As conservatives remember — and Julio knows first-hand from covering the chaos — the summer of 2020 was marked by rampant leftist violence. Democrats, as usual, gave cover to rioters and organizations like BLM and Antifa and brushed aside any responsibility for upholding the rule of law.
In one such instance of destruction in New York City around 1:20 a.m. on June 9, 2020, a man got out of a vehicle, lit a glove on fire, and tossed it under a New York Police Department vehicle.
Little more than one week after the arson attack on NYPD, the Department of Justice announced that they had arrested Victor A. Sanchez-Santa as the alleged culprit in the arson of the NYPD vehicle.
There was surveillance video showing the suspect getting out of a Honda Civic — registered to Sanchez-Santa — and placing the burning glove under the police vehicle. The suspect also admitted he was driving his Honda in Manhattan around the time of the attack. And Sanchez-Santa was indicted by a grand jury in September 2020 for charges carrying up to two decades behind bars and a minimum of five years imprisonment.
But now — more than two years since the alleged arson attack on an NYPD vehicle — Sanchez-Santa still hasn't faced justice.
Thanks to a new letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland from Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) who chairs the Republican Study Committee, it's been revealed that after Biden took office in 2021, his Justice Department tossed the case. Banks' letter explains that the Biden DOJ claimed "a review of the evidence in the case and information pertaining to this defendant acquired subsequent to the filing of the Indictment, the Government has concluded that further prosecution of VICTOR SANCHEZ-SANTA would not be in the interest of justice."
Bank's letter explains that, since February 1, 2022, the suspect, "who was arrested for trying to set a police car on fire, is a free man who[se] sole punishment is nine months of probation and mandatory anger management classes."
The Biden DOJ's leniency toward ideologically aligned leftist criminals is unfortunately unsurprising, given their similarly soft-on-some-crime handling of other suspects from the summer of 2020. Banks points out that:
Two Manhattan attorney were also arrested by the Justice Department for allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails at an NYPD car in May 2020. They initially pled guilty to possessing and making an explosive device, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. But recently, the Justice Department dropped their earlier agreement and entered a new, much more lenient plea deal with the defendants.They likely will spend two years or less in prison.
As Banks outlines, Attorney General Merrick Garland's Justice Department "is operating under a two-tiered system of justice. Violent rioters who are likely to vote [for] Democrats are often released with a slap on the wrist, or less, while January 6th defendants are prosecuted to the harshest extent possible," Banks notes. "The unequal application of justice is an injustice, and your politicization of federal law-enforcement is an attack on the basic American principle of equal justice before the law."
Banks closes his letter by requesting "'all evidence in the [Sanchez-Santa] case and information pertaining to this defendant acquired subsequent to the filing of the Indictment' that informed the Justice Department's decision not to prosecute Mr. Sanchez-Santa for setting a police car on fire."