person is entitled to bail. I don’t see anything wrong with that. The problem is it only works in one direction. Where all these lawyers defending the people who merely were constitutionally exercising their right to protest on January 6th, but are now being prosecuted, now losing their jobs, now being hounded out of signing. So that’s the problem. The problem is not that lawyers defended the constitutional rights of Black Lives Matter protesters. The problem is they don’t do that for other types of protesters. And so it’s completely disproportionate.
Herman (08:07):
And we’ve seen, as I see it’s a division where, what I call the party, this is the technocrats and the leftist and mockingbird media members all joined into what I’ve now labeled the party. Have indicated, you do the party’s bidding. You can do kind of anything you want. We’re cool with that. The media is cool with that. Certainly Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are cool with that. We’ll let these things go as I see it, but if you dare challenge the party, the view, the view on the COVID or the view on critical race theory, that view on the lecture results, then we’re going to punish you.
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