Lawyers Charged With Seven Felonies In Molotov Cocktail Attack Out On Bail
A surveillance camera is said to have recorded it all: a woman in a black t-shirt stepping out of a tan minivan; the lighting of a toilet-paper fuse, the arc of a beer bottle filled with fuel as it was thrown onto the dashboard of an empty police car. That act of vandalism, in the early hours of May 30, is why two Brooklyn lawyers are fighting federal explosives charges and could face as much as life in prison. They had been sitting in a New York jail until Tuesday night, after a government effort to keep them behind bars failed.
Federal prosecutors haven't accused Urooj Rahman, 31, or Colinford Mattis, 32, of harming anyone that night. But they have indirectly cast the two defendants as characters in the favored Trump administration narrative that suggests that last month's violent protests weren't just an eruption of anger from peaceful protesters, but rather the work of dedicated extremists.
In a recent memo to U.S. Attorneys and department heads, Attorney General William Barr made clear how he expected the department to respond — in the same way it did to organized crime or terrorism "by disrupting their violent activities and ultimately dismantling their capability to threaten the rule of law." Urooj Rahman and Colinford Mattis don't claim to be members of any group; their
