Re: Shooting at Pittsburgh Synagogue
Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2018 9:51 pm
Three Kansas militia members who were convicted of plotting to bomb the mosque and homes of Somali immigrants should be granted leniency in their sentencing because they were inspired by President Donald Trump’s rhetoric encouraging violence, lawyers for the men said in court documents.
The defense lawyers, in filings made in federal court in Kansas, said the court had to acknowledge Trump’s “rough-and-tumble verbal pummeling” in the 2016 election campaign that “heightened the rhetorical stakes for people of all political persuasions.”
One of the lawyers said that Trump continued to stoke Islamophobia.
The sentencing memorandums, filed on Monday and Tuesday, are just the latest instances of people blaming Trump’s nationalistic rhetoric for encouraging right-wing extremists.
A federal jury in April convicted Curtis Allen, Patrick Stein and Gavin Wright of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy against civil rights. The attack, planned for the day after the 2016 election in Garden City, Kansas, was thwarted by another member of the group who informed authorities.
Prosecutors are seeking life terms for all three men when they are sentenced in November.
Attorneys James Pratt and Michael Shultz, representing Stein, said Trump appealed to “lost and ignored white, working-class men” like their client, who was “an early and avid supporter” of the president.
“The court cannot ignore the circumstances of one of the most rhetorically mould-breaking, violent, awful, hateful and contentious presidential elections in modern history, driven in large measure by the rhetorical China shop bull who is now our president,” the lawyers wrote in their sentencing memorandum for Stein.
The defense lawyers, in filings made in federal court in Kansas, said the court had to acknowledge Trump’s “rough-and-tumble verbal pummeling” in the 2016 election campaign that “heightened the rhetorical stakes for people of all political persuasions.”
One of the lawyers said that Trump continued to stoke Islamophobia.
The sentencing memorandums, filed on Monday and Tuesday, are just the latest instances of people blaming Trump’s nationalistic rhetoric for encouraging right-wing extremists.
A federal jury in April convicted Curtis Allen, Patrick Stein and Gavin Wright of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy against civil rights. The attack, planned for the day after the 2016 election in Garden City, Kansas, was thwarted by another member of the group who informed authorities.
Prosecutors are seeking life terms for all three men when they are sentenced in November.
Attorneys James Pratt and Michael Shultz, representing Stein, said Trump appealed to “lost and ignored white, working-class men” like their client, who was “an early and avid supporter” of the president.
“The court cannot ignore the circumstances of one of the most rhetorically mould-breaking, violent, awful, hateful and contentious presidential elections in modern history, driven in large measure by the rhetorical China shop bull who is now our president,” the lawyers wrote in their sentencing memorandum for Stein.