WSJ: How the Justice Department is handling the January 6th rioters

OK the insurrectionists if you insist. Call it what you want but to the Justice Department ... a protest gone wrong & not an attempted coup.

January 6 and the ‘Insurrection’ Thesis. Sentences handed out so far are for lesser offenses.

Since the disgraceful events of January 6, there’s been a partisan debate over whether the Capitol riot was an attempted coup or a political protest gone horribly wrong. So far, sentences handed out to participants suggest the latter.

This may come as something of a surprise to casual consumers of political commentary. Opining in the Washington Post, Dana Milbank expresses the views of many congressional Democrats and cable TV pundits when he writes of “insurrectionists” and “armed attackers” and “the terrorists who took up arms against the U.S. government on that terrible day.”

The prosecutions concluded to date are for less serious offenses, which may be reassuring to those tempted to believe the government was at risk of being overthrown. Hannah Rabinowitz and Marshall Cohen of CNN report:

A married couple who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 and later downplayed the level of violence pleaded guilty on Tuesday in federal court, where a judge pledged to use the case to send a message that their behavior was “reprehensible.”

The plea hearing for the two Donald Trump supporters, Lori and Thomas Vinson of Kentucky, took place while the select committee hearing about the attack was underway in the House of Representatives.

The Vinsons, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of demonstrating in the Capitol. This has become the standard deal that the Justice Department has offered to nonviolent rioters.

The charge carries a potential maximum sentence of six months in jail, though they’ll likely get less than that, and could even receive probation and avoid incarceration. As part of the plea agreement, both agreed to pay $500 in restitution for damage done to the Capitol.

Presiding Judge Reggie Walton reflected on the events of that January day and said, “it’s an embarrassment to me, it should be an embarrassment to every American.” Indeed it should be. It also should be important to every American to see that those who broke the law are appropriately punished—no more or less.

“So far, at least 23 defendants have pleaded guilty. At least 12 defendants,” CBS News reports, “have agreed to cooperate with the government. At least 17 have pleaded guilty to misdemeanors only, while six have pleaded guilty to felonies.” The CBS report continues:

Three defendants have been sentenced: One defendant has been sentenced to 8 months in prison for a felony, and two have been sentenced for misdemeanor charges only. Anna Morgan-Lloyd was sentenced to three years probation and no jail time. Michael Curzio was sentenced to six months imprisonment, although the courts credited him for the approximately six months he had already spent incarcerated as he waited for the courts to hear his case.

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“Were we really that close to a coup?,” asks Christopher Caldwell in the New York Times. He adds:

Republicans had — and still have — legitimate grievances about how the last election was run. Pandemic conditions produced an electoral system more favorable to Democrats. Without the Covid-era advantage of expanded mail-in voting, Democrats might well have lost more elections at every level, including the presidential...

Whether the country ought now to return to pre-Covid voting rules is a legitimate matter for debate. But Mr. Trump’s conspiracy thinking produced another “distillation,” this time among supporters of the perfectly rational proposition that election laws had been improperly altered to favor Democrats. (To say that the proposition is rational is not to say that it is incontestably correct.) Those who held this idea in a temperate way appear to have steadily disaffiliated from Mr. Trump. By Jan. 6, the grounds for skepticism about the election were unchanged. But they were being advanced by an infuriated and highly unrepresentative hard core.

The result was not a coup. It was, instead, mayhem on behalf of what had started as a legitimate political position. Such mixtures of the defensible and indefensible occur in democracies more often than we care to admit.

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Also this week, the Times’ in-house ethicist is expressing a perhaps surprisingly nuanced view when responding to a reader inquiry. The Times reader is considering firing her “reliable, responsible and kind” dog walker after learning that the walker is a Trump supporter. Kwame Anthony Appiah of the Times cautions:

Your relationship with this woman is instrumental: She gets money, and you get dog care. Nor do her misguided views seem to be affecting your pet; you do not report that Rover, formerly content with plant-based kibble, has started howling for red meat. In fact, you think you’re getting good value for your money. And your patronage doesn’t make it more likely that she’d vote for deplorable candidates. So — while you don’t owe her the gig — it’s worth taking up the question of why you want to drop her...

A manager who penalizes a regular employee for her political views is exercising workplace tyranny, of the kind the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson has explored in her book “Private Government.” Stability of employment and freedom of political opinion are both important interests and should be protected from abuse not just by the government but also by private employers. So it’s ethically significant that you face this person as an equal citizen, with little power over her beyond the capacity to decline to use her services. She in turn would be perfectly free, if she discovered your appalling liberal views, to decline your business. Rover, of course, may regret having no say, or bark, in the matter.

Many news consumers would no doubt respond to the story by rooting for Rover to be able to keep his walker. But the Cockburn column at SpectatorWorld.com notes that “snarling anti-Trumpers” among the Times readership have been leaving numerous comments urging a termination. Let’s hope that such commenters aren’t yet running the Times.

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Comments

[Valeria Kondratiev]

Bravo to Kwame Anthony Appiah for his sensible advice. I actually thought it was sort of illegal to fire someone for their political opinion. I guess it isn’t unless it’s a business with multiple employees?

[maria]

Good response....

I actually know someone who babysat quite reasonably for a family on a regular basis. And then the family discovered that--shudder--gasp---the babysitter husband and wife were Civil War Memorabilia collectors---the husband was also well known in historical circles for his highly accurate battle scene dioramas---the wife had written numerous articles on women's role during the Civil War.

The family wanted the babysitting couple to remove all examples of "this racist period" in American history whenever the children were there. Needless to say, the answer was no. The family indicated that they would have to find another sitter. And they did.

Five of them to be exact over a seven week period---all of them unsatisfactory for whatever reason.

Let it suffice to say that they were back within a month but by then the babysitting couple---in demand by many people---had already moved on....

[NW 332]

I don’t know… I don’t think I could trust keeping Rudy Giuliani on the payroll to walk my dog.

[maria]

Hah! An update on the babysitting episode. The family have now been back twice and are desperate for the old arrangement.....however, this time they now want proof that the babysitting couple are (a) vaccinated---and (b) will commit to never discuss the Civil War with the children, ages two and three. Needless to say, when the babysitting couple finally stopped laughing, the sound of the hang-up could be heard across the street.