Top Justice Official Reinforces Barr’s Call for Sedition Charges Against Protesters
By: Sadie Gurman
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The second-in-command at the Justice Department issued a formal memo to the nation’s federal prosecutors Thursday telling them to consider charging violent demonstrators with sedition, a day after The Wall Street Journal reported that Attorney General William Barr had strongly urged them to bring such prosecutions.
Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said he was “re-emphasizing” Mr. Barr’s directive, made during a phone call with U.S. attorneys last week, that prosecutors be aggressive when charging certain protesters with crimes, including potentially prosecuting them for plotting to overthrow the U.S. government. People familiar with Mr. Barr’s call had earlier described it to the Journal.
The relevant statute, which lays out the crime of seditious conspiracy, “does not require proof of a plot to overthrow the U.S. Government, despite what the name might suggest,” Mr. Rosen wrote. He said it could be used in other contexts, including “for instance, where a group has conspired to take a federal courthouse or other federal property by force.”
The edict is part of a broader Trump administration crackdown on violence and property destruction that has sometimes accompanied protests over racial injustice in U.S. cities. The federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., was the scene of nightly and sometimes violent clashes this summer between demonstrators and law enforcement, including federal agents who had been sent there to tamp down the unrest.
Legal experts said violation of the rarely used sedition statute could be difficult to prove in court, as prosecutors would have to show there was a conspiracy to attack government agents or officials, that posed an imminent danger. There is a fine line, they added, between the expression of antigovernment sentiment, which could be protected speech under the First Amendment even if it included discussions of violence, and a plot that presented an imminent danger and could justify a charge of sedition.
Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen urged prosecutors not to let news coverage of the Justice Department’s proposed use of the sedition statute discourage them from using it.
PHOTO: TASOS KATOPODIS/PRESS POOL
There are few recent sedition cases, and Mr. Rosen’s memo cited one, highlighted by the Journal, that ended in acquittal. Several members of a Michigan-based militia group were accused in 2010 of plotting to kill a local police officer as part of a plan to start an armed clash with state and federal authorities. They were found not guilty in 2012 by a federal judge who said the government’s case was built on “circumstantial evidence” and didn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt the defendants had entered a “concrete agreement to forcibly oppose the United States Government.”
“While that prosecution was not ultimately successful, its failure was based on the facts of the case, not any infirmity in the statute itself,” Mr. Rosen wrote. He urged prosecutors not to let news coverage of the department’s proposed use of the statute discourage them from using it.
He also expressed regret that Mr. Barr’s conversation on last week’s call had leaked to reporters, saying, “I know that you share my disappointment over selective leaks of internal department communications and deliberations, which seem designed to misrepresent what the department is actually doing to protect the rights and interests of the American people.”
Federal prosecutors have charged more than 200 people with violent crimes related to the demonstrations sparked by the May killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. FBI officials earlier this year described the perpetrators as largely opportunistic individuals taking advantage of the protests.
On the call, Mr. Barr warned that violence could worsen as the November presidential election approaches, the people familiar with it said.
Appeared in the September 18, 2020, print edition as 'Barr Deputy Backs Use of Sedition Charge in Clashes.'
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Local officials have to be held accountable as well.
Trump and Barr doubling down on abuse of power...
John Adam's pulled that sedition crap for one term!
It did not work then and it will not work, again, today.
I see, you are invoking the Constitution. That is a valid argument. Jonathan Turley is making the same one. The strange thing about Turley is that he is consistent when it comes to the law!
Then you are wrong, again. "Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it". John Adam lost his bid for a 2nd term mainly because he abused his power as regards The Aliens and Sedition Act he enacted which ruined his chances. It was abuse of power then and it would still be abuse of power today...
Tell us why it was an abuse of power?
Because? Have you never heard of The First Amendment of the US Constitution? Really?
It is unconstitutional and thus illegal to ever interfere with American free speech. Just try to and you will get buried legally and politically!
We all have the right to free speech, not to be confused with crimes and acts of armed rebellion.
Rioting is a federal crime.
Yet Trump and Barr are threatening protesters!
By their definitions the Tea Party is seditious...
Read your own headline. It does not say rioters. It says protesters. At least try to be honest!
Not protesters - RIOTERS!
By their definitions the Tea Party is seditious...
The Tea Party was not committing violent acts
Read your headline. It doesn't say rioters. It says protesters. At least be honest!
Correct. They were one and the same. If not, they shouldn't have allowed the radical elements in.
Let us never forget his right to protest!/s
It's so darn American!/s
"The seditious-conspiracy statute, which is codified by Section 2384 of the modern federal penal code, was actually enacted by Congress during the Civil War — mainly to deal with Confederate sympathizers in free states who were violently sabotaging the Union war effort. As the Journal’s experts observe, it is rarely used. That is not because the crime is especially difficult to prove; it is much more straightforward than many federal crimes. Rather, it is because the conduct at issue — dangerous conspiracies to levy war against the United States, to violently overthrow our government, or to violently oppose the government’s legitimate authority — is historically unusual.
Notice the thread that runs through these variations of conspiratorial behavior: Force. Keep that in mind and you will easily grasp why apprehensions about sedition charges are specious. Unless prosecutors can prove that the alleged conspirators agreed to use force against the government, there is no such crime.
The notion of prosecuting sedition is anathema to legal experts and some historians because it calls to mind the late 18th century Alien and Sedition Acts, which are justly reviled as an unconstitutional effort to punish political dissent. There is also understandable constitutional concern about the word sedition. Outside the criminal-law context, it can be broadly construed to cover speech that, though it urges people to revolt against a government, does not necessarily advocate violence.
Similarly, if there is evidence that people are using force or plotting violent attacks against U.S. government installations, there is no viable objection to the introduction of evidence that they hated the United States and called for attacks against the government. The statements are not the crime; they are evidence of the crime, and the First Amendment does not prohibit their use as such. Judges, moreover, carefully instruct juries that people may not be convicted for holding unpopular beliefs; there must be proof beyond a reasonable doubt, in a seditious-conspiracy case, that they conspired to use force against the nation and its government. That’s the crime."
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/yes-the-doj-should-charge-violent-anti-american-radicals-with-seditious-conspiracy/?taid=5f640e2c07638d0001275ac9&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter