Horowitz: Here’s the must-have legislative fix for biased blue-city prosecutors and juries

Trump supporters have asserted that we must focus on Trump’s indictment, because if biased prosecutors could go after a president, they could politically target all of us. But that is exactly what they have been doing for the past few years, and there is no effort to push state and federal legislation stopping it. Just this week, two more prominent cases of politically motivated prosecutions should motivate us not just to fundraise for one particular presidential candidate, but to demand immediate legal reforms.

Exhibit #1: Douglass Mackey

Be careful which election memes, polls, satire, or information you share on social media – you could be facing 10 years in federal prison if the regime’s DOJ determines it’s misinformation. On Friday, Michael J. Driscoll, assistant director in charge for the FBI’s New York field office, announced that Douglass Mackey, who went by the name of "Ricky Vaughn" online, was found guilty of spreading misinformation during the fall of 2016. He was accused of working with other people on social media to "disseminate fraudulent messages that encouraged supporters of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to ‘vote’ via text message or social media which, in reality, was legally invalid," according to the DOJ press release.

Somehow, I think that when Congress passed 18 U.S.C. §241, which made it a federal crime "to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person … in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution," it did not mean tweeting election memes. It more likely was designed to target election interference like Black Panther militiamen standing outside Philadelphia precincts during that same 2016 election. Of course, those people were never indicted. Yet this is exactly what legislators had in mind when they passed the law after the Civil War to prevent white mobs from physically intimidating black voters at the polls.

Obviously, this meme from Mackey encouraging people to vote via text message was a lie because it was satire. This was the election where the governors illegally transformed the election to mail-in ballots, so Mackey was spoofing it by suggesting you can vote any way you want. This is now punishable by up to 10 years in prison. If you think this can’t happen to you, just consider the fact that the regime believes anything we say is a lie and is a threat to a “constitutional rights” of one of its chosen classes.

If this conviction is allowed to stand, there is quite literally no limit to how government administrations can chill political speech. Is it that hard to envision an FBI agent knocking on your door and saying, “You just wrote information telling people not to get vaccines or to take a certain therapeutic the CDC doesn’t like. You are engaging in fraud and are an accessory to murder!”

Let’s not forget that last year the “National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin” warned about threats from “Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs)” who “targeted individuals with opposing views engaged in First Amendment-protected, non-violent protest activity,” which include those “motivated by a range of issues, including anger over COVID-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results …”

Mackey was tried in New York because that was the place of his residence in 2016. But does anyone believe a man charged with influencing the election to the detriment of Hillary Clinton can get a fair trial in a place like New York? This is a classic example of the need for federal legislation allowing a defendant to request an expanded jury pool to reflect the political makeup of the broader country when the defendant is clearly targeted as a conservative figure.

Exhibit #2 Sgt. Daniel Perry

During 2020, one of the most horrific violent trends that played out on America’s streets was when BLM rioters would surround unsuspecting motorists and threaten their lives. Conjuring up images of lynchings by Hamas in the Middle East, people were faced with the choice of defending themselves against possible death or suffering a beating. A number of motorists faced prosecution rather than the people engaging in such illegal and disruptive violence.

Sgt. Daniel Perry, an active-duty soldier at Fort Hood in July 2020, was driving his Uber to earn some extra cash outside his military stipend. One night he was surrounded by a mob in downtown Austin and claims one of the protesters, 28-year-old Garrett Foster, was armed with an AK-47. He felt compelled to shoot Foster with his handgun when he alleges Foster pointed the AK at him, while others were banging on the hood of the car. Perry immediately called 911, was questioned by police, and was free to go that night. A year later, he was indicted by Soros prosecutor Jose Garza for murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

So a wild mob was able to carry long guns and bang on the cars of motorists without being prosecuted, but a man who fired on someone attacking him now faces murder. The facts of the case were obvious to begin with, but Perry’s story was corroborated by the lead investigator, Detective David Fugitt, who asserted in an August 2021 sworn affidavit that prosecutors under Travis County DA Jose Garza forced him to remove exculpatory evidence from his presentation to the grand jury. "It became clear to me that the District Attorney’s Office did not want to present evidence to the grand jury that would be exculpatory to Daniel Perry and/or to show that witness statements obtained by the family of Garrett Foster and/or their attorneys were inconsistent with prior interviews such ‘witnesses’ gave the police and/or the video of the incident in question," wrote Fugitt.

This week, Perry is facing trial in an extremely blue city within the red state of Texas, a city whose residents clearly have no problem with BLM blocking their streets. Does anyone believe Perry can rely on the facts of the case governing the minds of the jurors or the identity of the alleged victim in this case? I wouldn’t want to roll the dice.

There is a particularly urgent need for red-state legislatures to deal with this growing threat from their blue cities. Whenever a criminal case implicating a wedge political issue comes before a blue-city prosecutor or jury pool, equal protection under the law is no longer the guiding principle.

It was shocking enough that Americans now have to be more afraid in their own streets than they were in Afghanistan. As Sgt. Perry said, "I've been in Afghanistan and I was never so scared as I was tonight. You know, this is Austin, you know, I've always felt safe here until tonight." Now, they have to fear the same prosecutors who make our streets like those of the third world for actually defending themselves. Indeed, this era of political prosecution is about a lot more than just Trump.