U.S. Code § 1507 states that “any individual who “pickets or parades” with the “intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer” near a federal court or “near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer (emphasis mine)” will be fined, or “imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”
It’s no surprise that Joe Biden’s Department of Justice hasn’t lifted a finger to arrest anyone obviously trying to interfere with a Supreme Court decision. It’s also not particularly surprising that Joe Biden’s U.S. Marshals Service hasn’t been tasked with protecting the homes of conservative justices who are under threat.
But the biggest non-surprise of all is that Biden doing nothing about prominent Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) all but encouraging and justifying violence against the justices.
“While we have seen and heard extraordinary anguish in our communities,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said, “we have been moved by how so many have channeled their righteous anger into meaningful action: planning to march and mobilize to make their voices heard.”
In the statement, Pelosi also attacked Republicans and the Supreme Court over the expected ruling, and says that Democrats will “fight relentlessly to enshrine Roe v. Wade as the law of the land.”
“Righteous anger,” indeed.
“Republicans have made clear that their goal will be to seek to criminalize abortion nationwide,” Pelosi said. “Republican state legislators across the country are already advancing extreme new laws, seeking to arrest doctors for offering reproductive care, ban abortion entirely with no exceptions, and even charge women with murder who exercise their right to choose.”
None of those proposals have passed in any state legislature. Pelosi is dancing with strawmen to gin up outrage against the justices. And given the hysteria that Pelosi and other Democrats are generating against the justices, any such rhetorical incendiary devices could motivate some radical left crackpot to attempt to give Biden a few more Supreme Court picks.
This should concern Attorney General Merrick Garland. But the man who wanted to sic the FBI on parents protesting at school board meetings — a purely local matter — is predictably quiet when federal judges are under threat from a hysterical mob of left-wing crazies.
According to senior fellow at the National Review Institute and Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy, the Biden DOJ is being silent on this for the same reason as the White House: “They are elevating their political interest in portraying the draft Supreme Court opinion as extreme over their constitutional duty to execute the laws faithfully and protect both the Court and the justices.”
“I would note that months ago, when Attorney General Garland unjustifiably dispatched the FBI to investigate parents who were protesting the inclusion of racist and anti-American materials in school curricula, Garland claimed that the Justice Department had an interest in protecting teachers and school administrators. Not only was it untrue that schools were under siege; the relationship between parents and schools is a state and local issue, not a federal one — hypothetically, if a parent were to assault a teacher, it would be a state crime, not a federal one,” continued McCarthy.
Garland is just Biden’s errand boy. He does what he’s told to do. But Pelosi’s veiled threats against the justices, claiming that some anger is justified and should be encouraged, puts the Speaker outside the lines of acceptable behavior in a volatile political atmosphere.
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