Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon suggests Don Lemon and the anti-ICE mob will face charges under the KKK Act after they stormed a Minnesota church.
Here is the full transcript:
DHILLON: In other cases, the Biden DOJ used the Klan act conspiracy charges tacked on to the FACE Act in the case of protests outside abortion clinics to bring much longer sentences. So there are a number of tools available to us. Who funded this? What else? What other crimes may have occurred? Was there a use of the wires or the mails in preparing for this event? Did anyone cross state lines to do this? All of those are potential predicates for additional federal charges.JOHNSON: I mean, I’ve just pulled up the Klan act because this is the first time that I’ve heard this mentioned. This is an Act that was passed in 1871, correction there, to come at the Ku Klux Klan and protect African Americans voting rights, especially the Enforcement Act, which is known as the Force Act. So here’s some of the information on screen. Would you mind breaking down for us because we have just read the FACE act and how this is an affinity to the FACE Act, and obvious and egregious, demonstrable violation of the FACE Act because they were entering a place of worship, harassing and threatening. We just played a video of a man, a bearded man, who was threatening to attack the Christians that were worshiping there.So it seems like an obvious FACE Act violation, but the Klan act, here it is on screen, first time I’ve heard it mentioned. Can you unpack this for us?DHILLON: Yeah, the Klan Act is one of the most important federal civil rights statutes, and it goes back to the time when President Lincoln emancipated the slaves, and yet the Southern states, Dixiecrats mainly, were refusing to give them even equal rights. In fact, you had sheriffs and you had law enforcement harassing the newly freed slaves.So the Klan Act is a law that makes it illegal to terrorize citizens, to violate their civil rights, to get together and conspire to violate the civil rights. It is often used against law enforcement, but is now used against others as well. So whenever anyone conspires to violate the protected civil rights of American citizens, the Klan Act can be used to bring a conspiracy charge that we, in the federal law enforcement parlance, call this 241 and 242, civil and criminal conspiracies.And so what the Biden administration did is if three grandmas got together to pray outside an abortion clinic for the souls of the people inside and including unborn children, they would say, “Oh, that’s not just a violation of the Klan act. That’s a conspiracy to violate the civil rights of women going in there to get abortions.”And so we’re going to add additional charges and punish that more and make it from a misdemeanor under the FACE Act to a felony under the Klan Act.And President Trump pardoned the pro-life protesters in those cases. I have recently defended successfully in the 11th Circuit, a case called Oropesa, a case of Jane’s Revenge, the pro abortion protesters violently attacking crisis pregnancy centers in Florida. And we had the court uphold the Klan Act, criminal enhancement to the FACE Act.So I know it’s very deep in the weeds, but the point is, there are a number of things. The FACE Act is just the start. Like I said, you have material support for disruptive activities, you have conspiracy to violate civil rights. You have potentially the use of other instrumentalities to commit crimes. And so some of these folks who did this have self-identified.Don Lemon himself has come out and said he knew exactly what was going to happen inside that facility. He went into the facility, and then he began, quote, unquote, committing journalism. And as if that’s sort of a shield from being a part, an embedded part of a criminal conspiracy, it isn’t.And so, you know, we’re getting our ducks in a row. We’re putting the facts together, and this is a very serious matter.Come next Sunday, nobody should think in the United States that they’re going to be able to get away with this.Everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people away for a long, long time.
Dhillon added her own video from her appearance:
Pam Bondi and I, my boss, had already been in touch about this incident, what we’re going to do about it. I’m working hand in hand with her. We have sent federal prosecutors last night from my office in DC to Minnesota. They should be landing any moment now. We activated the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office as well.And this has the highest attention of the Attorney General and my Department of Justice team, because it is, as you said in your intro, this isn’t actually a question of whether we’re going to stand for it. We don’t stand for it in this country, and not every case that we do at the DOJ gets the headlines, but we’ve already prosecuted numerous attacks on churches so far in the last nine months since I took office. Under Pam Bondi’s leadership, we are investigating multiple attacks on synagogues.It is evil to attack any house of worship in America. It is illegal, and what I saw yesterday made me ashamed, frankly, for the United States, that we have an attorney general in Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a district attorney, Mary Moriarty, a mayor, Jacob Frey and Tim Waltz, Tampon Tim, who absolutely refuse to enforce their state laws. Their own state laws prohibit this very conduct.Well, if they’re not going to enforce their laws, we will enforce our federal laws, and we are already doing that.
As Elizabeth wrote this morning, Lemon and the mob interrupted the service, screaming “Justice for Renee Good” and “Who needs justice, we need justice.”
Lemon even had the nerve to compare the riots in Minnesota to the Civil Rights movement.
“This is what happens, he said, ‘when you violate people’s due process, when you pull people off the street,’ and ‘when you violate the Constitution,’” Elizabeth wrote.
Oh, honey. You violated the Constitution.
Lemon even accosted the pastor with a lecture on the First Amendment, which, um, he doesn’t appear to understand due to his actions:
Pastor: “This is unacceptable. It’s shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship…”Lemon: “Listen, there’s a constitution, the First Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest.”Pastor: “We’re here to worship Jesus because the hope of the world is Jesus Christ…”Lemon: “But did you try to talk to them?”Pastor: “No one is willing to talk. I have to take care of my church and my family so I ask that you would also leave this building.”Imagine storming a church mid worship and thinking you are the good guys.
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