OpEd: Wyden suppressing accountability
Originally published on November 5, 2024 by the Albany Democrat-Herald and the Corvallis Gazette-Times.
Section 4712 of the 2009 Hate Crimes Prevention Act, known as The Soldiers Amendment, created criminal enhancements for Americans targeting military families “on account of their service.”
But the Department of Justice has never enforced the Soldiers Amendment, enshrined in law at 18 U.S.C. § 1389, preferring to apply only domestic terrorism charges.
On Nov. 22, 2019, Rep. David Trone (MD-6) and five other House members sent a congressional inquiry asking then-Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray to explain why they were not enforcing military civil rights. Barr and Wray ignored the House Inquiry.
On July 13, I asked Oregon’s senior senator, Ron Wyden, to send a second letter, this time from the Senate, to hold the Justice Department accountable for failing to enforce military civil rights.
He and his staff have been very responsive; his veterans affairs constituent services representative even attended two hourlong training sessions I offer; one on hate crimes and another on employment discrimination.
But as the time passed and we moved closer to Veterans Day, I watched his office’s interest in military civil rights dwindle to almost nothing.
By Oct. 14, I was fed up with the silent treatment so I emailed Wyden’s office asking if he intended to fulfill his promise to hold federal agencies accountable. Just over 24 hours later, I was sent a PDF from his state outreach director that looked like what I was asking for; a second congressional inquiry to the DoJ, on Senate letterhead, with Ron Wyden’s signature.
It took a while, but I eventually noticed that the inquiry was dated Oct. 4, 10 days prior. When I looked online, I could find no mention of the anti-military hate crimes inquiry on Wyden’s social media, his Senate website, or the Finance Committee website he controls as chair.
A copy of the PDF can be found at the GIJustice.com blog, but my attempts at verifying the letter with the DoJ press office have been unsuccessful.
What I did find was an almost identically formatted and addressed letter that got a lot of media attention, starting at NBC News. This letter was dated Oct. 9, five days after the anti-military hate crimes inquiry, but it was three pages longer and focused on incarcerated youth.
While military families are being targeted for violent hate crimes, Wyden has given more resources to the families of youth convicted of crimes than to families whose sacrifices secure our freedoms. Incarcerated youth deserve attention and resources, but why should that come at the expense of military families, who have committed no crimes?
When I asked Wyden’s staff to justify “slow-walking” military civil rights, I got a condescending response from Wyden’s veterans affairs constituent services representative, who makes $30,000 more than my family (which relies on my disability compensation as our main source of income).
I was told by a former senior-enlisted special operations soldier, “Maintain your military bearing; gird yourself up and be patient.”
How long do federal officials, including veterans on their staff, expect the lowest ranking among the military families to "suck it up and drive on" while other families, including more privileged military families, suck up all the oxygen in the room?
