North Carolina Republicans affected by the firebombing of their campaign office are speaking out, accusing the Obama administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) of covering up the political motivations behind the attack.
On October 15, a firebomb was thrown through a window of the Republican Party office in Orange County, North Carolina, destroying property but killing no one as the office was empty overnight.
Local Republicans claim that ATF agents painted over a message on an adjacent building that read, “Nazi Republicans, leave town or else,” and would not answer questions about why the message was painted over. The crime scene was also compromised, with reporters and others freely walking around with no regard for forensic investigators. The creation of graffiti surrounding that office has continued.
“The ATF’s destruction of evidence in their investigation of Democrat terrorists tells us everything we need to know about our government,” conservative activist and North Carolinian Noel Fritsch told Breitbart News.
“The destruction of the ‘Nazi Republicans go home or else’ message is an attempt to cover up behavior of violent leftists bent on oppressing those with whom they disagree, and one wonders to what extent our federal government shares in that violent leftist agenda,” Fritsch said.
Here are the firsthand accounts of Orange County Republicans who spoke to Breitbart News, in their own words:
Daniel Ashley, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party:
“I stumbled onto our headquarters Sunday morning. My wife and I had gone to eat breakfast at a restaurant in town. I was showing her the work we had done, I wanted to use the restroom and she wanted a bottle of water so we went to headquarters,” said Ashley, who noted that the worst thing they’d faced so far was stolen yard signs.
“We saw the police tape,” Ashley said. “My wife took some pictures of the building, the window was busted up, I was trying to call some people and alert them. The police said, ‘You’ve been more than vandalized. You’ve been torched.”
Ashley dropped off his wife at home then returned to the scene of the attack.
“They were working inside,” Ashley said of ATF agents and police. “Then they started painting over the ‘Nazi Republicans leave town or else,’ which was on an adjacent building next door. They started painting over that with black paint. I said, ‘why are they painting over that right now?’ After [ATF] finally let us in I said, ‘why did you start painting over the graffiti?’ I know it said Nazi republicans but i don’t know what else it said. I asked four times. The ATF agents, they would look at each other; finally on the fourth time I got a real dirty look like ‘who are you to be asking these questions?'”
“These people thought this out,” Ashley said of the attackers. “This is domestic terrorism.”
Michele Nix, vice chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party:
It happened Sunday morning, and I was there Monday,” Nix said.
“When it happened the chairman of the Orange County Republian party, he could not get to the building because everything was taped off,” Nix said. “We saw the burned out shell of an office building…it was awful.”
“When they threw the molotov cocktail they thought it would explode, but there was a couch there, and it lit the couch on fire.”
“It was on the side of the building next to where they had firebombed the building,” Nix said of the Nazi message. “On the building next door they spray painted ‘Nazi Republicans leave town or else.'”
“When I got there, I saw that it had already been spray painted over, and I asked the ATF chairman and he said it was the ATF” who spray-painted it over.
“Why would they do that? The chairman said I don’t know. I kept asking them but they wouldn’t answer me.”
“We couldn’t understand why there wasn’t any yellow tape that was up. They came in, they [ATF] examined everything but there was no crime scene tape. I told the Hillsborough county police, why was there no crime scene tape? They said they have everything they need.”
“They said, because the owner wanted that to be painted over because it would be bad for their business,” Nix said. “The person who owns that business who had the business on their wall is a Democrat.”
Mary Lopez Carter, Republican North Carolina Senate candidate
“I went there the next day and the swastika and writing on the wall had been covered up with paint,” Lopez Carter said. “Danny Ashley said that ATF was out there and were the ones who covered it up.”
“There was no yellow tape, there was no effort to preserve the integrity of [the crime scene] for forensics,” Lopez Carter said, calling the situation “odd” and “sloppy work.”
“It sends a message that, hey, this wasn’t all that serious, and there could be copycats,” she said. “There have been more reports of graffiti, not firebombs, but graffiti out there.”
Rumors spread that the bombing was an inside job perpetrated by Republicans.
“It would never, never happen,” Lopez Carter said of that theory. “People were crying and were very upset.”
“The firebomb landed on or near the couch. I’m glad no one decided to spend the night and take a rest there.”
ATF did not return a request for comment for this report.
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