The deputy attorney general sent a memo to federal prosecutors telling them to consider charging violent demonstrators with sedition, reinforcing Attorney General William Barr’s call
The second-in-command at the Justice Department issued a formal memo to the nation’s federal prosecutors Thursday telling them to consider, a day after The Wall Street Journal reported that Attorney General William Barr had strongly urged them to bring such prosecutions.
Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said he was “re-emphasizing” Mr. Barr’s directive, made during a phone call with U.S. attorneys last week, that prosecutors be aggressive when charging certain protesters with crimes, including potentially prosecuting them for plotting to overthrow the U.S. government. People familiar with Mr. Barr’s call had earlier described it to the Journal.
The relevant statute, which lays out the crime of seditious conspiracy, “does not require proof of a plot to overthrow the U.S. Government, despite what the name might suggest,” Mr. Rosen wrote. He said it could be used in other contexts, including “for instance, where a group has conspired to take a federal courthouse or other federal property by force.”
The edict is part of a broader Trump administration crackdown on violence and property destruction that has sometimes accompanied
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