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Tag: white supremacists

  • Evergreen High School shooter used family heirloom gun; parents won’t be charged

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    The gun used by the 16-year-old boy who shot two students and then himself at Evergreen High School in September was a family heirloom, investigators with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office announced Wednesday.

    The Smith and Wesson .38 Special revolver that Desmond Holly used in the Sept. 10 attack originally belonged to one of Desmond’s grandparents, the sheriff’s office found, and was kept in a safe in the family’s home.

    Desmond’s parents will not be criminally charged in connection with the storage of the gun or their son’s access to it, the sheriff’s office concluded.

    Through an attorney, the boy’s parents told investigators on Jan. 23 that the revolver was “rarely seen or used and stored out of sight near the back of a large, locked gun safe,” and that their son “did not have access to the safe, except for brief moments when it was opened by his father,” according to a news release announcing the completion of the investigation.

    Douglas Richards, the attorney representing the Evergreen High shooter’s parents, told The Denver Post on Wednesday that he believes Desmond slipped the revolver out of the safe while he was with his father.

    “I believe what happened is Desmond and his father were cleaning some of the family firearms, and in a moment when his father was not looking, Desmond took a firearm from the back of the safe that was an heirloom and had not been used by the family, ever,” Richards said. “Because the firearm was never used and was not stored with other firearms in the safe, its disappearance was not noticed until after the tragedy.”

    The parents’ DNA was not found on the weapon, which was originally purchased in Florida in 1966.

    Richards called the decision not to charge the parents “correct.”

    The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office acknowledged, in its announcement, “that this was not the outcome many in our community hoped for.”

    An email sent to Evergreen High families Wednesday, alerting them to the sheriff’s completed investigation, said victim advocates would be on campus Thursday alongside the school’s mental health and counseling teams.

    Sheriff’s officials noted in their news release that investigators were “unable to speak with” Desmond’s parents and implied the family was uncooperative during the probe into the revolver’s origins.

    But Richards said Desmond’s parents spoke with investigators at the hospital as their son was dying and answered written questions and follow-up questions from investigators. Richards said he also offered to sit down with investigators to explain how the gun was stored.

    “I have… explained from the outset that the firearm in this case was stolen without the knowledge of Desmond’s parents,” Richards said. “…We have cooperated at every single turn, and it was only earlier this (year) that on my own I decided to just send the DA’s office a letter explaining what occurred, which obviously satisfied them that what we had been saying all along was true — that this was a terrible tragedy that was not foreseeable by anyone in Desmond’s family.”

    Desmond died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the end of his attack on the high school.

    He roamed the halls for about nine minutes and shot in several areas before leaving the building. Desmond wounded a 14-year-old boy who was not publicly identified and 18-year-old Matthew Silverstone; both were seriously injured but survived. Video of the attack shows that Desmond physically grappled with Silverstone before shooting him.

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  • What to know after Trump classifies antifa as a domestic terror organization

