Sessions Says ‘Evil Attack’ in Virginia Is Domestic Terrorism
August 14, 2017 in News by RBN
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Monday that the “evil attack” in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend meets the legal definition of an act of domestic terrorism, an early declaration in an investigation after a car plowed into a crowd of protesters.
“It does meet the definition of domestic terrorism in our statute,” Mr. Sessions said on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” referring to a fatal attack on Saturday when a vehicle drove into a crowd protesting white nationalists, killing one woman and injuring others. A 20-year-old man has been arrested and charged by Virginia authorities with second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and failing to stop at the scene of a crash that resulted in a death.
“You can be sure we will charge and advance the investigation toward the most serious charges that can be brought because this is unequivocally an unacceptable evil attack,” Mr. Sessions said, adding that terrorism and civil rights investigators were working on the case.
Mr. Sessions appeared on several morning news shows on Monday, condemning the violent demonstrations over the removal of a Confederate monument and defending President Trump’s response.
Mr. Trump has been reluctant to criticize white supremacists for the weekend’s bloody protests in Charlottesville. The attorney general’s remarks were notable for being more specific and direct than the president’s in condemning the alt-right, a loose collective of far-right activists, some of whom espouse racist and anti-Semitic views.
Mr. Sessions, who is coming off weeks of pointed criticism from Mr. Trump over his performance as attorney general, was pressed to explain why the president had not forcefully condemned white nationalism.
Mr. Sessions said the president had done so, but he was referring to an unattributed White House statement on Sunday that condemned “white supremacists,” not to comments Mr. Trump made publicly.
“He said that yesterday, his spokesman did,” Mr. Sessions said on ABC.
“It came from the White House,” Mr. Sessions said on NBC’s “Today” show. “It was authorized.”
“I think we’re making too much of this,” Mr. Sessions added on “CBS This Morning.”
As United States attorney in Alabama, Mr. Sessions was accused decades ago of making racist comments, something he has denied. But critics again assailed him as racist during his Senate confirmation.
But Mr. Sessions’s record on law and order suggests a more nuanced view.
“I’ve always said he’s good on criminal civil rights enforcement, on hate crimes. I think he really cares about it,” said Vanita Gupta, the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Ms. Gupta was head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division during the Obama administration. “The problem is, he’s completely unwilling to address systemic problems.”
Mr. Trump was scheduled to meet in Washington later Monday with Mr. Sessions and the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, about the Charlottesville incident, the White House said. Mr. Trump has been on vacation in New Jersey. Mr. Sessions said that Mr. Trump would speak “to the people” later on Monday.
The “domestic terrorism” language is largely symbolic — many of the law’s stiffest penalties are for international terrorism that do not apply domestically. But the debate over language has raged for more than a decade, as Muslim groups in particular argue that the word terrorism is used only when the attackers are Muslim.
By declaring the attack to be domestic terrorism, Mr. Sessions is moving quickly to quell a debate that swirled after the 2015 shooting of a historically black church in South Carolina. Dylann S. Roof, a South Carolina man who had once worn white supremacist patches, killed nine people in that attack. Loretta E. Lynch, the attorney general at the time, declared hate crimes “the original domestic terrorism.” But some civil rights groups wanted her to go farther.
Under federal law that was expanded after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a violation of federal or state criminal law qualifies as domestic terrorism if it appears to be intended to coerce or intimidate a civilian population or to coerce the policy of the government. But domestic terrorism carries no additional penalties. Investigators rely on charges like murder and assault in prosecuting these crimes.
The Justice Department announced over the weekend that it was opening a civil rights investigation into the Charlottesville incident.
