In the ever-growing sphere of politics and the insufferable people who often populate government, the phrase, “ya just can’t make this stuff up,” likely became hackneyed and trite centuries ago. But, this news is so flagrantly and boldly absurd, it’s clear that the phrase applies.
And it might help salve the pain of knowing our taxes pay this woman’s salary.
Kristen Clarke is the head of the Biden “Justice Department” Civil Rights Division. She also is a woman who boisterously supported the instantly-recognizable-as-false 2019 Jussie Smollett claim that he was attacked by racist “Maga Men” in the early morning on a frigid Chicago street.
Jussie Smollett subjected to a racist and homophobic attack.
— Kristen Clarke (@KristenClarkeJD) January 29, 2019
2 white men wearing ski masks attacked him, put a rope around his neck, and poured bleach on him and as they yelled slurs.
Prayers to @JussieSmollett for a speedy recovery from this hate crime https://t.co/Jj5pR5OWrD
And, as Chuck Ross reports for the Washington Free Beacon, Clarke's proudly marching on, undaunted.
Perhaps because she was so stellar at pushing that Smollett “hate crime” narrative, and since the Smollett tale helped fuel the ongoing pop media ruse that multitudes of Trumpers, and other “conservatives,” are racist, homophobic, and violent (pay no attention to the lost lives, the injuries, and the billions of dollars in damage associated with Black Lives Matter riots), Ms. Clarke now gets to head up – get this – a “Recognizing Hate Crime” symposium at Fordham University.
Writes Ross:
“Kristen Clarke, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, will kick off a Fordham University symposium on Nov. 9 called ‘United Against Hate: Identifying, Reporting and Preventing Hate Crimes.’ She will speak alongside two United States attorneys on ‘how to identify, report, and prevent crimes/incidents and discrimination,’ according to a Justice Department announcement of the event.”
You read that correctly. Apologies if it triggers a headache.
Yep. This is the same woman who, as Ross notes:
“…defended Smollett on social media after he reported the incident to police on Jan. 28, 2019.
She asserted on Jan. 29, 2019, that Smollett was ‘subjected to a racist and homophobic attack.’ She wrote that ‘2 white men wearing ski masks attacked [Smollett], put a rope around his neck, and poured bleach on him and as they yelled slurs.’"
But, hey, perhaps in those early hours, it was possible for a highly gullible leftist “civil rights” lawyer like Clarke to be duped. Perhaps she should be given the benefit of the doubt.
Or, perhaps not. Adds Ross:
“Days later, she accused the Chicago police department of ‘demonizing survivors’ by seeking Smollett’s cell phone as part of its investigation.
‘This is NOT how you treat survivors of a hate crime. Stop demonizing survivors and casting doubt on their claims if you want communities to trust that you will take #HateCrime seriously,’ she tweeted on Feb. 1, 2019.”
Interesting. The woman currently heading-up Biden’s “Civil Rights Division” at the “Justice” Department was, while in private legal practice, so on top of the judicial process that she felt completely comfortable claiming not only that Smollett was the “victim of a hate crime” but also that the request for his cell phone was “demonizing” a “survivor” of a “hate crime.”
Nothing says “justice” better than jumping to conclusions.
To be clear -- This is a BAD move by the Chicago Police Department. This is NOT how you treat survivors of a hate crime. Stop demonizing survivors and casting doubt on their claims if you want communities to trust that you will take #HateCrime seriously. @StopHateProj https://t.co/RIvF2tltly
— Kristen Clarke (@KristenClarkeJD) February 1, 2019
Related: Jussie Smollett Indicted By a Special Prosecutor Over 2019 Alleged Hate Hoax | MRCTV
And nothing says “U.S. Constitution” better than a lawyer pushing a report of a local Chicago assault into the otherworldly realm of nation-level “hate crime” statutes.
At that early stage, the reported assault was a matter for Chicago, period. But, of course, since the term “racism” is a political club, oft used by leftists to attack innocent people, Clarke appears to have been more than eager to focus national-level rhetoric on the case.
“Clarke suggested that race played a role in an Illinois state judge’s appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Chicago district attorney Kim Foxx’s decision to drop charges against Smollett. Foxx, who is black, dropped the charges after private conversations with a representative for Smollett’s family.”
Eventually, the light of reality dawned on her. As Ross notes:
“Clarke said during her Senate confirmation hearing last year she regretted her statements about the Smollett hoax. Republicans grilled Clarke about her criticism of Chicago police and her role in the Smollett hoax during her confirmation hearing, noting that Clarke oversees investigations into hate crimes and police misconduct as head of the civil rights division.”
But why was she nominated and appointed in 2021, fully two years after her outrageous push of such a wildly false narrative? Weren’t there tens of thousands of people who might have more of a grasp on reality than a person who trotted along beside the Smollett Hoax Wagon the way she did?
Regardless, she’s in that “prestigious” tax-funded slot, and she’s making the most of it by hopping to Fordham -- as an expert in recognizing “hate crimes.”
More than the absurdity of Fordham inviting her to their symposium, greater in import than the foolish behavior of Smollett, one can conclude a quick study of this absurd situation by looking at the bigger picture, the one concerning the impropriety of the federal focus on so-called “hate crime,” and concerning the term “hate crime” itself.
Constitutionally, the only reason the feds could be concerned with a case such as Smollett’s would have been if, after the local and state judicial processes were concluded, a party (defendant, or state) wanted to argue that he or she was not granted the protections supposedly promised by the Illinois and U.S. constitutions. So, for example, if Smollett really HAD been attacked, and the cops disregarded his claims, he might have an argument for action based on the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement that all states afford residents “equal protection” of their laws.
But, perhaps more fundamental than that, the very term “hate crime” is an ambiguous, malleable, government-controlled, term.
According to the founder’s rule book, the term should have nothing to do with the federal government any more than any other “crime” should – unless, again, the local/state handling of said case were to have breached the U.S. Constitution.
But, deeper, still, so-called “hate crime” statutes are political attempts to build a taxonomy of “thought crimes,” to distinguish some “motivations” for criminal behavior as more offensive than others, despite the fact that the behaviors might have produced the same injury to person or property.
In ancient Anglo-Saxon justice, ancient Irish Brehon Law, and ancient Viking Goddard justice, as well as the early British Common Law, local, decentralized systems of jurisprudence allowed local people to adjudge the motivations of the accused, of people who often were their neighbors. This closeness and the organic nature of the justice system did allow for attenuation of punishment (usually restitution, not retribution) for a crime against person or property based on what jurists thought might have been a simple momentary error in the judgment of the accused, if they thought the accused were more deeply troubled, and so on.
But when the state -- i.e. the polis – uses the tax-funded political system to establish statutes, the Pandora’s box of politics is opened, and new offenses, new terms, new “motivations” that the state dislikes – those will become codified and used as hammers to smash the “disliked.”
Rather than promoting “hate crime” terminology, one might want to recognize that the very act of having the state define “hate” is a political weapon that cannot be contained.
The Jussie Smollett case is a signal example of the problematic nature of such terminology in the hands of the state.
And now, a woman who promoted all of it is lodged in the “Justice Department” – and heading up a symposium on the “hate crime” hand-grenade, so that more people can lob it around.