Very much hypocrisy!

from
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/mar/29/democrats-eager-to-jail-jan-6-rioters-once-shielde/?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAQxpSN9K3ezs0lGPH5yN31_5TIlwEqKggAIhBcERswRnPnLkaJ3_gLN8OaKhQICiIQXBEbMEZz5y5Gid_4CzfDmg&utm_content=rundown

Democrats eager to jail Jan. 6 rioters once shielded radicals who bombed
the U.S. Capitol in 1983

Unidentified people examine two of the three windows, Nov. 8, 1983, that
were blown out the night before, as a result of the bomb blast that
caused damage inside the building of the U.S. Capitol. (AP Photo/Ira
Schwarz) ** FILE **
Unidentified people examine two of the three windows, Nov. 8, 1983, that
were blown out the night before, as a result of the bomb blast that
caused damage inside the building of the U.S. Capitol. (AP Photo/Ira
Schwarz) ** FILE … more >
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By Susan Ferrechio - The Washington Times - Friday, March 29, 2024
Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has boasted of arresting and
convicting hundreds of people who rioted in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6,
2021, signed off on dismissing the charges and quashing the arrest
warrant for a woman accused of detonating a bomb near the Senate chamber
in 1983.

Elizabeth A. Duke jumped bail nearly four decades ago and has never been
captured and prosecuted for the Capitol bombing, nor has she faced
charges in connection with the bombing of the Navy Yard and Fort McNair
or a plot to bomb other federal buildings, among them the Old Executive
Office Building next to the White House and the Naval Academy in
Annapolis, Maryland.

Democrats helped Ms. Duke get her case tossed in 2009, and Mr. Garland
later signed off on the move.

Democrats also helped free two other women, Susan Lisa Rosenberg and
Linda Sue Evans. With Ms. Duke, they were left-wing terrorists
associated with the Weather Underground and the May 19th Communist
Organization. They were charged with involvement in bombing the Capitol
and the other federal buildings.

Some of the people who worked to lessen their punishment are now
pursuing one of the biggest federal prosecutions in history against the
Jan. 6 rioters who pushed their way into the Capitol to protest the
certification of Joseph R. Biden’s electoral win over President Trump.

Democrats also condemned Mr. Trump for vowing to pardon Jan. 6 rioters
if he wins another White House term in November.

“In terms of the double standard, here’s an actual bombing of the Senate
chamber,” said Paul Kamenar, counsel for the National Legal and Policy
Center. “The Jan. 6 protest had some windows broken and things like
that. But a bomb wasn’t set off.”

The bomb that prosecutors say the women helped detonate on Nov. 7, 1983,
was planted a few feet from the Senate chamber and could have easily
killed or injured senators and staff who planned to work late that
evening debating spending bill amendments.

Senate leaders decided at the last minute that they no longer needed to
work into the night because amendments had moved along at a pace that
Senate Majority Leader Howard H. Baker Jr. called “little short of
miraculous.”

Baker ordered the Senate to recess at 7:02 p.m., but a crowded reception
near the Senate chamber was in full swing and didn’t end until around 9 p.m.

At 11 p.m., the bomb ripped apart the mahogany doors to Minority Leader
Robert C. Byrd’s office and caused what government historians called a
“potentially lethal hole” in a wall partition outside the Republican
cloakroom, where lawmakers and staff would have been congregating if the
Senate stayed in session as initially planned.

The blast showered the cloakroom with pulverized brick, plaster and
glass and destroyed ornate mirrors, chandeliers and furniture. A
historic portrait of Daniel Webster was blown to pieces.

The damage was estimated at $265,000 at the time, the equivalent of
about $900,000 today. An anonymous caller said the bomb was detonated to
protest U.S. military aggression in Lebanon and Grenada.

Five years later, in 1988, a grand jury indicted seven people in
connection with the bombing. They included Ms. Rosenberg, Ms. Evans and
Ms. Duke, a fugitive who skipped bail on separate explosives charges in
Pennsylvania.

