ADAM CREIGHTON


Last week, the FBI arrested a 61-year-old nurse in North Carolina, Susan Lee Hodges, who made the mistake of dropping her hotel key card inside the Capitol building, which police used to obtain her name from the hotel, and then her home address from Verizon, a ­mobile phone company.

“Google location data shows that a device associated with her 5575 number was within an area consistent with the interior of the US Capitol building between 2.49pm and 3.34pm”, the FBI said in its arrest warrant published online last week, which additionally highlighted how Hodges yelled “freedom” while she was inside the building.

The West hasn’t yet reached CCP levels of surveillance, where government cameras on every corner track their citizens’ movements and utterances, almost 24 hours a day, but it’s getting close – all in the name of “safety”, of course.

“Hodges can be seen sitting on the couch and unpacking the contents of her backpack, including the red hat she had been previously wearing and can of what appears to be Coca-Cola,” the FBI’s accusation went on. Horrifying stuff. When she saw someone ripping something off the wall, “she realised that something was not right at that point and decided to leave … with the help of police officers who were ushering people out of the building”, the FBI noted.

For all this, Hodges has been charged with four crimes, including entering, remaining in and disorderly conduct in a restricted building, which will probably put her in prison for a few years.

Of 720-plus prison terms so far meted out to the more than 1235 arrested in relation to January 6, the average term has been a few years, according to a recent Washington Post analysis (a little less for those who pleaded guilty).

Even judges appear to have been surprised at the FBI and Justice Department’s vindictiveness, handing down punishments well below prosecutors’ requests in around two thirds of cases, according to the Post, a far higher share than usual.

It’s hard not to see all this as anything other than political persecution, especially when other more serious crimes barely go punished at all, including, for instance, the notorious bashing of New York City police offers in recent days by illegal immigrants, or the rampant unpunished shoplifting that blights big Democrat-controlled cities.

To be sure, it was unwise of Hodges to enter the Capitol building, but what is the public benefit of pursuing and demanding jail time for relatively harmless individuals who attended a protest, years after the fact? It destroys what remains of their often-modest lives, without obviously serving to reduce the likelihood of such riots occurring again.

The same zeal to track down rioters wasn’t observed in the wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020, who collectively caused far more death and destruction. And the scapegoating of January 6 protesters is worse given US authorities were in part to blame for the riot getting out of control, failing to provide extra security until well after hundreds of protesters had entered the building.

I think that is meant to be, "America the Beautiful" not "America for the Beautiful", right Chimera?  Tsk, tsk, tsk...