The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Friday that two elite lawyers accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail into a New York Police Department vehicle last weekend should not receive bail and must return to jail.
Breitbart News reported Monday: “The two attorneys, Colinford Mattis, 32, and Urooj Rahman, 31, reportedly hurled a Molotov cocktail at a police vehicle in the 88th Precinct in Fort Greene Saturday as tensions escalated in the area.”
Mattis works in New York for the Pryor Cashman corporate law firm, and was suspended without pay after news of his arrest. He had already been furloughed since April due to the coronavirus pandemic. Rahman is a human rights lawyer.
They were released on $250,000 bond. Rahman’s bail was posted by fellow attorney Salmah Rizvi, who worked in President Barack Obama’s administration as an intelligence official, providing information for Obama’s daily briefing.
Prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York were dissatisfied with the suspects’ release and filed an appeal.
Mattis graduated from Princeton University and New York University Law School. Rahman graduated from Fordham Law School. She threw a beer bottle with a lit fuse into a damaged police car, setting the console alight; no one was injured.
“The pair also passed out Molotov cocktails Friday night to crowds who were clashing with police so others could cause more destruction, prosecutors said. Authorities said they later found additional incendiary devices in their car,” Fox News reported.
They were taken into federal custody by U.S. Marshals after the appeals court ruling.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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