Birth of the American Gulag

David Zukerman, "January 6 political prisoners deserve much more outrage than they're getting"

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?

Hundreds, yes hundreds of Trump-supporters at the Capitol have been held for seven months without trial. Other than a timid protest by a few conservative House Republicans, this writer is unaware of demands that these political detainees — how otherwise explain their detention by Biden's attorney general Garland (and thank the Almighty he was not put on the Supreme Court) — be given a fair and speedy trial?

Following a story in The Washington Post that a federal judge has constitutional concerns about one case involving a few of the detainees, The New York Times recognized, in its August 11 print edition, that the constitutional right of the detainees to a speedy trial is going by the boards, as trials are supposed to begin within 70 days of indictment.

Here it is more than seven months after January 6, 2021, the date of the Capitol incursion.

Isn't this an occasion for the filing of habeas corpus writs? What is going on here — political justice of the sort that Judge Emmet G. Sullivan imposed on Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, maintaining a prosecution that the government sought to be dismissed? And by the way, the Times article on the absence of a speedy trial for the "Jan. 6" detainees ended with the writer, Alan Feuer, quoting political 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 Jan[uary] 6 itself.'" (This writer doubts that the judge said "Jan. 6.")

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.

Where is the attorney to cite this from the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution? "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury[.]" Detention for seven months without trial seems a prima facie violation of the Sixth Amendment.

Further, 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 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?

The rabid, radical leftists 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? Good heavens, why hasn't the government detained for months on end the Antiifa protesters in Lafayette Square, June 1, 2020, who vandalized and set on fire St. John's Church?

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. James Madison must be deeply dismayed that the American spirit of liberty he extolled in Federalist No. 57 is fading away. ACLU, Alan Dershsowitz, Jonathan Turley, please copy.