Justice Department FINALLY Charges a Couple People Over Statue Attacks

This is good.

Just one charge means that these people now have to wonder if they’re going to be charged, which wasn’t something they’d had to think about for the past month when not one single person was prosecuted for vandalism (and virtually no one was prosecuted for arson).

Fox News:

The Department of Justice on Saturday announced charges against four men for their alleged involvement in the vandalization of the Andrew Jackson statue in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., during a demonstration earlier this week.

The news broke just hours after President Trump tweeted 15 individual press releases from the U.S. Park Police, with photographs of suspects who allegedly desecrated the monument, which lies on federally owned property.

Lee Michael Cantrell, 47, of Virginia; Connor Matthew Judd, 20, of Washington, D.C.; Ryan Lane, 37, of Maryland; and Graham Lloyd, 37, of Maine, were all charged in a criminal complaint Friday with “destruction of federal property,” according to the Justice Department (DOJ).

A 47-year-old man was involved!

I found his picture on a Tennessee drugs arrest.

YIKES.

Even the guys in their 30s… what are they doing with their lives?

The charges were announced by Acting U.S. Attorney Michael R. Sherwin; Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office’s Criminal Division, James A. Dawson, and Acting Chief of the Park Police Gregory T. Monahan.

The complaint, which was unsealed Saturday, states that on June 22, the four men participated in damaging the statue alongside other rioters, while also being captured on video “attempting to pry the statue off its base with a wooden board and trying to pull the statue down with the aid of a yellow strap,” the DOJ said.

It also claims there is video evidence showing “Lloyd as he breaks off and destroys the wheels of cannons located at the base of the statue. Lloyd is then captured on video pulling on ropes in an effort to topple the statue and handing a hammer to an unidentified individual involved in the incident,” according to the department.

William Barr does not appear to be involved in this, at all. It was an act by Sherwin and some FBI agents.

Barr still needs to be fired for his refusal to deal with this problem, but I’m glad that Trump was able to find a way around this and at least charge someone. It is possible that this will now begin to slow.

It is just so completely insane that Barr was just letting this happen for weeks and openly and publicly refusing to press charges on anyone. The Freedom Caucus did a great job calling him out last week.

But again: as far as we know, the position of Barr remains “never touch the good boys,” and this is an act by Attorney Sherwin, directed by the president.

I’ll tell you, this Barr guy really has me missing Jeff Sessions.