To the editor:

I certainly agree with Ellen Starbird’s final paragraph last week that “laws are the expression of an ethics of a people and that contempt for lawfulness is particularly unattractive in a public official.” But her application of that principle is misplaced and shows a leftist bias.

Roger Stone was indicted for giving false statements to a Democratic congressional committee. Doesn’t everyone, including McCabe, Comey, Strzok, and Hillary? An FBI agent gave false testimony to a grand jury but was not indicted. Stone was also indicted for advising another witness to give them a different story. How many future witnesses get advice from a friend? He was also indicted for talking to WikiLeaks although it was stated that he did not coordinate with the Russians or collude with WikiLeaks. Don’t we have freedom of speech? There was no victim in any of these indictments. For these crimes he was to receive nine years of prison at 67 years of age into a potential virus atmosphere.

The sentence for rape can be as little as 1-3 years and for murder 10 years for someone with Stone’s clean record. How do you compare Stone’s victimless charges to rape and murder? Why would Stone receive such effort by the FBI, prosecutors and judges in this case? Even though Trump only commuted the verdict, Trump receives static for these seldom prosecuted acts.

Consider that Bill Clinton pardoned 456 people, the most famous of those was Marc Rich who committed wire fraud, mail fraud, racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, criminal forfeiture, $48,000,000 of income tax evasion, and trading with Iran in violation of a trade embargo (as charged in the 1984 superseding indictment). Marc Rich was the most wanted man in America facing up to 300 years of prison but Clinton pardoned him at the end of his term. The Riches and Clintons knew each other very well. It was revealed that Marc Rich’s wife who lived in this country made an “enormous” donation to the Clintons’ presidential library.

Obama commuted 153 sentences and 78 pardons of convicted felons. His choices were argumentative too. Seems to be a pattern that both Parties commute and pardon, many of which are justified but politics often comes into play! In some cases like Marc Rich, the pardon was almost criminal.

Only the extremely naive would think that the Federal Court House in Portland would still be standing if Trump had not intervened in Portland. In Minnesota, Portland, Seattle and New York alone the mobs destroyed thousands of businesses. Under the guise of protests anarchist, criminals like the Antifa masked annihilists, and vandals all turned the protestors into a mob while Democratic mayors restrained the police. The crimes of robbery, arson, vandalism, injury to police officers and even murder were enough to fill a whole prison. Certainly the Democratic governments exemplified the writer’s expression of public officials having contempt for lawfulness.

Thanks to Trump we still have a court house in Portland.

John Benedict

Cape Coral