Report: Biden’s DOJ Has Dismissed ‘More Than One Third Of Cases’ Against Portland Rioters
The Department of Justice under President Joe Biden is moving quietly to dismiss the majority of federal cases filed in connection to the Portland, Oregon riot, according to local media.
KWG reported that federal prosecutors have dismissed more than one-third of cases stemming from the violent protests in downtown Portland when protesters clashed with federal agents last summer.
“KGW reviewed federal court records and found 31 of the 90 protest cases have been dismissed by the US Department of Justice, including a mix of misdemeanor and felony charges,” it said.
The report noted that some of the most serious charges dropped include defendants charged with assaulting a federal officer, which is a felony. It said more than half of the dropped charges were also ‘dismissed with prejudice,’ which it said were described by several former federal prosecutors “extremely rare.”
‘Dismissed with prejudice’ means the case can’t be brought back to court,” it added.
The charges were all tied to the confrontations between protesters and “special agents of the federal government” deployed to defend the city’s federal courthouse from rioters over the summer.
“Multnomah DA Mike Schmidt pledged, near the beginning of the unrest, that his office would drop ‘lesser charges that the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) often arrests protesters for, such as rioting, disorderly conduct, and ‘interfering with a peace officer’ — a catch-all term for not following orders or bothering a cop,” The Daily Wire said in an earlier report referring to Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt.
“The dismissal of protest cases comes in stark contrast to the tough talk from the US Department of Justice last summer where it vowed to make protesters face consequences for their actions.
Then-US Attorney for Oregon, Billy Williams, vowed there would be consequences for the nightly graffiti, fires and vandalism outside the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse, KGW reported.
The report said at least 11 of the dismissed federal protest cases were dropped on or after the inauguration of Democratic President Joe Biden.
The publication also noted that with a new president and also a new Attorney for Oregon, it remains to be seen how the remaining protests-related cases will be handled.
