A conservative reporter and several other people were attacked by Antifa, during a May 7 event at the University of Washington that hosted Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA.
“The reporter, Jonathan Choe, as well as his security team is seen being attacked by a group of ruffians in the quad as he tries to run away, and then a member of his team is shown with blood trickling down his face and neck in the aftermath of the ambush,” reports The College Fix. Choe and “his security were attacked by members of ANTIFA near the anti-Israel encampment at the University of Washington. Cops were called to the scene and are now investigating.”
The University of Washington is located in Seattle, where the left-wing county executive and many judges are soft on crime. Radio host Jason Rantz argues that “state-level policies that have ’emboldened’ criminals are to blame for Seattle’s homicide spike” and rise in crime since 2019.
As Rantz noted in 2020,
As King County and Seattle crime surges, Executive Dow Constantine hopes to end felony incarceration while embracing a move to defund police….Constantine seeks a budget cut to the sheriff’s department that will cut up to 30 deputies…The reason? Constantine and other leaders are taking advantage of the civil unrest and Black Lives Matter movement to forward a purely partisan social justice agenda….The result? Undoubtedly more crime. Indeed, we’re currently seeing more crime…Under a plan presented by Constantine, King County would jail fewer felons. Instead, they’d be referred to nebulously-defined “community-based services” that, history has shown, have dangerous consequences….This move comes as Constantine pushes the talking point that the criminal justice system is racist.
Meanwhile, the left-wing Washington state supreme court undermines the enforcement of the law in many ways, demanding that race be considered as a factor in criminal-justice decisionmaking, citing from articles with “Critical Race Theory” in their title, and branding the legal system as racist. In one case, State v. Sum,
The Washington Supreme Court … overturned the conviction of a man for lying to police, because the man was non-white. If he were white, his conviction for making a false statement would have been upheld, because there was no dispute that he lied, and the questions he was asked by a police officer were typical attempts to gather information.
But the court ruled that the police officer’s questions to him effectively detained him, because his race, in the court’s view, made these questions (such as what his name was) more coercive to him than if he were white. It ruled that the criminal was detained by these questions, regardless of whether he felt detained, simply because, as an Asian or Pacific Islander, he was non-white.
In another case,
The progressive Washington State Supreme Court has issued a ruling that effectively gives black plaintiffs a racial advantage in lawsuits against whites….in a truly bizarre ruling, the Washington State Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that it is presumptively racist to characterize litigants as “combative” or “confrontational,” if the litigants happen to be black. Based on this strange conclusion, it ruled that a $9,000 verdict for a black plaintiff was likely inadequate, and had to be overturned at the plaintiff’s request, unless the white woman who was sued could somehow prove the judgment would not have been larger absent its counsel calling the black plaintiff combative. It also ruled by a 7-to-2 vote that it was presumptively racist to point out that three witnesses all used the exact same phrase, as if they were coached, suggesting collusion, because the witnesses happened to be black.
Lawyer Ted Frank calls it an example of “a state Supreme Court applying critical race theory for the purpose of discriminating against whites in civil litigation” and how “pseudoscientific nonsense is infecting our institutions.” The ruling does indeed rely on Critical Race Theory books, such as “Racial Microaggressions: Using Critical Race Theory to Respond to Everyday Racism”…The ruling also contains all sorts of bizarre unnecessary claims unrelated to its holding, like suggesting that welfare fraud doesn’t exist (it routinely occurs) and that its existence is just a racist trope invented by Republicans.
The case involved a black woman asking for a new trial because of opposing counsel’s successful attack on her credibility and calling her “combative” in cross-examination. The black woman sued for $3.5 million after a white motorist had a rear-end collision with her. Video showed the black motorist was faking the extent of her injuries. After defense counsel called into question her credibility, based on the video, the jury awarded the black woman only $9200.
The attack on the conservative reporter was part of a series of attacks by Antifa on conservatives, according to numerous videos posted on social media. The attacked reporter, Choe, persisted in reporting after the attack, posting on X that “students leaving the Charlie Kirk event in Seattle were greeted by a mob of Antifa lunatics who flooded the Quad. They carried weapons and started numerous fights.”
Kirk himself said that “After a successful evening event and day of tabling, ANTIFA is attempting to intimidate our attendees as the event ends. They are mostly non-students the university should immediately deal with but for some reason allow to roam free and bully the student body.”
