Harmeet Dhillon Appears on ‘Fox News at Night with Shannon Bream’ To Discuss Georgia Hate Crime Bill
According to Dhillon (Video Transcript):
First of all, what he’s talking about is absolutely real. In 2016, I represented over 20 Trump supporters who were viciously assaulted in a rally in San Jose in which the mayor of San Jose actually almost glorified the violence and said that the Trump supporters deserved it because the president was such a bad person. So this is a real thing. We’ve seen it happen in other places. My concern as civil rights attorney is how do you parse out punishing people for their actions versus for their thoughts. I’m not in favor of punishing people for their thoughts, however, as a minority and my religious faith, we’ve had people have murders that are based on their religion and so hate crime laws come into play and serve as enhancements and deterrents for terroristic-type actions. In that sense, as long as you are basing this on violent crimes, it should be prosecuted anyway, and then an enhancement that goes for that sort of terroristic effect of trying to intimidate people, I’m okay with it if those safeguards are there.
Spoken as a totally clueless Washington Post writer. I can tell you that, you can ask Hayden Williams, young man who was punched on the Berkeley campus because of his perceived conservative viewpoint. This is absolutely right. If we have a law like this, it should be bipartisan and agnostic as to the viewpoint but it is not unprecedented. California has a law that protects people and their jobs for example on the basis of their political viewpoint. I think this is the next frontier. It is terrorism.
