Who Is Michael van der Veen?

             My VIP for this week is attorney Michael van der Veen. He is one of the attorneys who won the impeachment trial for former President Donald Trump. While van der Veen was in Washington, D.C., defending Trump, bad actors vandalized his home in the Philadelphia area. They smashed windows and sprayed-painted “TRAITOR” in red on his driveway with an arrow pointing towards his home. The time was about 8:00 p.m. on Friday night. 

            Van der Veen’s wife was home at the time of the attack and reported the vandalism to the police. Van der Veen told Fox News that his family, business, and employees are being threatened in addition to the vandalism. Van der Veen hired private security agents to protect his home and family.

            Van der Veen is not the only Trump attorney to have his home vandalized. Bruce Castor, a fellow Trump attorney, revealed that his home and family had been “the subject of unrest.”

I was a homicide prosecutor for decades, so I have some experience with death threats and vandalism at my home, and my wife and police dealt with that at our house…. But the rest of the team don’t have that sort of experience.

It’s been very unsettling. Mr. van der Veen’s house was vandalized last night…. My house was the subject of unrest….

These people are lawyers, and they expect to do their jobs without having fear for their personal safety…. If the country has reached the point where somebody who needs a lawyer, that lawyer is themselves attacked, where are we going to be going forward when somebody truly is in need of counsel and can’t find one because they’re afraid to defend a person who represents what half the country thinks is an unpopular cause?

            The local police report that there have been no arrests so far for the attack on the van der Veen home, and there are no suspects currently. However, the police have increased their patrols in the area.

            The attacks on the van der Veen and Castor homes is political violence. It came in retaliation for the attorneys’ work to defend Trump from an unconstitutional impeachment trial. This violence should be condemned just as swiftly and strongly as the attack on the Capitol because it is an attack on what the Constitution guarantees.