Ivy League Lawyer Who Firebombed Cop Car Will Spend a Year and a Day in Prison

Colinford Mattis’s accomplice Urooj Rahman was sentenced to 15 month in November Colinford Mattis / Reuters

A lawyer from the Ivy League who set fire to a police car during the 2020 George Floyd Riots was sentenced to just one year and a half in prison on Thursday. This is the conclusion of a pair that were marked by unusual leniency by the Biden Justice Department.

Colinford Mattis was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Brian Cogan of New York’s Eastern District. Urooj Rahman was a public interest lawyer who was with Mattis during the firebombing. sentenced In November to 15 Months. In a pre-sentencing memoProsecutors said that they had viewed “Mattis’s conduct here as equally culpable to Rahman’s conduct” and recommended a sentence of 18 to 24 months—well beneath the initial guideline of 10 years.

Mattis and Rahman leveraged their prestigious degrees, left-wing legal advocacy, and personal connections—including with one former Obama administration official who posted Rahman’s $250,000 bail—to curry favor with the Justice Department. Liberal media outlets, such as NPR and New York magazine produced fawning coverage The arrest of the two men.

Trump administration prosecutors wanted a 10-year sentence for the couple with a domestic terrorist enhancement. was dropped After President Joe Biden’s and Attorney General Merrick Galrland’s election. Mattis, Rahman and the Department of Justice reached a sweetheart arrangement in June. They pleaded guilty only to lesser arson and explosives offenses that were just five years long. New York State stated that Mattis and Mattis were both victims of arson before Rahman was sentenced. disbarred.

James Trusty, an ex-federal prosecutor, spoke to the Washington Free Beacon In November, the DOJ announced that it had changed its approach to the two cases. “extraordinarily unusual.” Both Rahman and Mattis’s lawyers requested sentence commutations prior to appearing in court. They pushed for each other’s release on time served.

Mattis and Rahman began to share plans to firebomb NYPD targets and build Molotov cocktails on May 29, 2020, just hours after Minneapolis’s Third Precinct had been set ablaze.

“Bring it to their neck,” Mattis, a Princeton graduate and New York University’s Law School, sent a text message on the night of protests at New York City. “Molotovs rollin’,” Rahman, a Fordham law student, responded.

They can be combined. “encouraged others to engage in violence” And “mocked reportedly injured police officers,” According to prosecutors.

Prosecutors stated that it was “troubling” Licensee