Yesterday, we wrote about a letter from a newsletter reader whose son is one of those incarcerated in the wake of the Capitol breach on January 6. (His son is one of those who didn’t even go inside the building.) Imagine how it must be to have one’s son being held in jail by the feds, with no bail, for many months (like a murderer), awaiting a trial that might not even happen until sometime in 2022. It’s not even possible for the father to have a private conversation with his own son, as phone conversations are monitored at the jail, and the son isn’t even able to meet in private with an attorney. All of this, I feel compelled to remind you, is happening in America, the land of the free.

In case you didn’t see the father’s letter and our response, here it is.

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=25AAFBB1-0197-4525-A6F6-CC190FDAB183

After this piece ran, we received a comment from another reader who took exception to what the father had said about his son, saying the son had nothing to apologize for and was even a hero. In fact, her letter ended in a way that seemed downright abusive to the father. (It’s all too easy to get abusive towards people we only talk to online, people we have never met and don’t know at all.) We thought this reader’s questions and observations deserved to be addressed at length. First, here is her letter...

(From Sharon)

Just a couple of questions about the father of the Capitol Hill detainee:

First of all, why would black people not support Trump people?

Because most black people do but then again these were criminals.

Also, the father says what his son did was wrong? Oh? Getting in the way of Goebbels and the Gestapo?

My father saw combat in Korea and Vietnam and if that’d been me he’d have been cheering not saying I’d done wrong.

Mister your son did right and he is a hero and if you don’t stand with him shame on you.

………………..

Dear Sharon:

Thank you for responding; we welcome responses from all sides. But I think some issues here cry out for clarification.

The father, Keith, did mention in his letter that most of the inmates at DC Correctional were black –- as are most of the residents of Washington, DC –- and that in general they were dismayed to have Trump supporters in their midst. That is not surprising and is not the same as saying black people don’t support Trump, only that these particular black people in Washington, DC, did not. And while the black conservative movement is picking up steam in some parts of the country, most black people are still not a part of that. We can deny reality if you would like, but these inmates of the DC Correctional facility, who do happen to be mostly black, are not Trump supporters. Probably some of the white ones aren’t, either; after all, this is Washington, DC. On the bright side, once they learned Alan was a Trump supporter and not a pedophile, they treated him better than they treat pedophiles.

Recall that according to the letter we previously posted from detainee Joe Biggs, some of the black people Biggs met in a Florida correctional facility were struck by what a nice guy he was. They liked him. It wasn’t the black men, but some of the white men identifying as white supremacists, who didn’t want to be associated with him. They said he was “too nice” to be in their group.

In fact, Joe said that one thing he’d learned for sure after meeting real white supremacists in this jail was that he WASN’T ONE.

Sharon, you criticize Alan’s father for saying that what his son did was wrong. We don’t know the details of the confrontation his son had with police and a reporter outside the Capitol Building, but the son does, and if he feels contrite and believes he was in the wrong, I think we should take him at his word. You know I’ve said myself that this confrontation was a bad idea and has had terrible repercussions. I’m not sure you understood me when I said the left is using this for great political benefit. In that sense, anything that was done at the Capitol Building that went beyond peaceable assembly was indeed wrong. If this young man realizes that, so much the better.

You may say he did right to fight against “Goebbels and the Gestapo,” but, again, we don’t know exactly what went down and his part in it. According to his dad, since he’s come to the Lord he’s thought deeply about the kind of man he wants to be. He’s sorry for what he did. His father respects that, and I think we should, too.

The thing that really stood out to me in this father’s letter was the dismay at the two-tier justice system. “I guess if you are a Democrat,” he said, “you can burn a city or burn a federal building with agents inside it; you may be arrested but will be out the next day without bail.”

This young man does NOT deserve to be languishing on a lower rung of our “justice” system simply because he is a Trump supporter, and he absolutely does not deserve to be held for many months with bail denied. As I’ve said, he and the other “detainees” (political prisoners) are being used as political props for the statecraft that is Nancy Pelosi’s investigatory “commission,” when they should be treated with exactly the same rights as any other American. Direct your fury at THAT, not at a father who is hurting and thinking about his son.