Woman convicted for laugh at Sessions hearing
A jury Wednesday convicted three Code Pink activists on charges related to a protest at the confirmation hearing of Jeff Sessions for attorney general — including a Virginia woman who said all she did was laugh.
Each of the three protesters faces up to 12 months in jail, $2,000 in fines or both, depending on a June 21 sentencing hearing.
The woman who laughed, Desiree A. Fairooz, 61, of Bluemont, Virginia, said she was undeterred. “We’ll face the music when we get to that,” she said.
A twoday trial in District of Columbia Superior Court in Washington ended Tuesday. All three had pleaded not guilty, rejected a plea deal and demanded the trial.
In verdicts returned shortly after noon Wednesday, the jury also convicted two other activists in the group she was with, Tighe Barry and Lenny Bianchi, who were dressed as Ku Klux Klan members with white hoods and robes and stood up before the Jan. 10 hearing started.
In an April court filing, the office of the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia had argued that all three protesters shared a common goal to “impede and disrupt” the hearing. Fairooz, the office said, had “created a scene.”
Early in the hearing, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said that Sessions’ record of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented,” Ariel Gold, the campaign director of Code Pink, said Wednesday.
Fairooz said that, on hearing that, she let out a giggle.
“I just couldn’t hold it,” she said Wednesday. “It was spontaneous. It was an immediate rejection of what I considered an outright lie or pure ignorance.”
Prosecutors described her actions differently.
Fairooz had “let out a loud burst of laughter, followed by a second louder burst of laughter,” the U.S. attorney’s office said in the filing. Police then tried to “quietly escort” Fairooz from the room, but she “grew loud and more disruptive, eventually halting the confirmation hearing.”
Gold described the noise Fairooz made as a “reflexive gasp” that was no more loud than a cough. Fairooz said it was not intended to disrupt the hearing.
“None of us planned to get arrested,” said Fairooz, who attended the hearing dressed in pink as Lady Liberty and carrying a sign. “We just wanted to be a visible symbol of dissent.”
Fairooz was found guilty of disorderly and disruptive conduct and a charge of parading or demonstrating on Capitol grounds, according to lawyer Samuel A. Bogash.
Barry and Bianchi were acquitted on a count of disorderly conduct but were convicted on two separate charges of parading or demonstrating, Barry said.