The Matthew Lawrence Perna Act of 2024 is a vital first step in direction of guaranteeing that the political persecution witnessed within the aftermath of January sixth is curtailed by the legislation.
Final week, amid pouring rain, Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene held a press convention in entrance of the Capitol constructing, imploring her colleagues to co-sponsor the Matthew Lawrence Perna Act of 2024. The invoice’s namesake, Matthew Perna, adopted 1000’s of different law-abiding Individuals in peacefully demonstrating on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Matthew was arrested and charged with a number of felonies for showing on the Capitol on that fateful day. After an extended and arduous 13-month sentencing, by which Perna pled responsible and acquired a menace from the federal decide presiding over his case of an “enhanced sentencing,” Perna tragically took his personal life. The justice system waged all-out psychological and non secular warfare in opposition to him, breaking him down right into a shell of his former self. It was merely an excessive amount of for anybody, not to mention a person browbeaten into submission by his personal authorities that he beloved sufficient to take civic motion, to bear.
Perna, as soon as energetic, vibrant, and robust, was a casualty of the Biden regime’s weaponized justice system, carried out by what Greene aptly phrases “Biden’s Department of Injustice” in her press launch accompanying final week’s press convention. The method works by utilizing the pretext afforded by the justice system to psychologically torture – and in Perna’s case, really kill – these deemed enemies of the regime. In probably the most tragic of instances, the “political hostages” — as President Trump repeatedly calls them — take their very own lives: which is precisely what occurred with Matthew, who hanged himself on February 25, 2022, somewhat over a yr after January 6th — persecuted by our two-tier system of justice.
https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1762917082184958387?s=20
The primary iteration of the Matthew Perna Act, named in Perna’s honor, was initially drafted by former Congressman Louie Gohmert in one of many final acts he did earlier than retiring, and launched to the 117th Congress. Sadly, on the time, Gohmert may solely discover one co-sponsor of the laws: Congresswoman Greene.
Now, almost two years later, Greene finds herself in a well-known place – although this time, with Congressman Gohmert now not within the image. Greene now stands as the one congressperson, of each events and of each homes, to be sponsoring this invoice. Certainly, no laws may ever deliver again Matthew, or on a regular basis, power, and emotional and monetary prices borne by so many households of January 6th victims, who’ve struggled mightily to make ends meet, in lots of instances with their fathers and first breadwinners imprisoned behind bars (and the rest being pushed to chapter for warding off baseless fees by their very own authorities).
In fact, the injustice dedicated by the American authorities can’t be remedied by a single laws. However the Matthew Perna Act creates a robust basis to guard elementary rights that helps transfer the ball in the correct course. Among the many invoice’s key options, which can be read here in full, consists of prohibiting the detention of nonviolent political protesters, which the Biden regime did, and nonetheless continues to do (and intends to maintain doing except stopped), in opposition to so many in any other case peaceable demonstrators who innocently appeared on Capitol grounds.
The invoice additionally seems to be to safe different elementary due course of rights, together with the correct to a speedy trial, which is guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. As well as, the invoice establishes constant sentencing pointers and limits the scope of unconstitutional governmental surveillance and investigation, a breach of the correct to privateness assured by the Structure.
Maybe most necessary, nonetheless, is the invoice’s switch of venue reform, which might allow “the transfer of venue in criminal trials for nonviolent political protesters in Washington, D.C.” Such a reform could be a monumental step in direction of guarding procedural due course of rights, equivalent to a good decide and jury, which is principally unattainable these days in any deep blue metropolis replete with left wing authorities bureaucrats and attorneys, like Washington.
As noticed in President Trump’s personal instances in D.C. and New York, his counsel waived his proper to a jury trial, realizing that there was no probability he would obtain a good and unbiased jury, from the jury pool in these cities. Even when an neutral juror in some way managed to evade being stricken, the attorneys and prosecutors now tasked with vetting the jury pool usually choose in opposition to standards, equivalent to cable information preferences and even race in some instances, that broadly correlates with being a Trump supporter or Republican — and therefore, a bent to be extra lenient to J6 defendants.
And the method by which jurors are vetted, although undoubtedly teeming with severe due course of and different constitutional infringements, shouldn’t be held accountable to any larger energy – be it an appeals courtroom or bar affiliation, as a result of these tribunals are likewise in thrall to the identical woke and far-left ideologies which have pushed the Biden regime to run roughshod across the Structure and politically persecute their foremost political opponent.
Thus, the prospect of honest and neutral justice has been rendered nearly extinct in our nation’s capital, and different main cities throughout the land which have traded the rule of legislation for a extra primitive type of justice commonplace within the banana republics to our South. Therefore, the necessity for laws that can deal with the difficulty head-on by requiring the choice to vary venue out of those constitutional voids, to boards extra amenable to due course of and accepting of honest and neutral justice as these phrases had been lengthy historically understood.
The skies on the day of the press convention opened, and buckets of rain poured down just like the tears of the departed on the hosts and little media gaggle of spectators who weathered the weather to listen to the Congresswoman. Greene was flanked by Geri Perna, Matthew’s aunt and closest companion throughout his lifetime, whose relationship was virtually like that of a surrogate mom. Tears and rain streamed down her face, mixing till they turned one, as she delivered a brief, however highly effective exhortation calling for congressional motion on behalf of her late nephew.
She started her remarks by studying the suicide be aware left behind by Perna: solely twenty-five poetically haunting phrases that land with the pressure of a thunderclap.
“I sacrificed my freedom when I entered the Capitol building on January 6th and, in despair, took my own life the night that I wrote this…”
Additionally behind the dais was Cynthia Hughes, founding father of the Patriot Freedom Project, a corporation committed to raising money and advocating for January 6th victims and their families. Edward Martin, President of the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, who additionally serves on the board of the Patriot Freedom Mission, joined the ladies on the podium – placing a solemn pose to match the gravity of the event.
It’s unlucky that an in any other case very smart piece of laws, one with the only real function of defending each American’s proper to talk and assemble with out governmental overreach, and to protect one’s elementary due course of rights if charged with a criminal offense, wouldn’t be readily embraced by all members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike. However it’s a unhappy reflection of the occasions that laws of this type is required within the first place – and thus the urgency to maintain the political strain on our elected lawmakers, even because the nation grows weary of listening to about January 6th.
Nevertheless, actual change won’t happen except lawmakers act to proper the injustices of the previous few years. Once more, no legislation will ever deliver again Matthew, however the want to stop one other January 6th stays as nice as ever – and the time to take motion is now.
Continued inaction – and indifference – will solely embolden the nefarious actors — of the Structure, rule of legislation, and in the end, the American folks — who’ve already robbed so many valuable years of harmless Individuals and their households, together with younger youngsters, who’ve been disadvantaged irrecoverable years from their moms and dads, in lots of instances throughout their most childhood. In probably the most tragic of instances, equivalent to Matthew’s, the federal government has gotten away with homicide.
As elementary rights are stripped away with impunity, the remainder of society sleepwalks into tyranny – till it turns into too late to do something, when folks lastly discover, however the nation is past the pale.
We’re teetering dangerously near that time now: allow us to act swiftly earlier than it’s too late.
Discover your Congressperson on the listing right here, and cellphone them to encourage them to help the Matthew Perna Act: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative.
