The Matthew Lawrence Perna Act of 2024 is a critical first step towards ensuring that the political persecution witnessed in the aftermath...
The Matthew Lawrence Perna Act of 2024 is a critical first step towards ensuring that the political persecution witnessed in the aftermath of January 6th is curtailed by the law.
Last week, amid pouring rain, Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene held a press conference in front of the Capitol building, imploring her colleagues to co-sponsor the Matthew Lawrence Perna Act of 2024. The bill’s namesake, Matthew Perna, followed thousands of other law-abiding Americans in peacefully demonstrating at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Matthew was arrested and charged with multiple felonies for appearing at the Capitol on that fateful day. After a long and arduous 13-month sentencing, in which Perna pled guilty and received a threat from the federal judge presiding over his case of an “enhanced sentencing,” Perna tragically took his own life. The justice system waged all-out psychological and spiritual warfare against him, breaking him down into a shell of his former self. It was simply too much for anyone, let alone a man browbeaten into submission by his own government that he loved enough to take civic action, to bear.
Perna, once full of life, vibrant, and strong, was a casualty of the Biden regime’s weaponized justice system, carried out by what Greene aptly terms “Biden’s Department of Injustice” in her press release accompanying last week’s press conference. The process works by using the pretext afforded by the justice system to psychologically torture – and in Perna’s case, actually kill – those deemed enemies of the regime. In the most tragic of cases, the “political hostages” — as President Trump repeatedly calls them — take their own lives: which is exactly what happened with Matthew, who hanged himself on February 25, 2022, a little over a year after January 6th — persecuted by our two-tier system of justice.
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene Holds a Press Conference on the Introduction of the “Matthew LawrencePerna Act of 2024.” https://t.co/4ExP2f4FKZ
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) February 28, 2024
The first iteration of the Matthew Perna Act, named in Perna’s honor, was originally drafted by former Congressman Louie Gohmert in one of the last acts he did before retiring, and introduced to the 117th Congress. Unfortunately, at the time, Gohmert could only find one co-sponsor of the legislation: Congresswoman Greene.
Now, nearly two years later, Greene finds herself in a familiar position – though this time, with Congressman Gohmert no longer in the picture. Greene now stands as the only congressperson, of both parties and of both houses, to be sponsoring this bill. Indeed, no legislation could ever bring back Matthew, or all the time, energy, and emotional and financial costs borne by so many families of January 6th victims, who have struggled mightily to make ends meet, in many cases with their fathers and primary breadwinners imprisoned behind bars (and the remainder being driven to bankruptcy for fending off baseless charges by their own government).
Of course, the injustice committed by the American government cannot be remedied by a single legislation. But the Matthew Perna Act creates a strong foundation to protect fundamental rights that helps move the ball in the right direction. Among the bill’s key features, which can be read here in full, includes prohibiting the detention of nonviolent political protesters, which the Biden regime did, and still continues to do (and intends to keep doing unless stopped), against so many otherwise peaceful demonstrators who innocently appeared on Capitol grounds.
The bill also looks to secure other fundamental due process rights, including the right to a speedy trial, which is guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. In addition, the bill establishes consistent sentencing guidelines and limits the scope of unconstitutional governmental surveillance and investigation, a breach of the right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution.
Perhaps most important, however, is the bill’s transfer of venue reform, which would permit “the transfer of venue in criminal trials for nonviolent political protesters in Washington, D.C.” Such a reform would be a monumental step towards guarding procedural due process rights, such as a fair judge and jury, which is basically impossible nowadays in any deep blue city replete with left wing government bureaucrats and lawyers, like Washington.
As observed in President Trump’s own cases in D.C. and New York, his counsel waived his right to a jury trial, knowing that there was no chance he would receive a fair and unbiased jury, from the jury pool in these cities. Even if an impartial juror somehow managed to evade being stricken, the lawyers and prosecutors now tasked with vetting the jury pool often select against criteria, such as cable news preferences and even race in some cases, that broadly correlates with being a Trump supporter or Republican — and hence, a tendency to be more lenient to J6 defendants.
And the process by which jurors are vetted, though undoubtedly teeming with serious due process and other constitutional infringements, is not held accountable to any higher power – be it an appeals court or bar association, because these tribunals are likewise in thrall to the same woke and far-left ideologies that have driven the Biden regime to run roughshod around the Constitution and politically persecute their foremost political opponent.
Thus, the prospect of fair and impartial justice has been rendered virtually extinct in our nation’s capital, and other major cities across the land that have traded the rule of law for a more primitive form of justice commonplace in the banana republics to our South. Hence, the need for legislation that will tackle the issue head-on by requiring the option to change venue out of these constitutional voids, to forums more amenable to due process and accepting of fair and impartial justice as those terms were long traditionally understood.
The skies on the day of the press conference opened, and buckets of rain poured down like the tears of the departed on the hosts and little media gaggle of spectators who weathered the elements to hear the Congresswoman. Greene was flanked by Geri Perna, Matthew’s aunt and closest companion during his lifetime, whose relationship was almost like that of a surrogate mother. Tears and rain streamed down her face, blending until they became one, as she delivered a short, but powerful exhortation calling for congressional action on behalf of her late nephew.
She began her remarks by reading the suicide note left behind by Perna: only twenty-five poetically haunting words that land with the force of a thunderclap.
“I sacrificed my freedom when I entered the Capitol building on January 6th and, in despair, took my own life the night that I wrote this…”
Also behind the dais was Cynthia Hughes, founder of the Patriot Freedom Project, an organization committed to raising money and advocating for January 6th victims and their families. Edward Martin, President of the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, who also serves on the board of the Patriot Freedom Project, joined the women at the podium – striking a solemn pose to match the gravity of the occasion.
It is unfortunate that an otherwise very sensible piece of legislation, one with the sole purpose of protecting every American’s right to speak and assemble without governmental overreach, and to preserve one’s fundamental due process rights if charged with a crime, would not be readily embraced by all members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike. But it is a sad reflection of the times that legislation of this sort is needed in the first place – and thus the urgency to keep the political pressure on our elected lawmakers, even as the nation grows weary of hearing about January 6th.
However, real change will not occur unless lawmakers act to right the injustices of the past few years. Again, no law will ever bring back Matthew, but the desire to prevent another January 6th remains as great as ever – and the time to take action is now.
Continued inaction – and indifference – will only embolden the nefarious actors — of the Constitution, rule of law, and ultimately, the American people — who have already robbed so many precious years of innocent Americans and their families, including young children, who have been deprived irrecoverable years from their mothers and fathers, in many cases during their most formative years. In the most tragic of cases, such as Matthew’s, the government has gotten away with murder.
As fundamental rights are stripped away with impunity, the rest of society sleepwalks into tyranny – until it becomes too late to do anything, when people finally notice, but the country is beyond the pale.
We are teetering dangerously close to that point now: let us act swiftly before it’s too late.
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