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    President Donald Trump on Monday signed an order designating a decentralized movement known as antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, though whether he can actually do that remained unclear. Trump blames antifa for political violence.The Republican president said on social media last week during a state visit to the United Kingdom that he would be making such a designation. He called antifa a “SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER” and said he will be “strongly recommending” that its funders be investigated.The White House released Trump’s executive order shortly after he departed for New York, where he was addressing the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday.Here are a few things to know about Trump and antifa:What is antifa?Short for “anti-fascists,” antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left-leaning militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.Can Trump designate it as a domestic terrorist organization?Antifa is a domestic entity and, as such, is not a candidate for inclusion on the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations. Dozens of groups, including extremist organizations like the Islamic State and al-Qaida, are included on that list. The designation matters in part because it enables the Justice Department to prosecute those who give material support to entities on that list even if that support does not result in violence.But there is no domestic equivalent to that list in part because of broad First Amendment protections enjoyed by organizations operating within the United States. And despite periodic calls, particularly after mass shootings by white supremacists, to establish a domestic terrorism law, no singular statute now exists.The executive order did not specify how Trump would go about designating antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.What does antifa do exactly?Literature from the antifa movement encourages followers to pursue lawful protest activity as well as more confrontational acts, according to a 2018 Congressional Research Service report.The literature suggests that followers monitor the activities of white supremacist groups, publicize online the personal information of perceived enemies, develop self-defense training regimens and compel outside organizations to cancel any speakers or events with “a fascist bent,” the report said.People associated with antifa have been present for significant demonstrations and counter-demonstrations in recent years, including mobilizing against a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. They were also present during clashes with far-right groups in Portland, Oregon.Why did Trump label antifa as domestic terrorists?He says it’s a very bad and “sick” group. The executive order says antifa “uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide” to accomplish its goal of overthrowing the U.S. government. The order calls on relevant government departments and agencies to use every authority to investigate, disrupt and dismantle any and all illegal operations, including terrorist actions conducted by antifa or anyone claiming to act on its behalf.Trump’s history with antifaIn Trump’s first term, he and members of his administration singled out antifa as being responsible for the violence at protests triggered by the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes and held it there even after Floyd stopped moving and pleading for air.Then-Attorney General William Barr described “antifa-like tactics” by out-of-state agitators and said antifa was instigating violence and engaging in “domestic terrorism” and would be dealt with accordingly.At the time, Trump blamed antifa by name for the violence, along with violent mobs, arsonists and looters.He recently began singling out antifa again by name following the Sept. 10 assassination of conservative youth activist Charlie Kirk, who was a big supporter of the president.In an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office last week, Trump said he would pursue a domestic terrorism designation for antifa if such a move had the support of Pam Bondi, the current attorney general, and other Cabinet members.“It’s something I would do, yeah,” Trump said. ”I would do that 100%. Antifa is terrible.”He previously had called for antifa to be designated as a terror organization after skirmishes in Portland, Oregon, during his first term.

    WASHINGTON —

    President Donald Trump on Monday signed an order designating a decentralized movement known as antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, though whether he can actually do that remained unclear. Trump blames antifa for political violence.

    The Republican president said on social media last week during a state visit to the United Kingdom that he would be making such a designation. He called antifa a “SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER” and said he will be “strongly recommending” that its funders be investigated.

    The White House released Trump’s executive order shortly after he departed for New York, where he was addressing the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday.

    Here are a few things to know about Trump and antifa:

    What is antifa?

    Short for “anti-fascists,” antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left-leaning militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.

    Can Trump designate it as a domestic terrorist organization?

    Antifa is a domestic entity and, as such, is not a candidate for inclusion on the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations. Dozens of groups, including extremist organizations like the Islamic State and al-Qaida, are included on that list. The designation matters in part because it enables the Justice Department to prosecute those who give material support to entities on that list even if that support does not result in violence.

    But there is no domestic equivalent to that list in part because of broad First Amendment protections enjoyed by organizations operating within the United States. And despite periodic calls, particularly after mass shootings by white supremacists, to establish a domestic terrorism law, no singular statute now exists.

    The executive order did not specify how Trump would go about designating antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.

    What does antifa do exactly?

    Literature from the antifa movement encourages followers to pursue lawful protest activity as well as more confrontational acts, according to a 2018 Congressional Research Service report.

    The literature suggests that followers monitor the activities of white supremacist groups, publicize online the personal information of perceived enemies, develop self-defense training regimens and compel outside organizations to cancel any speakers or events with “a fascist bent,” the report said.

    People associated with antifa have been present for significant demonstrations and counter-demonstrations in recent years, including mobilizing against a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. They were also present during clashes with far-right groups in Portland, Oregon.

    Why did Trump label antifa as domestic terrorists?

    He says it’s a very bad and “sick” group. The executive order says antifa “uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide” to accomplish its goal of overthrowing the U.S. government. The order calls on relevant government departments and agencies to use every authority to investigate, disrupt and dismantle any and all illegal operations, including terrorist actions conducted by antifa or anyone claiming to act on its behalf.

