“Beyond the Pale”: Sen. Cotton Slams AG Garland Over Light Sentence for Antifa Rioter

Montez Terriel Lee was caught on video lighting a pawn shop on fire. He can be seen pouring accelerant over the property, sparking a light, and igniting the blaze, a roaring fire that burned the building to the ground. In the ashes were the remains of a 30-year-old man, an almost certain victim of the blaze Lee sparked.

So, what sentence was the Antifa rioter given? Was he charged with murder, or at least manslaughter, and locked up for years?

Nope, at the insistence of the  U.S. Attorney’s office, he was given an unbelievably light sentence: just 10 months in jail and 3 years of supervised release. Only a few months in prison for homicide.

Well, Sen. Tom Cotton is furious about that and just sent a furious letter to AG Garland, slamming him and his office for the almost unbelievably lenient sentence given to the Antifa arsonist and killer.

In the letter, Cotton first recounts the crime Lee is accused of and slams the light sentence he was given, saying:

On May 28, 2020, Montez Lee set fire to a pawn shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and murdered a 30-year-old father of five.

In August 2020, the United States Attorney’s Office in Minnesota indicted Lee on one count of Arson and he pleaded guilty on July 22, 2021. The sentencing guidelines called for a sentence of around 20 years. But the U.S. Attorney’s office filed a Sentencing Memorandum asking for half this time. Most shockingly, the U.S. Attorney defended Montez Lee and expressed sympathy for his murderous arson because Lee’s crime was committed during the BLM riots. 

Then, continuing his assault on the AG’s office and framing the leniency shown to Lee as intentionally letting political allies off the hook, whatever detestable crimes they committed, Cotton says:

Showing leniency towards a career criminal who committed murder is bad enough. But justifying the murder because the career criminal shares the Biden Administration’s politics is beyond the pale. 

The American people deserve to know whether leniency for left-wing murderers is the official policy of the Biden Department of Justice, or whether this travesty was a one-off.

He then demands that the AG’s office answer three questions, asking:

1. Does the Attorney General believe participation in a riot is a basis for leniency in sentencing individuals for violent crimes?
2. In the Sentencing Memorandum, the government concludes that Montez Lee “does not appear to pose a danger to the public.” The Sentencing Memorandum stated that Lee, who was 25 when he committed this crime, had been convicted for burglary, domestic violence, and theft. The government also acknowledged that, in his domestic violence case, Montez Lee violently ruptured his girlfriend’s eardrum. Given these convictions, all committed in a truncated period before Lee was even 25 and which put him at Criminal History Level IV (out of VI), please describe how the government concluded that Lee posed no danger to the community.
3. Please provide all communications between the United States Attorney’s Office for Minnesota and any political appointees at the Department of Justice regarding the sentencing recommendation for Montez Lee.

Cotton is right; letting a murderer off the hook because he torched a man and business in the name of social justice is far, far beyond the pale for America. That’s straight out of Weimar Germany, not the American Republic.

Yet it appears to be what Biden’s Attorney General and his office are doing. They need to answer for that miscarriage of justice.

By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.