Five months after U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced a campaign against “troublemakers,” authorities tracked down Atlanta housing activist Richard Hunsinger and charged him with vandalizing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Atlanta during a July 25 protest where masked activists tossed Molotov cocktails and a nail bomb into the building. Left-wing activists sympathetic to Hunsinger and others who have been arrested in connection with demonstrations claim the prosecutions are intended to blunt protest against the government by removing activists deemed “troublemakers,” reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. ”This is outside of the juridical landscape of U.S. law,” said Paul Torino of the Atlanta Anti-Repression Committee, which is helping those arrested in protests. “Which is more normal in, I don’t know, Iran? Places with a little less political freedom than the U.S.”
”This particular Department of Justice is the most political I’ve ever seen,” said Georgia State law Prof. Caren Morrison, a former prosecutor. “But even without an agenda … I would still expect to see (some of) these cases go federal. It would make sense to me.” In the ICE building incident, Hunsinger was denied bond, although he had no criminal record and had 14 people attest to his good character. Holding defendants without bond is generally reserved for people considered to be dangerous or likely to flee. Of 151 felony arrests related to social and racial unrest around the nation, federal judges agreed with prosecutors to deny bond in a third of cases. Some federal prosecutions around the nation appear to have a weak link to federal crimes. The Center for Investigative Reporting found that some defendants are facing federal prison time because property damaged was involved in interstate commerce. In one case, a federal arson charge was filed because a damaged coffee shop obtained its to-go cups from a neighboring state.