Anti-Anti-Trumper: Former Marine and lawmaker’s legislation will criminalize reporting bogus hate crimes

Photograph: Rev. Al Sharpton and Tawana Brawley in the 1980s pulled off one of history’s biggest hoaxes claiming Brawley was attacked and sexually assaulted by a gang of white men. Neither one served a single day behind bars for their fake bias crime circus.

Recent news reports fabricated to paint GOP President Donald Trump as illegitimate leader whose followers are racists, hoodlums and even Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazi activists have gone too far, according to number of police officers who spoke with ConservativeBase.com. As a result of the media paying little attention to the accuracy of their reports, Americans have come away with the notion that there is an increase in the number of hate crimes committed, when in fact investigations have proven the majority of the bias crime complaints are bogus.

But one lawmaker in President Trump’s home state has proposed legislation to attack the fake news stories before they are promulgated throughout the nation and the world. A former U.S. Marine, New York Assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor (R-New York) introducd legislation that will make the reporting of a fake bias crime a felony offense punishable by a serious prison sentence, not a local jail. His legislation came in the wake of several high-profile bias crime claims that proved to be hoaxes.

“These hoaxes waste police resources, rip at the fabric of society and unnecessarily instill fear in communities,” said Lalor. “Because of their particularly destructive nature they should be punished differently than garden-variety false police reports, which are misdemeanor offenses. I grew up in Wappingers Falls and saw the most notorious bias crime hoax of all time perpetrated by Tawana Brawley and Al Sharpton. These hoaxes can not only destroy lives, but tear communities apart,” said the young legislator.

“In fact, they are often designed to do just that. Those who commit these criminal hoaxes need to face appropriately severe punishments.  Would-be perpetrators of these kinds of hoaxes need to be put on notice that there will be real consequences if they report a fake bias crime, so they think twice before they act,” he said.

Lalor pointed to two large-scale hoaxes in New York alone that occurred in 2016 as examples:

In December, a Muslim woman in New York City claimed three men attacked her, yelling “Donald Trump,” calling her a terrorist and attempting to tear off her traditional head scarf. She later recanted her story, admitting that she lied because she broke her curfew and her father was increasingly mad that she was dating a Catholic and becoming more Western. The NYPD rightly committed significant resources to find the perpetrators and Governor Cuomo rightly ordered an investigation by the MTA, State Police and Division of Human Rights into what turned out to be hoax. 

In May, three SUNY Albany students were indicted for falsely reporting that they had been attacked by several white men who were yelling racial slurs. One of the students has admitted to the hoax and was allowed to plead guilty to a civil offense with just a $120 fine and 100 hours of community service. The slap on the wrist comes after the false accusations drew national attention, commentary by a presidential candidate and rallies in support of the “victims” of a bias crime that didn’t happen. 

A list of some of the recent hoaxes from around the country can be found here.

Lalor continued, “We need to send a message that we will not tolerate these attempts to divide, waste police resources and unnecessarily frighten communities. These are serious crimes, with serious impacts and they deserve to be classified as felonies.”