Law Practice,
Government
Sep. 21, 2020
Dissent is not sedition
Attorney General Bill Barr encouraged federal prosecutors on a nationwide conference call this month to charge protesters with sedition. Whether this is a genuine charging recommendation or is pure political theater matters not. Either way, Barr’s admonition constitutes an authoritarian attempt to stifle dissent by branding it as anti-American.
Michael Montaño
Michael is an antitrust, privacy, and technology lawyer practicing in California and Texas and a Political Partner of the Truman National Security Project focused on the rule of law. You can find him and supporting citations for this column on Twitter at @montanotx.
Throughout the summer, President Donald Trump and his allies have sought to conflate peaceful protest with organized violence. As millions of Americans took to the streets to demonstrate against racially biased policing, Trump and his allies have repeatedly raised the specter of Anitfa and seized on the trope of "outside agitators" to delegitimize constitutionally protected assembly. Now comes Attorney General Bill Barr to take things one step further, encouraging fed...
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