(Photo: Staff Sgt Tony Harp/US Air National Guard/CC)
Elham Asaad Buaras
Lawyers representing a man convicted of a 2016 terror plot targeting Somali refugees by bombing a mosque and apartment complex in Garden City, Kansas have asked a judge to consider a more lenient sentence, arguing that President Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric should be taken into account as the “backdrop” for the case.
Attorneys for Patrick Stein who was found guilty of the terror plot on October 14 claimed that Trump’s “brand of rough-and-tumble verbal pummeling” contributed to Stein’s homicidal thoughts.
During the trial in April, prosecutors played recordings in which Stein described Muslim immigrants as “cockroaches” that needed to be exterminated, and talked about killing Muslims with weapons dipped in pigs’ blood.
Two months before the conversation took place, Trump had referenced a questionable tale about General John Pershing killing Muslims with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood.
The sentencing memorandums, filed last month, are just the latest instances of people blaming Trump’s nationalistic rhetoric for encouraging right-wing extremists.
“The court cannot ignore the circumstances of one of the most rhetorically mould-breaking, violent, awful, hateful and contentious presidential elections in modern history, driven in large measure by the rhetorical China shop bull who is now our president,” the lawyers wrote.
The lawyers are asking for a lesser sentence in part due to the argument that Stein was a Trump supporter and that the President inflamed Stein’s anti-immigrant hatred ultimately influencing the man’s attack plans.
“A person normally at a 3 on a scale of political talk might have found themselves at a 7 during the election, a person, like Patrick, who would often be at a 7 during a normal day, might ‘go to 11.’. That climate should be taken into account when evaluating the rhetoric that formed the basis of the Government’s case,” the lawyers wrote.
“As long as the Executive Branch condemns Islam and commends and encourages violence against would-be enemies, then a sentence imposed by the Judicial Branch does little to deter people generally from engaging in such conduct if they believe they are protecting their countries from enemies identified by their own Commander-in-Chief,” said the lawyers.
They cited Trump’s tweets as evidence, as well as the President’s recent – and completely unfounded – claim that “Middle Easterners are mixed in” with a migrant caravan currently en route to the US from Honduras.
Stein and two other members of a Kansas militia group were convicted of the plot to bomb an apartment complex that’s home to Somali immigrants the day after the November election.
