Republicans ignoring Jan. 6 political prisoners

FPI / August 15, 2021

Trials are supposed to begin within 70 days of indictment. Hundreds of Trump supporters who were at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 have been held in prison without trial for seven months.

The detainees have essentially received the silent treatment from Republicans in Washington, "other than a timid protest by a few conservative House Republicans," David Zukerman noted in an Aug. 12 op-ed for American Thinker.

Why aren't Republicans demanding the detainees be given a fair and speedy trial?

Think about the outrage if leftist activists had been detained for seven months during the Trump administration.

"How long would it have taken rabid, radical leftists to respond if the Trump Department of Justice had held Antifa defendants in jail for seven months without trial? Half a millisecond?" Zukerman wrote.

The Washington Post has noted that a federal judge has constitutional concerns about one case involving a few of the detainees. The New York Times acknowledged in its Aug. 11 print edition that the constitutional right of the detainees to a speedy trial is going by the boards.

It is now more than seven months after Jan. 6.

"Isn't this an occasion for the filing of habeas corpus writs? What is going on here? Is it political justice of the sort that Judge Emmet G. Sullivan imposed on Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, when he maintained a prosecution that the government sought to dismiss?" Zukerman noted.

The New York Times article on the absence of a speedy trial for the Jan. 6 detainees ended with the writer, Alan Feuer, quoting judge Sullivan:

"[Judge Sullivan] suggested that the fault [for the delay in bringing the cases to trial] lay not [with the government] but in the number of rioters who breached the Capitol. 'The problem,' he said, 'started on January 6 itself.' "

Zukerman noted: "Consider the clear implication of Judge Sullivan's gratuitous comment: a judge may disregard 'due process of law' and 'equal protection of the laws' (see the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution) if he considers the charges an unacceptable affront to his political mindset. Judge Sullivan would strip the blindfold from the statue of Justice and tilt her scales way over to the left."

Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the Constitution states: "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public safety may require it."

Could it be, Zukerman wrote, "that defense counsel fear that applications for a writ of habeas corpus would be denied by courts regarding the January 6 defendants as rebels? Or could it be that defense counsel fear retribution from the DOJ or the federal judges if they protest the repressive treatment of their clients too zealously?"

Leftists, Zukerman added, "made it a practice to accuse President Trump of undermining our democratic institutions and imposing authoritarian rule on the country. That was a false claim. But behold the treatment given citizens who are not even charged with insurrection or sedition. The main charges seem to be obstruction of an official proceeding, which, as the Post article reports, may be an unconstitutional charge — and, get this, trespass. Where else but under a totalitarian-minded regime would more than 500 detainees be held seven months and counting for trespass?"

The Biden administration "is trashing due process and equal protection of the laws — and not a word of outrage at this trashing of the Constitution is heard," Zukerman wrote. "James Madison must be deeply dismayed that the American spirit of liberty he extolled in Federalist No. 57 is fading away."

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