Three anti-Muslim militia members, on trial for plotting to slaughter Somali refugees in southwest Kansas, have adopted a defense strategy that could’ve been culled directly from President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed: suggesting that a biased FBI conspired against them in the lead-up to the 2016 election due to their political beliefs.
Curtis Allen, Patrick Stein and Gavin Wright are on trial in connection with their arrest in a FBI domestic terrorism sting just weeks before the 2016 election. Their defense attorneys, in turn, are putting the FBI on trial ― accusing the nation’s premier law enforcement agency of improperly targeting the three men due to their conservative ideology.
It’s common for defense attorneys to suggest their clients were wrongfully singled out by biased law enforcement officials. And to be sure, there’s nothing wrong with healthy skepticism about law enforcement and the FBI.
But the situation here is striking: A U.S. president has taken pains to undermine the FBI (declaring that the bureau’s reputation is “in Tatters—worst in History!”), and defense attorneys for accused terrorists are seeking to capitalize on that reality. This is happening as the president is trying to neuter a special counsel probe that’s already resulted in multiple charges against and guilty pleas from a variety of his associates. The government, meanwhile, will have to deal with jurors primed to believe a conspiracy theory fundamentally at odds with the facts ― namely, that the FBI is a hotbed of liberalism that worked behind the scenes to somehow try to stop Trump’s election.
You know the really troubling part is that Trump and his supporters would probably find nothing wrong with this.
After all these planned attacks were against Muslims, not REAL Americans.
You know, white people.
Source https://ift.tt/2GG1qNz
