It may be tempting for some to try to turn anti-Muslim filmmaker Mark Bassely Youssef, who was blamed by the Obama administration for the attack in Benghazi, into a martyr for free speech, but the fact is he took the plea deal. If he truly believed he was innocent, or thought a one-year sentence was wildly disproportionate to his charges, he could have fought it out in court. Why pass up the free publicity of a public trial, unless you’re guilty and think a plea bargain is the best deal you’re going to get?
The California man behind an anti-Muslim film that led to violence in many parts of the Middle East was sentenced Wednesday to a year in federal prison for probation violations in an unrelated matter, then issued a provocative statement through his attorney.
The sentence was the result of a plea bargain between lawyers for Mark Bassely Youssef and federal prosecutors. Youssef admitted in open court that he had used several false names in violation of his probation order and obtained a driver’s license under a false name. He was on probation for a bank fraud case.
Shortly after Youssef left the courtroom, his lawyer, Steven Seiden, came to the front steps of the courthouse and told reporters his client wanted to send a message.
“The one thing he wanted me to tell all of you is President Obama may have gotten Osama bin Laden, but he didn’t kill the ideology,” Seiden said.
Asked what that meant, Seiden said, “I didn’t ask him, and I don’t know.”
Admittedly, the sentence does sound harsh for a probation violation. But this guy was also a con artist and a federal convict who previously pulled off a major check fraud scheme. He was specifically prohibited from using aliases and the Internet without specific permission from his probation officer, which he apparently didn’t have.
So it’s not so much the sentence itself that’s problematic, but whether he was treated differently by federal prosecutors because of the film. Would he have been arrested if his movie hadn’t been blamed for the protests in Benghazi and Cairo? Would prosecutors have pursued him so vigorously, and pushed for the maximum sentence? These are grey areas, and it’s a surprise the ACLU hasn’t gotten involved. There’s no overt violation of civil liberties here, but there should be legitimate concerns about a chilling effect on free speech.
The biggest red flag was was when the father of fallen Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods said Hillary Clinton assured him at the Benghazi memorial service that the feds were going to “arrest and prosecute” the filmmaker. Nobody else has backed up or confirmed this. But if true, it would be a bombshell, and it certainly warrants further investigation.
"and it’s a surprise the ACLU hasn’t gotten involved"—you are so naive. This is 100% because of politics and a First Amendment violation. It would never have been enforced like this if it weren't for Obama's traitorous Regime. The ACLU is not involved because they are complicit in Obama's treachery and corruption. It is quaint that you think the ACLU actually believes in free speech.
Cool it. The article was written in a non-reactionary manner. You don't have to scream "FIRE" for someone to smell the smoke.
I think she was being sarcastic. "Chilling effect on free speech" traditionally is one of the arguments raised by the ACLU in some of its more extreme cases and using it here sorta shames them on their silence. n nI find this terrifying and recommend all to read Harvey Silverglate's _Three Felonies a Day_ relative to the US Dept of Justice. The title comes from the concept that every Soviet citizen committed at least three felonies a day, and hence could be charged and convicted for *something* if he/she/it somehow came to the attention of the state. n nAnd as to the "voluntary" nature of a plea deal — read Silverglate's book. Innocent people routinely plead guilty to things they didn't do because it would cost them so much to defend themselves otherwise.
I don't think she was being sarcastic, but I hope you are right.
She's quite bright and her sarcasm is often so subtle that it is missed. n
I'm not a lawyer so let me see if I have this right. The guy wasn't framed. He was just specially targeted and severely sentenced. n nI suppose that a Disney style animator who dared to portray Mohamed as a cheerfully pink Porky Pig look-alike would probably get five years. n nMaybe someone at the State Department ought to consider an alternative plan. Print and broadcast insulting portraits of Mohamed everywhere. The Muslims would have a world-wide, world class canniption fit and get the shame out of their system. n nA friend suggests another alternative. Have the Air force parachute greased pigs by the thousands into the city of Qum. Set the crazed ayatollahs and imams to tripping over their robes chasing greased pigs. Eventually they'll have no choice but to pile up the porkers and burn them. And when those hungry Muzzies smell all that bacon, pork chops and ham sizzling… n nSo much for fantasy. I look forward to seeing Clinton, Clapper, Rice, Panetta, Petraeus and Obama answering questions from a congressional committee.
The C-5 has a deck (floor) not unlike a supermarket cashier's station, and the plane can fly with the rear door open — I believe a good pilot can do this at about 100 feet off the ground. We can (and do) drop certain types of cargo by simply rolling it out the back door and letting it fall. n nI have long wanted to see us get a cargo of pork by-products. No bones because those would be projectiles but intestines, fat and such, diced up into pieces no bigger than a couple inches square, and then loaded into a C-5 which then drops it over some holy city, I was thinking Medina. If you have ever seen a snow plow throw slush you know how this will go absolutely *everywhere* — into every nook and cranny — and in a dry climate with a hot sun, it will start becoming rather fragrant quite quickly. n nOne of the many rather inhuman things that psychologists and therapists do is expose people to things they are afraid of to the point where they are so overwhelmed that they can't be afraid of them anymore. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy comes from the same roots as the "brainwashing" done in the North Korean and North Vietnamese POW camps and it does work. If we just kept "greasing" their holy cities, it only would be a matter of time before Islam got over this concept of violent responses to insults to Islam. n
What was that line in Midnight Express? Muslims don't eat pig because they aren't cannibals?
Look, we still more or less have semi functioning Bill of Rights. We've just redacted one of them as it applies to Islam. There's still a bunch more that sort of operate. Stop complaining.
I'm pretty disgusted by the way this guy was targetted over the video, by the lies about the video causing the attacks on our embassy, and by the clamor to subordinate our first amendment to the desire to stay on the right side of people who want to kill us anyway. n nBut he did get a driver's license under a false name. Nobody is supposed to do that. Being framed as the poster boy for rioting jihadis is no reason to persecute the guy but it's no reason to give him a free pass either. What sentence would they give to someone who committed the same violation while on probation for the same initial offense as this guy?
I was in county court once and watched a man, on probation get charged with possession of a stolen gun while driving a stolen car. His penalty? 18 months additional probation. n nThis movie guy got railroaded by any standard of how the criminal justice system operates in the real world
Very good comparison, is a joke that this filmmaker with the wrong name in the driving license ,which is only a piece of paper that show is capacity of driving, had to be punish far worse of violent criminal who are left out to probably doing more bank assault!
Bacile should be punished. But he should be punished not for making a very stupid film, but for making a film that he knew would result in Muslim violence AND claiming he was an Israeli Jew and that the film was financed by American Jews so that the violence would be directed against Jews.r nr nNo jew would ever make such a poor film. If a Jewish film producer wanted to make a film based on an anti Islam theme, he could have done a far better job..
Hmmm, interesting point. It seems, however, that you are stopping short of asserting that Bacile should be prosecuted for indirectly slandering Jews by trying pin shoddy film making on them, right? n nTheoretically maybe Bacile could be prosecuted for trying to frame Jews for producing a deliberately incendiary video. n nThe problem with that, however, is that such a prosecution world almost necessarily be in the service of lending credence to the Administration's BS that Bacile's video had anything to do with anything that occurred in Benghazi. Wisely the Administration has apparently decided not to go that far this time. n n