Ms. Rosenberg served 16 years of a 58-year term. Ms. Evans was freed
after 16 years of her 40-year sentence. Ms. Rosenberg was never formally
prosecuted for the bombing because she was already serving a lengthy
prison sentence after being caught with 740 pounds of explosives, a
submachine gun and other weapons that prosecutors said were intended for
bombings and bank robberies to fund their cause.

Ms. Rosenberg and Ms. Evans had also been charged in a deadly Brinks
truck robbery in New York, but Ms. Rosenberg was never prosecuted
because of her lengthy ongoing prison sentence.

President Clinton granted the two women clemency in January 2001 on his
last day in office and over the objections of prosecutors. Ms.
Rosenberg’s commutation came at the urging of Rep. Jerrold Nadler, now
the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

In contrast with his help securing leniency for Ms. Rosenberg, Mr.
Nadler has called for heavy punishment of the Jan. 6 protesters.

“It is critical that all of the perpetrators of this insurrectionist
attack be identified, investigated, arrested, charged and subsequently
prosecuted. The Department of Justice must dedicate every available
resource to its offices across the country in order to ensure that all
of these individuals are held accountable,” Mr. Nadler said in a letter
to Mr. Garland three weeks after the Jan. 6 riot.

Mr. Nadler did not respond to a request for comment for this report.

Mr. Garland said the Jan. 6 case has become “one of the largest and most
complex and resource-intensive investigations in our history.”

Under his direction, the Justice Department has spent millions of
dollars tracking down those who set foot on the Capitol grounds on Jan.
6, charged more than 1,250 people and obtained more than 890 convictions
in connection with the riot.

It’s not clear whether anyone in the Justice Department is trying to
arrest Ms. Duke, now 83, over her alleged role in detonating a bomb near
the Senate chamber four decades ago.

Although she was listed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, her indictment
was quietly dismissed and her arrest warrant quashed in 2009 by a
magistrate judge at the request of a federal prosecutor working under
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

A transcript shows the hearing lasted just a few minutes. Assistant U.S.
Attorney Jeffrey Beatrice did not offer a reason, at least on public
record, for seeking the dismissal of the five-count indictment against
Ms. Duke, who would have been in her 60s at the time.

Mr. Garland reviewed the dismissal of Ms. Duke’s case in 2014 when he
was serving as chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C.
Circuit.

He tossed out a complaint by attorney Montgomery Blair Sibley that
Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson was never authorized to throw out the
indictment. Magistrate judges can make recommendations for district
court judges to dispose of cases but are not authorized to toss out
indictments, he argued in his complaint to Mr. Garland.

Mr. Garland did not directly address the merits of his argument or the
decision to throw out the indictment and arrest warrant for Ms. Duke.

Mr. Beatrice “never showed any good cause, he didn’t say any reason for
it, and that was that,” Mr. Sibley said.

Judge Robinson, court records show, identified herself as a district
court judge, not a magistrate, when she signed off on the order to throw
out the indictment.

Although her indictment in the District of Columbia has been tossed out,
Ms. Duke still faces charges from a 1985 arrest in Pennsylvania for
unlawful storage and possession of firearms and explosives and for
possessing counterfeit identification and Social Security cards.

An official at the Justice Department headquarters in Washington said
the case was thrown out because of the charges in Pennsylvania.

“She remains a wanted fugitive,” said a spokeswoman for the U.S.
Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. “I’m not
able to comment on investigative resources allotted to ongoing cases.”

Ms. Duke, Ms. Rosenberg and Ms. Evans were part of a radical political
terrorist group that sought to use “armed propaganda” to force changes
in federal policies.

The women and four others also were charged with bombing Fort McNair and
the Navy Yard.

The group placed and detonated explosives at four locations in New York
City, including the FBI’s Staten Island office, and plotted to bomb the
Old Executive Office Building and the Naval Academy.

The group was caught with a cache of “rifles, shotguns, handguns,
bulletproof vests, time-delay firing mechanisms into operable bombs,”
Justice Department officials said in 1988 after the five-count indictment.

Ms. Rosenberg, Ms. Evans and Ms. Duke were also accused of involvement
in the 1981 armed robbery of a Brinks truck that killed two police
officers and a security guard.

Mr. Clinton commuted the sentences of Ms. Evans and Ms. Rosenberg
without providing an explanation.