    Trump’s history with antifa

    In Trump’s first term, he and members of his administration singled out antifa as being responsible for the violence at protests triggered by the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes and held it there even after Floyd stopped moving and pleading for air.

    Then-Attorney General William Barr described “antifa-like tactics” by out-of-state agitators and said antifa was instigating violence and engaging in “domestic terrorism” and would be dealt with accordingly.

    At the time, Trump blamed antifa by name for the violence, along with violent mobs, arsonists and looters.

    He recently began singling out antifa again by name following the Sept. 10 assassination of conservative youth activist Charlie Kirk, who was a big supporter of the president.

    In an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office last week, Trump said he would pursue a domestic terrorism designation for antifa if such a move had the support of Pam Bondi, the current attorney general, and other Cabinet members.

    “It’s something I would do, yeah,” Trump said. ”I would do that 100%. Antifa is terrible.”

    He previously had called for antifa to be designated as a terror organization after skirmishes in Portland, Oregon, during his first term.

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  • A Politician Who Loved Being Courted

    A Politician Who Loved Being Courted

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    Every so often, someone asks me who my favorite politicians to write about over the years have been. I always place Bill Richardson, the longtime congressman and former governor of New Mexico, near the top of my list. I once mentioned this to Richardson himself.

    “How high on the list?” he immediately wanted to know. “Top 10? Top three? I get competitive, you know.”

    Richardson died in his sleep on Friday, at age 75. I will miss covering this man, the two-term Democratic governor, seven-term congressman, United Nations ambassador, energy secretary, crisis diplomat, occasional mischief magnet, and freelance hostage negotiator who even holds the Guinness World Record for the politician who’s shaken the most hands—13,392—in an eight-hour period.

    “Make sure you mention that Guinness World Record thing,” Richardson urged me the first time I wrote about him, in 2003. “The handshake record is important to me.”

    Why? I asked. “Because it shows that I love politics,” he replied. “And I do love politics. I love to campaign. I love parades. I don’t believe I’m pretentious. I’m very earthy.”

    But why was the fact that he loved politics important?

    “Because I’m sick of all these politicians these days who are always trying to convince you that they are not really politicians,” Richardson went on. I had noticed this phenomenon as well, and it holds up: that the slickest and most unctuous people you encounter in politics are often the ones who spend the most energy trying to convince you they hate politics and are in fact “not professional politicians.”

    “I don’t mind being called a ‘professional politician,’” Richardson added. “It’s better than being an amateur, right?”

    From the September 2023 issue: How America got mean

    Richardson was an original. Born to a Mexican mother and an American businessman, he spent much of his childhood in Mexico City and identified strongly as Latino. He served as chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in the 1980s and was the only Latino governor in America during his two terms in Santa Fe. Richardson spoke often about how his dual ethnic and cultural identities placed him in advantageous and sometimes awkward positions—“between worlds” (which he’d use as the title of his 2005 memoir).

    His identities also placed Richardson in big demand as probably the most prominent Latino elected official in the country at the time. He absolutely loved being in big demand, and was milking his coveted status as much as possible when I first encountered him. That September, all of the 2004 Democratic candidates for president—John Kerry, Howard Dean, John Edwards, etc.—were straining to pay respects to Richardson after a debate in Albuquerque.

    I was working for the Washington Post Style section at the time, and I found Richardson’s full-frontal “love of the game” quite winning. He was over-the-top and unabashed about the enjoyment he derived from the parade of candidates coming before him. “It’s fun to get your ring kissed,” Richardson told me that night, though he might not have said ring.

    We were walking into a post-debate reception for another candidate, Senator Joe Lieberman. Like most of the Democratic VIPs in Albuquerque that night, Lieberman was an old friend of Richardson’s; they’d worked together on the 1992 Democratic Party platform committee.

    “I wore this to curry favor with you,” Lieberman told Richardson, pointing to a New Mexico pin on his jacket. “You also saw that I spoke a little Spanish in [the debate].”

    “I thought that was Yiddish,” Richardson said. Lieberman then got everyone’s attention and offered a toast to El Jefe.

