Brent Bozell: Crime and Punishment in Joe Biden’s America

In the summer of 2020, America was in flames as Antifa and BLM set fire to city after city – Seattle, Minneapolis, Portland, New York, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and so many more. Police stations were torched, and dozens of officers were injured as all manner of projectiles, from rocks to Molotov cocktails, were hurled at them. Dozens of people died. The damage was estimated at over $1.2 billion, the highest in history.

In January of 2021, the Biden administration came to town. With 35,000 FBI agents and support personnel at his disposal, and armed with an annual $10.8 billion budget, Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland had everything he needed to bring the criminals to bear.

But there was no outrage from the Justice Department. Instead, with a lonely exception here and there, there was silence. Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of crimes across the country never have been, nor ever will be, prosecuted. New York City is paying George Floyd protesters a $13 million settlement for arresting them. Many other cities across the U.S. are negotiating similar settlements.

Perhaps it’s because Biden’s Justice Department had other priorities. It has been obsessed with putting in prison anyone, and everyone who participated in the “insurrection” of January 6.

My son does not belong to any political group. His only organized involvement during the 2020 elections was with a local church group that met daily to pray the rosary for America. But like tens of millions of other Americans, my son believed the 2020 presidential election had been stolen, so on January 6 he traveled to Washington, DC, and joined with over 100,000 other patriots to show their support for the man they believed had won and deserved to be certified.

But then things went wrong, and he was part of it. He entered the Capitol after breaking two windows. Ultimately, he was arrested and charged. He accepted responsibility for these felony offenses as well as other ancillary misconduct. But when he would not plead guilty to the felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding – as unconstitutional a charge as there ever was, and one which is about to be tossed out by the Supreme Court, the Biden Justice Department unloaded.

Without the obstruction charge, the January 6 “insurrection” narrative would be vaporized. The vast majority of protesters would be no guiltier than the hundreds of pro-Hamas protesters who stormed the Capitol last October; or Code Pink protesters who regularly disrupt Congressional hearings; or even Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who tripped a fire alarm (and lied about it) to prevent a House vote. All who committed those infractions were charged with misdemeanors and paid meaningless fines.

Were justice equally distributed, my son would be similarly guilty, with an additional punishment for breaking two windows. One could project probation and financial restitution. But this is Joe Biden’s Justice Department, and we knew that would not be enough.

Two and a half years after he was charged, and on the eve of his trial, the hammer dropped. Suddenly the Justice Department found he’d assaulted – “barreled into,” they said – a policeman. The footage provided as evidence was so grainy and from such a distance that the judge himself acknowledged it was impossible to determine conclusively if my son had even touched the officer. Later the judge would state emphatically that he wanted it understood that my son never attacked this or any other officer that day. But this is when the layman learns that “assault” does not necessarily mean attack. It also means “impede” or “interfere,” and since my son went forward toward an officer when pushed from behind by the now unruly mob – guilty.

But my son did interact with the police that day.

The prosecution had access to and had watched other video footage that day. One clip showed my son bringing water to an officer suffering from tear gas. A second video showed my son successfully commanding a menacing rioter to sheath his baseball bat after he’d ignored similar demands from an endangered cop. There exists also footage showing my son helping yet another policeman to his feet after being knocked over.

This meant nothing to the “Justice” Department. It wanted a felony conviction, and when it got it, this out-of-control federal agency went for more – far more. As the sentencing date approached it pinned yet another charge: terrorism enhancement. The Biden administration now wanted the court to equate my son, whose most serious crime ever was a traffic offense, to Osama bin Laden. They argued the applicable sentencing range was 22-27 years in prison.

The presiding judge would have none of it and declined to accept the enhancement. He sentenced my son to 45 months instead. But during the sentencing this judge declared he’d found something everyone had missed. Hidden in a footnote buried in their report, the prosecutors had provided the replacement cost for one broken window – $847.00. That amount made the offense a misdemeanor, not a felony. The prosecution knew this all along yet proceeded in bad faith with a felony charge.

Why did they go to such extremes against my son, to include inventing crimes and wanting him declared a terrorist?

This was not a pursuit of justice by a prosecution governed by principle. In Biden’s America, justice has no home for those who challenge it. This was a political prosecution using the full force of the federal government because my son, Leo Brent Bozell IV, carries his father’s name, and his father has influence and is supporting President Trump in 2024. Ends justify means, and they will stop at nothing.

A criminal investigation into this corrupt Justice Department is long overdue. Those who have corrupted it know that in a new Trump administration their days are numbered.

L. Brent Bozell III is the founder and president of the Media Research Center.