Biden Admin and Democrat DAs are Lowering Charges Against Leftists Who Attack Churches

National   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Jun 2, 2023   |   10:23AM   |   Washington, DC

If you have the “correct” views, chances are you’ll get a lighter sentence in court for crimes targeting your political opponents.

Justice is supposed to apply equally to everyone in American law, no matter what an individual’s political views, income level, social status, race or gender. But many believe the Biden administration and Democrat leaders are quietly destroying this fundamental principle to punish their political opponents.

Last month, for example, a Michigan man only was sentenced to community service after he shot an elderly pro-life woman while she was canvassing ahead of the November election. Richard Harvey was sentenced to 100 hours of community service, a suspended jail sentence of two months and one year of probation.

This week, the Washington Examiner highlighted several other examples involving radical activists caught vandalizing Catholic churches.

“If you look at cases where, you know, a mosque gets vandalized, or this push around anti-Asian hate and things like this — if it happens to any other group, the federal government is right on top of it,” said Tommy Valentine, director of the Catholic Accountability Project at CatholicVote. “As we should, right? We’re not complaining about that. The issue is that when the attacks are against Catholic churches, there’s no response.”

CatholicVote and others have been keeping track of the attacks on Catholic churches in the U.S. According to its research, 324 churches have been attacked since May 2020.

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In one attack, a statue of St. Junipero Serra at a San Francisco church was vandalized with red paint and then knocked over in 2020. Five activists initially faced felony charges for the crime, but, last week, Marin County District Attorney Lori Frugoli, a Democrat, reduced the charges to misdemeanors, according to the report.

Frugoli defended the changes, saying the defendants’ participated in “restorative justice” classes and agreed to pay restitution.

But San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said prosecutors would not have reduced the punishment if the activists had targeted other groups.

“This course of action would not have been taken with anyone else,” Cordileone responded. “In fact, this crime likely would have been charged as a hate crime, at least if it were perpetrated against certain other minority and vulnerable groups of people.”

According to the report, other recent examples of light consequences include:

In Washington state, the Justice Department last month recommended no jail time for a transgender person who defaced church property and assaulted a church employee.

In Washington, D.C., a man who destroyed the statues of three saints at a Catholic school appears to have pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor that allowed him to avoid serving his prison sentence.

The Examiner contrasted their prosecution with that of a pro-life advocate in Alexandria, Virginia, “who was sentenced to 30 days in jail last summer for a trespassing charge after handing out roses to women in the waiting room of an abortion clinic.”

Valentine told the Examiner that they don’t blame local police; the political favoritism appears to be coming from the federal government level.

“[It’s] not because the police departments are not wanting to investigate these things, but that they don’t have the resources to combat what’s really part of a nationwide epidemic,” Valentine said.

The report adds to growing concerns that the Biden administration is using the Department of Justice, FBI and other agencies as a weapon against its political opponents. Peaceful pro-life advocates have had their homes raided by FBI agents, while arson attacks, property damage and vandalisms of pro-life organizations and churches appear to be met with lackluster investigations by federal authorities.

Churches and pro-life advocates have become increasing targets of vandalism and violence. LifeNews counted about 250 attacks in 2022, including ten arson/attempted arson attacks.

Many pro-life organizations are increasing security and Republican lawmakers are demanding action from the Biden administration to crack down on the growing pro-abortion domestic terrorism. But, while the Biden administration has been aggressively working to expand the killing of unborn babies in abortions, it has done little to stop the hostilities directed at pro-life advocates and churches.

Frustrated by the inaction, a New York pregnancy resource center recently launched its own private investigation into a June 2022 arson attack that caused more than half a million dollars in damage and injured two firefighters.