    Richardson let me ride around with him in the back of his SUV while he tried to hit post-debate receptions for all of the candidates. I noted that he’d instructed the state police driver to keep going faster and faster on Interstate 40—the vehicle hit 110 miles an hour at one point. When I mentioned the triple-digit speed in my story, it caused a bit of a controversy in New Mexico. Ralph Nader made a stink. (“If he will do this with a reporter in the car,” Nader said, according to the Associated Press, “what will they do when there’s no reporter in the car?”)

    The next time I saw Richardson, a few months later, he shook his head at me and tried to deny that the vehicle was going 110.  I held my ground.

    “Oh, whatever. Fuck it,” Richardson said. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”

    Richardson ran for president in 2008, but he quit after finishing fourth in both Iowa and New Hampshire. I had since moved on to The New York Times and used to run into him on the campaign circuit. A few weeks after he dropped out, I went down to Santa Fe to interview him about the lengths that the two remaining Democratic candidates—Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—were going to in an attempt to win his endorsement. Another Bill Richardson primary! What could be more fun?

    “Oh, the full-court press is on like you wouldn’t believe,” he told me. The “political anthropology” of this was quite interesting too, he added. “Barack is very precise,” like a “surgical bomb,” Richardson said. “The Clintons are more like a carpet bomb.” He relished my interest in the pursuit of him.

    “I want to make it clear that I’m not annoyed by any of this,” Richardson said of the repeated overtures he was getting from the candidates and their various emissaries. I quoted him saying this in the Times, but not what I said in response to him in the moment: “No shit, governor.”

    I’ll admit that the notion of a pol who loves the game seems quite at odds with the tenor of politics today. People now routinely toss out phrases like our democracy is at stake and existential threat to America, and it’s not necessarily overheated. Fun? Not so much.

    But thinking about Richardson makes me nostalgic for campaigns and election nights that did not feel so much like political Russian roulette. Presidency or prison? Suspend the Constitution or preserve it? Let’s face it: Death threats, mug shots, insurrections, and white supremacists are supreme buzzkills.

    From the October 2023 issue: The courtroom is a very unhappy place for Donald Trump

    Richardson made it clear to me that he’d loved running for president—it was one of the best times of his life, he said—and he missed the experience of it almost as soon as he got out. But what he really wanted was, you know, the job. “I would have been a good president,” he said in Santa Fe in 2008. “I still believe that. Please put that in there, okay?”

    If nothing else, the Clinton-Obama courtship was a nice cushion for Richardson as he tried to ease back into life in the relative quiet of his governor’s office. It also, he said, might get him a gig in the next administration. Richardson was 60 at the time and said he envisioned “a few more chapters” for himself in public life. Richardson told me he would have loved to be someone’s running mate or secretary of state.

    “I’m not pining for it, and if it doesn’t happen, I’ve had a great life,” he told me. “I’m at peace with myself.”

    He wound up endorsing Obama, who, after he was elected, nominated Richardson to be his secretary of commerce—only to have Richardson withdraw over allegations of improper business dealings as governor (no charges were filed).

    Richardson devoted the last stage of his career to his work as a troubleshooting diplomat and crisis negotiator. He would speak to thugs or warlords, drop into the most treacherous sectors of the globe—North Korea, Myanmar—if he thought it might help secure the release of a hostage.  Among the many tributes to Richardson this past weekend from the highest levels (Joe Biden, Obama, the Clintons), I was struck most by the ones from some of the people who knew directly the ordeals he worked to end: the basketball star Brittney Griner and the Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, who called Richardson “a giant—the first giant—in American hostage diplomacy.”

    The last time I saw Richardson was a few years ago, in the pre-pandemic Donald Trump years—maybe 2018 or 2019. We had breakfast at the Hay-Adams hotel, near the White House. I remember asking him what he called himself those days, what he considered his current job title to be.

    Richardson shrugged. “‘Humanitarian,’ maybe?” he said. But he worried that it sounded pretentious.

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    Mark Leibovich

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