The whole purpose of a state or federal “hate crime” law is to pick up the slack when local authorities refuse to prosecute a specific kind of crime for political reasons. States enacted the first “hate crime” laws to protect homosexual men from assault. The allegation was that, in some communities, a homosexual man could get assaulted, and local authorities would show little interest in prosecuting the perpetrator. The idea was that state or federal prosecutors should sweep in to pick up the slack.
However, “hate crime” laws themselves have now been hyper-politicized and generally used to advance a political narrative. We see certain criminals being double charged on two different levels while others. Meanwhile, in cities like Portland, Seattle, San Fransisco, and others, local prosecutors are flat out refusing to prosecute people for left-wing politically motivated violence, and no one, neither the state nor the feds, is picking up the slack.
Multnomah County District Attorney [MCDA] Mike Schmidt has refused to prosecute over 91% of cases brought against BLM and Antifa rioters. He has bragged on Twitter about the hundreds of cases he has dropped against these perpetrators. Neighboring Yamhill County has even opened an investigation against Schmidt for politically motivated selective prosecution.
Recently, Congressman Ken Buck questioned FBI director Christopher Wray why the feds are prosecuting so few people for attacks on federal buildings. These attacks have occurred over and over during hundreds of individual left-wing riots. However, the FBI has over five hundred open cases for a single riot that stemmed from a Trump rally.
FBI Director Christopher Wray responds that they do not prosecute cases better handled by the local prosecutors, which seemed like a disingenuous cop-out.
