Back in February, two climate change activists walked into the Capitol Rotunda and threw red powder on a display case which holds the United States Constitution.
The stupid stunt caused upwards of $50,000 in damage and took days to clean up.
The two activists were arrested and charged with a felony. Now they have been sentenced. They got real prison time.
The Associated Press reports:
Climate change activist gets 2 years in prison for dumping red powder on Constitution display
A climate change activist who dumped red powder on a case containing the original copy of the U.S. Constitution was sentenced on Friday to two years in prison for his role in the vandalism earlier this year at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson told Donald Zepeda that his attack on the display of the priceless document did nothing to advance his cause.
“You still think that was connected to the climate change problem, and I can’t agree with that,” she said.
Zepeda, a leader of Declare Emergency, was charged with another member of the climate change awareness group. Jackson sentenced Zepeda’s co-defendant, Utah resident Jackson Green, on Tuesday to 18 months of prison.
Zepeda, 35, of Maryland, pleaded guilty in August to destruction of federal property. The Constitution itself was not damaged.
The Hill has more:
The Post said that Zepeda’s attorney argued that “as viscerally infuriating” as the defendant’s actions might have been, “he never intended to damage the Constitution nor its case, nor anticipated the cost of cleaning it.” The intention, his defense said, was to have “the Biden administration declare a climate emergency,” The Post reported.
Green, according to The Washington Post, apologized and wrote, “I have come to realize that in addition to causing direct harm to individuals, destructive protest actions like the ones I carried out can lead to the opposite of our intentions by creating a negative response — turning people off from climate activism and creating further discord.”
Perhaps if this type of punishment was handed down more often, leftists would think twice about defacing famous works of art by throwing soup on them.
(Image:Source)
Mike LaChance has been covering higher education and politics for Legal Insurrection since 2012. Since 2008 he has contributed work to the Gateway Pundit, Daily Caller, Breitbart, the Center for Security Policy, the Washington Free Beacon, and Ricochet. He has also written for American Lookout, Townhall, and Twitchy.
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