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FBI arrests US Army veteran for 'conspiracy' over protest against ICE

theguardian.com

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Re: FBI arrests US Army veteran for 'conspiracy' over protest against ICE

#21

Post by like_any_other »

mrinterweb wrote: post #11

"Conspiracy to Impede or Injure Officers" seems like a pretty broad category, and should be separate things. Conspiracy to impede is one thing. That might be applied to planning to be at a protest where you may be in the way of an officer. Injuring is a very different thing. Conflating the two into a single charge seems disproportionate. This conflation seems intentional to give an excuse to just round up anyone who…

> a crime that has a punishment equal to assaulting an officer

I'd be very surprised if the punishments for impeding or injuring are equal, despite the two crimes being described in the same statute. Afaik sentencing guidelines take into account more than just the charge itself.

Re: FBI arrests US Army veteran for 'conspiracy' over protest against ICE

#22

Post by mrinterweb »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #13
mrinterweb wrote: post #11

"Conspiracy to Impede or Injure Officers" seems like a pretty broad category, and should be separate things. Conspiracy to impede is one thing. That might be applied to planning to be at a protest where you may be in the way of an officer. Injuring is a very different thing. Conflating the two into a single charge seems disproportionate. This conflation seems intentional to give an excuse to just round up anyone who…

Conspiracy to impede is unconstitutional, as people in the US have the right to peacefully assemble. If cops decide to illegally break up a protest, then they can say "oh you're impending me!" and no one actually has a 1st amendment right.

I'm certainly not advocating that "conspiracy to impede" should be illegal. I just feel that putting "impede" and "injure" together into a single charge seems like a way to deal excessive punishments in a way that could be very broadly interpreted.

Re: FBI arrests US Army veteran for 'conspiracy' over protest against ICE

#23

Post by nemo44x »

Aurornis wrote: post #19

This article is confusing. I think the actual charges are this: > According to the indictment, Mavalwalla and his co-defendants “physically blocked the drive-way of the federal facility and/or physically pushed against officers despite orders to disperse and efforts to remove them from the property”. And it was recorded and posted to Instagram: > A one-minute video posted on Instagram shows the army veteran briefly j…

[flagged]

Re: FBI arrests US Army veteran for 'conspiracy' over protest against ICE

#24

Post by onetimeusename »

PieTime wrote: post #7
standardUser wrote: post #4

The complete lack of pushback from traditional conservatives against Trump's constant overreach and his complete disregard for basic civil liberties and the rule of law continues to shock me.

I’ve asked myself why my grandparents did not try to overthrow their Nazi regime. They were not the most immoral people on the surface, they just viewed their actions happening as the only way of survival. I think the answer lies in seeing what really happening instead of what’s portrayed as happening on their propaganda outlets. Articles like this start to transition people away from supporting fascism if they are b…

[flagged]

Re: FBI arrests US Army veteran for 'conspiracy' over protest against ICE

#25

Post by standardUser »

mathiaspoint wrote: post #10
standardUser wrote: post #4

The complete lack of pushback from traditional conservatives against Trump's constant overreach and his complete disregard for basic civil liberties and the rule of law continues to shock me.

[flagged]

Hardly. There has never been a president more hostile to libertarian ideology than Donald Trump.

Re: FBI arrests US Army veteran for 'conspiracy' over protest against ICE

#26

Post by krapp »

onetimeusename wrote: post #24
PieTime wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve asked myself why my grandparents did not try to overthrow their Nazi regime. They were not the most immoral people on the surface, they just viewed their actions happening as the only way of survival. I think the answer lies in seeing what really happening instead of what’s portrayed as happening on their propaganda outlets. Articles like this start to transition people away from supporting fascism if they are b…

[flagged]

>There was large scale mass migration into the country that appeared to be facilitated by the last administration.

Did you forget to specify "illegal" migration in regards to this conspiracy theory or did the mask just slip here?

Re: FBI arrests US Army veteran for 'conspiracy' over protest against ICE

#27

Post by exolymph »

standardUser wrote: post #4

The complete lack of pushback from traditional conservatives against Trump's constant overreach and his complete disregard for basic civil liberties and the rule of law continues to shock me.

~No one pushes back on abuses of power by their own side.

(Not literally no one, but few enough people that they effectively don't matter.)

Re: FBI arrests US Army veteran for 'conspiracy' over protest against ICE

#28

Post by nomel »

rafram wrote: post #18
nomel wrote: post #2

Facts start at the third section, "‘An issue of selective prosecution’", after ~30 paragraphs of character/story/emotion building. > Mavalwalla was one of hundreds of people to respond to a 11 June social media post from the former president of the Spokane city council that encouraged protesters to block an Ice transport they believed would carry two Venezuelan immigrants who were in the country legally, petitioning…

The Bundy brothers - the ones who led an armed occupation of a wildlife refuge for 41 days - were charged with that same crime, and they were acquitted: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/27/oregon-milit... So I would caution against reading a short description of the law and thinking it's an open-and-shut case against the protesters.

IANAL, but that cases seem very different. This appears direct (prevent the federal officer from completing their enforcement action), where the Bundy brothers appears to have been indirect (in response to a federal officers that completed their action):

> In response to the imprisonment of two Harney County ranchers, who were prosecuted for arson, Ammon and Ryan led a group of activists in an occupation of the Malheur national wildlife refuge, an obscure sanctuary for birds.

> Ammon declared that he and other protesters, some who openly carried firearms and took over government buildings and equipment, would stay until the ranchers were freed and the refuge land was given to locals to control.

Re: FBI arrests US Army veteran for 'conspiracy' over protest against ICE

#29

Post by nemo44x »

mathiaspoint wrote: post #10
standardUser wrote: post #4

The complete lack of pushback from traditional conservatives against Trump's constant overreach and his complete disregard for basic civil liberties and the rule of law continues to shock me.

[flagged]

They’re just so used to not having opposition. Even less than that. Just being able to blatantly walk all over their opposition and poke them in the eye. Their opposition assumed good will but after decades of being deceived they’ve finally decided to resist. And this resistance is a new feeling for the left.

They’re continuing their tried and true tactics but they aren’t working anymore.

Re: FBI arrests US Army veteran for 'conspiracy' over protest against ICE

#30

Post by dragonwriter »

mathiaspoint wrote: post #10
standardUser wrote: post #4

The complete lack of pushback from traditional conservatives against Trump's constant overreach and his complete disregard for basic civil liberties and the rule of law continues to shock me.

[flagged]

No, for a while after the shakeup of the US political landscape resulting from Johnson embracing the Civil Rights Act and the Republican Party exploiting disaffection of racists from the Democratic Party in a way that they had not tried to do after the similar Democratic split over integration vs segregation in the 1940s that produced the short-lived State's Rights Democratic Party, the Republican Party placed heavy rhetorical emphasis of libertarianism because it was a framework within which the “State's Rights” code for racial discrimination and laissez-faire capitalism of economic conservatives could be appealed to under the same verbiage. This was not an attempt at a compromise with the Left; insofar as it was a compromise rather than just a joint propaganda effort, it was a compromise within the Right.
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