Dems Want to Free All Criminals Except Political Criminals

Dems outraged that Tina Peters will be freed alongside killers and child abusers

In 1991, Max Miller, a handyman, stopped to assist a family who had run out of gas on a mountain road. He went to get gas for them, came back, filled up their tank, and then they beat him, took his gun, shot him and left him to die. One of the men, Joseph Aguayo stole Miller’s gun, another shot him from behind and Aguayo bashed Miller’s face in with a large rock.

The ‘Good Samaritan’ murder was so horrifying that it made the national news and that Aguayo’s stepmother testified against him. He was sentenced to life in prison.

In 1994, Mailorn Smith, a 72-year-old WWII veteran, was murdered east of Denver. He had been driving on the road with an unnamed woman when their path was blocked. A woman from the second car got out and pretended to ask for directions and then one of the men demanded money. Smith tried to defend himself and was shot and killed. Eugene Gilbert robbed them.

Now, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, in a spree of over 40 pardons and commutations, cut short Aguayo’s life sentence and made him eligible for parole, and commuted Gilbert’s sentence of life without parole to make him eligible for parole next year.

Neither of those horrifying crimes has Democrats outraged. Instead what has Colorado Democrats fuming is that among the killers of old men, the drug dealers, child abusers, stalkers and assorted monsters whom the Democrat governor chose to inflict on society was one truly unforgivable fiend: a 70-year-old woman named Tina Peters who ‘denied’ an election.

Gov. Polis’ pardons and commutations included 5 murderers, 2 attempted murderers, a child abuser, several drug dealers, a stalker, and all of those are worse than an election clerk.

Tina Peters got 9 years in prison in a pro-crime Democrat state where the alleged rapist of a 13-year-old girl could walk away with four years probation while another rapist could get away with 45 days and time served, but those aren’t serious crimes like questioning ‘election integrity’.

Colorado House and Senate Democrats released a statement declaring that “we strongly oppose Governor Polis’ decision to preempt the courts and commute the sentence of a still-unremorseful Tina Peters.” Noting that every Senate and House Democrat had signed a letter objecting to the commutation, they claimed that the 70-year-old election clerk’s “actions threatened our elections, and commuting her sentence sends exactly the wrong message.

It wasn’t as if Tina Peters had done something minor like beat a man’s head in with a rock or rob a dying man, she had ‘denied’ an election. As far as Colorado Democrats are concerned, murdering the elderly is an excusable crime, while denying their ‘election integrity’ isn’t.

Freeing killers sends the right message while freeing political opponents sends the wrong one.

Democrat legislative leaders insisted that Tina Peters needed to be punished further because of “the impact of Ms. Peters’ crimes in fueling election conspiracy theories that undermine the integrity of our elections system as a whole. We fear that any clemency or other sentence reduction on your part will further embolden these conspiracies and those who propagate them.”

And what better way to restore the public’s faith in the ‘integrity’ of the system than by punishing anyone skeptical about it? The imprisonment will continue until faith in the system is restored.

It worked for the USSR and Cuba: it’s bound to work in the People’s Republic of Denver.

Colorado Democrats are admitting that they want to keep Tina Peters in prison not over what she did, but because of her political views and because of her political supporters, and that, by definition, makes her a political prisoner.

Colorado House and Senate also complained that Peters had “attacked a police officer”, specifically bodycam shows that she lightly struggled when she was being manhandled and forcibly handcuffed with her hands behind her back (general police protocol in the past had been to handcuff women who don’t pose a threat in the front: a category that includes an older woman). Media coverage declared that Peters had allegedly “tried to kick a police officer.”

It’s noble of the ‘Defund the Police’ party to be suddenly so concerned for the welfare of a police officer who, there but for the grace of Allah, Xenu and Mother Earth, could have almost been kicked.

It’s odd then that the same Democrats raised no objection to releasing Brandin Kreuzer who together with his accomplice had opened fire on Sheriff’s deputies with a Bushmaster M17S and 9MM handgun and wounded Deputy Todd Tucker back in 2008. Tucker was permanently injured and required multiple surgeries. “I’ve been hit. I have blood coming down my arm, and I don’t know where it’s coming from. I have bullet holes all over my car,” he recalled.

That was back in 2008. Kreuzer was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Gov. Polis claimed that his sentence was “disproportionate” and is freeing him after serving only 15 years.

“Brandin Kreuzer SHOT A COP and nearly killed him. How dare you minimize his heinous crimes,” Sheriff Darren Weekly blasted the governor. “I have spoken with both officers involved, and they are absolutely furious, as am I. The audacity of GovofCO to grant clemency to a would-be cop killer on National Peace Officers Memorial Day shows a complete lack of respect for the brave men and women who wear the badge and put their lives on the line every day.”

None of the Colorado Senate or House Democrats supposedly outraged that an elderly woman might have almost kicked a cop were similarly outraged that Polis freed a thug who actually shot a cop. One might almost think that they don’t actually care about police, unless like the Capitol Police or the near-kicking victim, they serve as human shields for their political agenda.

A growing number of Democrats, 400 by current count, all the way from Denver to Aurora to Boulder, have signed on to a call to punish Gov. Polis for having the temerity to unleash a horrifying ‘election denier’ alongside the otherwise collection of killers, stalkers, child abusers and drug dealers whose freedom to kill again they brand as a new civil rights movement.

“The Party’s institutional credibility on issues of democracy and election integrity,” the letter argued. And what credibility do they have on democracy if they’re not locking people up?

Once you stop keeping people in prison for their views, ‘democracy’ just falls apart.

Now the sacredness of the annual ritual in which Gov. Polis, in keeping with the highest values of ‘criminal justice reform’, frees killers, like Ronald Janoushek, who murdered his girlfriend in a bar parking lot, Rudy Giron, who shot a 66-year-old man for his necklace, and Travis Colvin (sexual assault, attempted murder, motor vehicle theft) has been tainted by Tina Peters

According to Democrats, no crime, not murder, rape, or child abuse, is unforgivable except opposing their political agenda. They say that Democrats have become a pro-crime party, but that’s not really true. There is one category of crimes that they will relentlessly prosecute.

Political crimes.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center’s Front Page Magazine.

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