(Congress Report) – Republican Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana is taking a bold stand and demanding to know why Biden’s Justice Department dropped a charge of arson against a man who tried to light a New York Police Department vehicle on fire during riots that took place in 2020.
The riots in question were inspired by the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department.
According to Just The News, in June of 2020, Victor Sanchez-Santa, who was 19 at the time and living in Queens, was arrested and charged by the DOJ for a single count of arson after he allegedly lit a cloth glove on fire and then put it under an NYPD vehicle just before fleeing the scene.
An affidavit from an NYPD detective says the crime was captured on surveillance video.
“Sanchez-Santa made national headlines regarding the alleged arson, including in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Associated Press, NBC New York, New York Post, and New York Daily News,” the report said.
“Three months later, Sanchez-Santa was indicted for arson by a grand jury. Arson carries a minimum mandatory sentence of five years in prison and a maximum sentence of 20 years,” Just The News stated. “But in February last year, the then-acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York deferred prosecution of Sanchez-Santa for nine months during the term of his ‘good behavior and satisfactory compliance with the terms of this agreement.'”
Not long after serving his nine-month probation and completing the mandatory anger-management classes he was required to attend, the U.S. Attorney’s Office put in a request with the court for the Southern District of New York, which led to its dropping the case against Sanchez-Santa.
Why did they drop the charge?
Apparently, according to the filing, the decision was based on “a review of the evidence in the case and information pertaining to this defendant acquired subsequent to the filing of the Indictment, the Government has concluded that further prosecution of Victor Sanchez-Santa would not be in the interests of justice.”
Banks then sent a letter (read it here) to the DOJ making a comparison between its treatment of Sanchez-Santa and other liberal protesters to that of Capitol rioters from Jan. 6.
The congressman pointed out, “The Justice Department’s decision to drop charges against Mr. Sanchez fits its pattern of lenient treatment of left-wing rioters.”
“He then mentioned two Manhattan attorneys who allegedly threw Molotov cocktails at an NYPD car in May 2020 that recently received a lighter plea agreement than was originally given them by the DOJ,” the report said.
Banks pointed out that of the current 862 Jan.6 rioters who have received charges, only “a handful of those charges” have been dropped. He then said that “multiple defendants are being charged with ‘trespassing on restricted grounds’ but are not accused of entering the Capitol or committing violence.”
“Under your leadership, the Department of Justice is operating under a two-tiered system of justice,” Banks went on to write. “Violent rioters who are likely to vote Democrat are often released with a slap on the wrist, or less, while January 6th defendants are prosecuted to the harshest extent possible. The unequal application of justice is an injustice, and your politicization of federal law-enforcement is an attack on the basic American principle of equal justice before the law.”
Banks then made a request for the department to provide “‘all evidence in the case and information pertaining to this defendant acquired subsequent to the filing of the indictment that informed the Justice Department’s decision not to prosecute Mr. Sanchez-Santa for setting a police car on fire.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York did not provide a comment Wednesday beyond the public filings regarding the matter and forwarded an attachment of the nolle prosequi that was filed by the office and then later on ordered by the court.
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