Why Do We Have Two Standards of Justice in America?

             The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the double standard of justice in the United States. This double standard has been obvious for numerous years. One notable example is the exemption given to Hillary Clinton for leaking classified information on the internet server in her closet. There are high standards for protecting classified information as well as grave consequences for not protecting it. Yet, Clinton was exempt for doing the same thing that has put other people in prison. Why?

            Another glaring example happened this week.  Daunte Wright was killed by an apparent accident in Minnesota, and the shooter was arrested, charged, and booked with second-degree manslaughter. During the same time period, the Justice Department announced that the books had been closed in the death of Ashli Babbitt. Both Wright and Babbitt were killed by police officers. Yet, one officer’s life has been ruined, and the other officer’s name is not even known. Again, the question is why?

            The answer seems to be about political agendas. Babbitt was white and a Trump supporter. She was shot while climbing through a winder in the so-called insurrection that took place in the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. Wright was black, had a warrant out for violent assault, and was killed while resisting arrest. Monica Showalter wrote about the Wright and Babbitt cases and the obvious double standard in the treatment of the two officers. 

In the first case, no charges were filed and the officer's name, like that of any professional executioner, was withheld from the public. We don't know if it was an experienced or inexperienced officer, if race played a factor, if the officer had other problems with his record, or if he was reaching for a taser maybe, which would have been appropriate with an unruly crowd, but accidentally pulled a gun. Nope, no info. Books closed, family notified, no more to be heard about it….

In the second case, the officer's name and address and picture and family pictures were instantly splattered all over the media and Internet as mobs raged. Fencing went up at her home, her family was forced to flee, and amid rioting over the death of Daunte Wright who was resisting arrest, she instantly resigned the force. Then she was arrested, charged, and booked with second-degree manslaughter, the only possible charge in this case that disregards intent, and city officials fell all over themselves to declare her guilty anyway, with the dead man's family declaring the charges not enough. A city official who stated that the officer, a 26-year veteran named Kim Potter, was entitled to due process was forced to resign. Meanwhile, Joe Biden joined the rabid leftist crowd on Twitter and pretty well declared her guilty. Anyone think she's in for a fair trial?

            Showalter is not the only person who noticed the double standard being used for the two officers. Numerous other people have commented on the two tiers of justice, including Tucker Carlson in his monologue yesterday.

We have a right to know who shot Ashli Babbitt and why," Carlson said. "No one will tell us. The Biden administration says the man who killed Babbitt is a Capitol Hill police officer and he did the right thing... If you shoot people without warning because they're in the wrong place, that's not allowed. But apparently now it is allowed.

            Why is the Justice Department withholding information about the officer who shot Ashli Babbitt? She was trespassing by climbing through the window, but she was hardly a threat to the officer. She was a small, unarmed woman – about five foot two inches and barely over one hundred pounds. She was surrounded by officers, but was hardly a threat to them. Showalter made some good points in her article.

The failure to tell who shot Ashli Babbitt, with unprecedented force not justified by her act of unarmed trespassing into a Capitol area, but smells of crony protectionism. It also has a whiff of politics: The Bidenite Justice department is hardly disinterested here -- they benefit from excusing the officer after all in order to paint all the trespassing unruly protestors as actual insurrectionists. While the officer involved shouldn't ever get the treatment that Potter got, with doxxing and fleeing and jailing and all that, what the Bidenite DoJ is doing to excuse the officer comes off as politically partial, not fair-minded. Someone is benefiting here, someone cronyish, in the claim that no one should know who he is. Yet, he took someone's life -- without consequences, all because, as the DoJ report claimed, he was supposedly scared, which might not be the best quality in a police officer if the man could not master it. Does not matter, he's unnamed -- and no one can ask.

There should be one standard for handling such incidents. If one police officer has the right to remained unnamed and protected from public scrutiny, then all officers have the right to remain unnamed. If one officer is arrested, booked, and charged with manslaughter, then all officers should be arrested, booked, and charged according to the case. In my view, both officers should be treated with leniency because they were both acting to protect the public. However, the public has the right to know the names of both officers.