NEW DISTRICT ATTORNEY SCHMIDT VIOLATES FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS BY SELECTIVE PROSECUTION OF ANTI-ANTIFA DEMONSTRATORS

James Buchal, Multnomah County Republican Chair

Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt has today refused a request to dismiss felony riot charges against Joey Gibson and others arising out of their May 1, 2019 demonstration against Antifa outside of the now-defunct Cider Riot bar.  District Attorney Schmidt made this decision even though his own written, formal policy states:  “We will presumptively decline to charge cases where the most serious offenses are . . . Riot, ORS 166.015” unless the riot charge is accompanied with some other more serious conduct.

In the case of Mr. Gibson, the District Attorney’s office is already on record that Mr. Gibson’s conduct is far less blameworthy than the hundreds of Antifa rioters whose charges have been dismissed.  At a hearing on March 6, 2019, the Deputy District Attorney told a Multnomah County judge:

Your Honor, if the State was charging Mr. Gibson with assault, the State can see that Mr. Gibson would have a very good basis to say, “How am I being charged with assault? I don’t see anything of me assaulting anyone.”

In short, under the reign of District Attorney Schmidt, it is now a felony in the City of Portland to stand and videotape members of Antifa, making verbal attacks on their misconduct, but perfectly legal to attack police, trespass on police facilities, block traffic, and harass Portland residential neighborhoods—but only if you are an Antifa member.

District Attorney Schmidt is destroying the “equal protection of the laws” guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, by punishing the innocent and excusing the guilty so long as they share the political viewpoint he favors in the ongoing nightly riots in Portland.

We join others in the Oregon legal community advocating that the Oregon Attorney General seek the Governor’s approval to take over the functions of this rogue prosecutor, pursuant to ORS 180.070.  This is not the first example of serious and unconstitutional pro-Antifa bias in Portland’s law enforcement.  After Antifa members fired shots outside of Cider Riot months after the May 1st incident, in an encounter that resulted in the death of one Antifa member, no charges at all were brought of which we are aware.  Action by higher authorities is needed to halt Portland’s slide into anarcho-tyranny.

For further information, contact counsel to Mr. Gibson: 

James Buchal, 503-314-6597

Angus Lee, 360-635-6464

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