04/07/2023
Pictured: Rep. Angie Craig (D. Minn.), Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui, Kendrick Hamlin
From Ringside at the Reckoning, the Substack of former PowerLine blogger Paul Mirengoff: Judge orders release from jail of man who attacked congresswoman.
Paul Mirengoff writes:
In February, Kendrick Hamlin, also known as Hamlin Khalil Hamlin, assaulted Rep. Angie Craig (D. Minn.) in the elevator of the congresswoman’s apartment building. The assault occurred on the morning of the day the U.S. House voted to reject Washington D.C.’s soft-on-crime revisions to the criminal code. The House would have disapproved the revisions even absent the assault on Craig, but the timing of the two events drew extra attention to the attack.
This Craig, she’s a white woman:
Since the attack on Craig, attention has been diverted by two other high-profile assaults in D.C. First, one of Sen. Rand Paul’s staff members was stabbed repeatedly on the streets of Washington. Then, a Virginia woman was stabbed to death in a D.C. hotel by a man who had recently been released from jail after pleading guilty to attempted robbery.
But now, Kendrick Hamlin is back in the news.
This is Hamlin (photo via DC Police Twitter), he’s a black man, though headlines about the attack call him a “homeless” man:
A D.C. federal court magistrate judge ordered that Hamlin be released from jail and sent to an inpatient treatment center.
Hamlin has a long criminal history. According to CBS News:
A review of court records shows nearly a decade of criminal cases involving Hamlin. Several of the incidents and arrests occurred in particularly close proximity to the grounds of the Capitol.
In one case last November, police accused Hamlin of spitting blood at several Capitol Police officers during an altercation. According to a police affidavit, Hamlin was spotted by Capitol police lying on the ground on a sidewalk near the Capitol and taken to a hospital for medical care. The affidavit said Hamlin “became combative” with police while leaving the hospital and bit one officer, spit blood on others and kicked another in the groin.
Court filings indicate Hamlin pleaded guilty in the case and was sentenced to serve 35 days in jail. He was scheduled to be released about two weeks before his alleged attack against Craig.
Apparently, then, Hamlin was only able to restrain himself for two weeks before resuming his criminal activity. And this assumes his attack on Craig was his first post-release crime.
There’s more.
Leaving aside the “more,” what kind of Judge would let this guy out? Well, it turns out to be our old friend, magistrate judge Zia M. Faruqui, who specializes in keeping white January 6 protesters in jail.
This is Faruqui, he’s the child of Muslim immigrants:
After all the Antifa/BLM rioters and arsonists released without bail, one group is being DEALT WITH: white, mostly peaceful protesters who supported President Trump. A Muslim Magistrate Judge has ordered one protester held without bail.https://t.co/9NL9QsneAZ
— VDARE (@vdare) February 2, 2021
The magistrate judge, Zia M.Faruqui, responded that the law only requires him to have “reasonable assurance” that a defendant will appear for his next court date. But given the 25 bench warrants issued to Hamlin for previous failures to appear and the absence of genuine security at the treatment facility, how can the court have any confidence this defendant will show up for his next court date?
The judge sniffed that “to say this is a close call is not doing it justice.” But calling the case “close” will be no consolation to Hamlin’s next victim. It’s Judge Faruqui who isn’t doing justice.
Fortunately, he stayed his release order pending appeal to the chief judge of the district court. We can only hope the chief judge will overturn the order.
Crime is rampant in Washington, D.C. these days and the city’s police department is, by the mayor’s admission, insufficiently staffed to counter the problem.
One might hope that judges would at least see to it that the criminals officers do apprehend are incarcerated and thus unable to commit further mayhem. But Hamlin’s case suggests that D.C. judges can’t be counted on, either.
Well, maybe some can, and some can’t.
When I posted, above, on this guy in 2021, I wrote that:
Faruqui isn’t only a Muslim, as you can tell from his name, he’s an ex-Federal prosecutor. He “served for twelve years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Offices in St. Louis and Washington D.C.”
According to the court website, Judge Faruqui, who boasts of being the “child of immigrants,” was appointed a Magistrate Judge in D.C. on September 14, 2020. That doesn’t mean he was appointed by President Trump — Magistrate Judges are appointed by a majority vote of federal district judges — but it’s certainly an example of “personnel is policy.”
For more on Faruqui, see here: Update On Federico Klein Case: Denied Bail By Muslim Ex-Prosecutor, Defense Fund.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.