
We finally heard from our MAGA congressman, Ben Cline, on the issue of President Trump’s inexcusable pardons of the 1,500 J6ers who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election to keep their Dear Leader in power.
“Officer Allen Gibson served our Commonwealth with dedication for two years before tragically losing his life in the line of duty,” Cline wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
Hold on: being told that this isn’t Cline raising issue with Trump freeing J6ers.
“It’s unacceptable that the individuals charged with his murder were granted clemency by President Biden,” Cline finished his tweet.
There we have it.
ICYMI
This was Cline joining Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares going full racist dog-whistle after Biden, on his way out the door over the weekend, granted clemency to two innocent Black men serving life sentences connected to the murder of a White police officer that even a jury said they didn’t commit.
Why not just go on live TV and shout the n-word at the top of your lungs, guys?
The case that Cline thinks needs addressing, days later, involves Terence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne, whose crime was being Black, and thus very loosely fitting the description of whoever it was that killed Gibson, 25, during a 1998 drug bust in Waverly, in Sussex County.
Gibson was shot and killed with his service weapon during the drug bust, and according to court records, he was able to describe his attackers to responding officers as a “tall and skinny” Black man with “dreadlocks” who was assisted by another Black man who was balding and short.
Richardson, then 27, and Claiborne, then 22, were arrested, as police identified Richardson as the “tall and skinny” shooter Gibson had described, through he is only 5’8”, several inches shorter than Gibson, and Richardson wore his hair in cornrows, not dreadlocks; and Claiborne, while fitting Gibson’s description as bald, is four inches taller than Richardson, so, how he would be confused as being the “short” one is anybody’s guess.
(Well, OK, but, hey, he’s Black. Close enough, right?)
There was also no DNA evidence linking them to the scene, and it would later emerge that police coerced a witness into saying that she saw Richardson shoot Gibson, which she would testify in court she did not actually see happen.
The two took a plea deal offered because state prosecutors knew they couldn’t get a conviction in the case for jaywalking, much less murder, but the plea deal became a controversy locally, and the U.S. Attorney got involved, and tried them under the RICO statute.
A jury acquitted them of the murder, but the judge sentenced them to life anyway, on drug charges that should have gotten a max of 10 years.
Richardson and Claiborne have been in prison since 2001 for a crime they didn’t commit, but to Ben Cline, the real “hostages” are the J6ers who we’ve all seen on video mercilessly beating cops, threatening to hang Vice President Mike Pence, trying to break through barricades to get at top congressional leaders – and if they were going to hang Mike Pence, you can guess what they were going to do to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
ICYMI
To be fair, Cline hasn’t called the J6ers “hostages”; that’s the word used by Trump as he issued the pardons on Monday, ahead of having his press office put out a statement also calling the prosecution and incarceration of the 1,500 “a grave injustice.”
Cline has just exercised his right to remain silent on the sheer gall of the guy that he hitched his political wagon to letting actual cop-killers free – argue that one with me all day long, but in addition to the 174 police officers who were injured on Jan. 6, Brian Sicknick died the next day from a stroke, and four others later died by suicide.
Funny, then, isn’t it, that 92 percent of the J6ers are White – wonder if that has anything to do with Cline, along with Youngkin and Miyares, not only remaining silent on the J6 pardons, but trying to divert attention away from J6 by pointing at the two innocent Black guys from Waverly?
White guys killing cops in the name of Donald Trump: OK by Ben Cline, Glenn Youngkin and Jason Miyares.
Black guys in jail because they very loosely fit the description of Black guys who killed a cop in small-town Virginia: also OK by Ben Cline, Glenn Youngkin and Jason Miyares.