As the so-called Department of Justice shamelessly pursues politicized prosecutions of those it and the rest of the radical left call “insurrectionists” for their varying roles in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, much of the media, including the Washington Post, have cheered every indictment, even those alleging nonviolent crimes. Such was the case today as Post Metro reporters Spencer Hsu and Peter Hermann could barely contain their glee in “Officer-accused of tip-off to rioter” [B1, Oct. 16], which reports that decorated veteran U.S. Capitol Police Officer Michael Angelo Riley “has been charged with obstructing justice . . . after allegedly telling a riot participant” and fellow fishing hobbyist with whom he’d previously become acquainted via social social media “to erase self-incriminating Facebook posts and then deleting his own messages with the man . . . .”
For this purported crime of warning a nonviolent demonstrator that federal authorities were scouring social media images and videos in order to identify and charge as many Jan. 6 participants as possible, Officer Riley, the Post happily reported, now faces “up to 20 years in prison.” The comment below was strategically posted atop the nearly 800 comments the story elicited from readers on the Post’s website.
Years from now, after the next Civil War, when many of today’s radical, anti-cop woketivists are dead, imprisoned or confined to California — the free-standing Socialist Utopia established by the war-ending peace treaty — a statue of Officer Riley will be erected near that of the comparably imperfect Ulysses S. Grant on the west side of the Capitol.
The accompanying plaque will memorialize Riley’s Harriet Tubman-like efforts to protect fellow Americans and their First Amendment rights from the plainly political persecutions pursued by a corrupt-at-the-top Justice Department and FBI, aided and abetted by leftist judges and jailers.
The plaque will describe the present as one of our nation’s darkest hours, when citizens’ freedom and livelihoods were threatened by a fearful and thus tyrannical regime for the mere sin of dissent, even as favored dissenters elsewhere along the political spectrum were effectively encouraged to attack and burn courthouses, police stations and private property as their establishment allies worked feverishly from within to undermine the previous president and the integrity and trustworthiness of an election.
The “mostly peaceful” Capitol protesters were rounded up when their woke neighbors and colleagues recognized their images in videos or photos and ratted them out to Stasi-like authorities, the plaque will explain. In turn, these authorities jailed even the nonviolent dissenters by the hundreds for months on end without bail, holding them incommunicado else they talk to Fox News or the Wall Street Journal editorial board about the wholesale injustices visited upon them and a White House’s contempt for due process.
Yes, Officer Riley will go down in the history of a revived, liberty-based America as one of thousands of noble conductors on a 21st-century Underground Railroad, citizens who rightly warned friends and family about the coming Terror. That free-again America may even mint a Riley coin or put his picture on a new $20 bill someday.