SCALISE SHOOTER ‘LIKED’ LEFT-WING SMEAR GROUP LINKED TO CHICK-FIL-A ATTACK
June 14, 2017 in News by RBN Staff
Source: WND
Fan of SPLC, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, TV shows favored by left
By JOE WILSON
WASHINGTON – The Illinois man who allegedly wounded Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., and several others at a baseball practice early Wednesday in Alexandria, Virginia, apparently was a fan of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which nearly five years ago was linked to a domestic terror attack at the Washington office of the Family Research Council.
James T. Hodgkinson, who reportedly shot at Republican congressmen and staffers who were at a practice for an annual charity baseball game for members of Congress, was an avid supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, according to his Facebook page.
Many of Hodgkinson’s profile pictures featured Sanders, as did his cover photo before Facebook removed his page Wednesday shortly after he was identified as the suspect.
Hodgkinson “liked” many anti-Republican, far-left Facebook pages, including “Dump Trump,” “Liar, Liar, Republican campaign on fire,” “Republicans ARE the problem,” “Berniecrats United to Resist Trump” and “Fire the Republican Government.”
Overtly anti-Republican groups were not the only things he liked on Facebook. His “liked” TV shows favored by the left-wing such as “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” on HBO, “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC and “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah on Comedy Central.
The shows regularly paint Republicans to be incompetent at best and outright fascists and Nazis at worst.
He also was a member of groups such as “The Road To Hell Is Paved With Republicans” and “Community Justice Center,” a California-based group of community organizers who opposed Republicans. He posted statements such as “It’s time to destroy Trump and Co.” and that Scalise should “lose his job.”
He “liked” the Southern Poverty Law Center, which itself has been linked to domestic terror and once put Ben Carson on its list of “haters.”
SPLC’s past targeting of FRC was cited in court as the impetus for an attack on the Christian organization’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.
The legal team at Liberty Counsel, criticizing SPLC for “falsely and recklessly labeling Christian ministries as ‘hate groups,’” noted SPLC is “responsible for the first conviction of a man who intended to commit mass murder targeted against a policy organization in Washington, D.C.”
“On August 15, 2012, Floyd Corkins went to the Family Research Council with a gun and a bag filled with ammunition and Chick-fil-A sandwiches. His stated purpose was to kill as many employees of the Family Research Council as possible and then to smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces (because the founder of the food chain said he believed in marriage as a man and a woman). Fortunately, Mr. Corkins was stopped by the security guard, who was shot in the process. Corkins is now serving time in prison. Mr. Corkins admitted to the court that he learned of the Family Research Council by reading the SPLC’s hate map.”
WND reported a video showed Corkins entering the FRC offices and confronting Leo Johnson.
Corkins later was sentenced to prison for domestic terrorism. It was during an interview with FBI officers that Corkins named SPLC as his source of information.
Central to the case, according to the government’s document, was that Corkins “had identified the FRC as an anti-gay organization on the Southern Poverty Law Center website.”
FRC officials repeatedly have explained that they adhere to a biblical perspective on homosexuality but are not “anti-gay.”
SPLC also exhibited behavior so egregious that it was reprimanded by the far-left administration of Barack Obama.
Judicial Watch, citing a letter to Michael M. Hethmon, senior counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, and others, said the DOJ reprimand came in 2016 but was “kept quiet at the agency’s request.”
“[It] involves the SPLC’s atrocious behavior during immigration court proceedings. Two groups that oppose illegal immigration, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), were the target of personal, baseless and below-the-belt attacks from SPLC attorneys during official immigration court proceedings. The SPLC filed a motion attacking and defaming the two respected nonprofits by describing them as ‘white supremacist,’ ‘eugenicist,’ ‘anti-Semitic,’ and ‘anti-Catholic.’ In its reprimand the DOJ says it is troubled by the conduct of SPLC lawyer Christopher Strawn and that his conduct ‘overstepped the bounds of zealous advocacy and was unprofessional.’ Furthermore, SPLC made ‘uncivil comments that disparaged FAIR and its staff,’ the rebuke states, adding that the language constitutes frivolous behavior and doesn’t aid in the administration of justice,” Judicial Watch explained.
“The Obama administration kept the reprimand confidential and asked FAIR and IRLI to keep it under wraps. In the meantime, SPLC continues to publicly trash the groups and escalate attacks against them by putting them on the official hate list. The executive director and general counsel of IRLI, Dale Wilcox, says his nonprofit and FAIR will keep fighting for immigration policies that put America first. ‘The SPLC’s latest tactic in its never-ending witch-hunt and the federal government’s resulting reprimand should send the following message to the mainstream media,’ Wilcox said: ‘Stop using the SPLC as a legitimate hate-watch source in your news coverage. That a cabal of biased list-keepers can play such an important role in distorting the immigration debate in this country is testament to the utter failure of much of the mainstream media which frequently publishes their inflammatory commentary and refuses to question their baseless methods or financial motivations,’” Judicial Watch said.
The letter explained the DOJ stopped short of “formal disciplinary proceeding[s],” instead opting for the rebuke in the letter.
“We take this opportunity to remind the attorney practitioners involved in this misconduct that practitioners before EOIR should be striving to be civil and professional in their interactions with each other, the public, the board and immigration courts. Attorneys owe a duty of professionalism to their clients, opposing parties and their counsel, the courts, and the public as a whole.”
To really understand the war zone America is becoming, read the June issue of WND’s acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, “RAGE AND VIOLENCE: Why the Left has gone insane in the Age of Trump.”