Protests: Many find Barr’s suggestion of sedition charges troubling.
Critics: Doing so would block protected speech
WASHINGTON – Attorney General William Barr urged federal prosecutors in a call last week to consider filing sedition charges against violent protesters, according to a person familiar with the call.
Barr’s comments, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, come as the Justice Department has charged hundreds of protesters amid months of nationwide civil unrest following the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of police.
A sedition charge is highly unusual and is brought against people who conspire to overthrow the government or to levy war against the country.
To successfully prosecute someone for sedition, prosecutors must prove there was a conspiracy against the U.S. government, and doing so is “virtually unheard of,” said Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Charging someone with sedition also contradicts constitutional protections to protest, Gerhardt said.
“If it’s permissible for the attorney general of the United States or federal prosecutors to go after people because they are arguing against the government ... then what he and these prosecutors are doing is going after people for their political speech. That expression is protected,” he said.
The last time an administration agto gressively brought sedition charges against a group of people was under President Woodrow Wilson in the midst of U.S. involvement in World War I, Gerhardt said. Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1918, which curtailed free speech rights of Americans who were against the war.
“I have never known of a sedition prosecution, and I was a prosecutor with the DOJ ... for 34 years,” said Mary Lee Warren, who served for more than 30 years under five presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama. “I think a responsible U.S. attorney would look at the facts ... and see if it applies to the elements of the offense of sedition as it’s laid out in the U.S. Constitution.”
Barr also drew sharp condemnation Thursday for comparing lockdown orders during the coronavirus pandemic slavery. In remarks at Hillsdale College Wednesday night, Barr had called the lockdown orders the “greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history” since slavery.
Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., told CNN that Barr’s remarks were “the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful things I’ve ever heard” because they wrongly equated human bondage with a measure aimed at saving lives.
In another development regarding protests, a military whistleblower told a House committee that federal officials sought some unusual crowd control devices – including one that’s been called a “heat ray” – to deal with protesters outside the White House on the June day that law enforcement forcibly cleared Lafayette Square.
Contributing: Associated Press