Biden admin refuses to investigate violence and vandalism by Hamas supporters

Despite nationwide lawbreaking, no one has been charged with any crime.

By Adam Kredo, The Washington Free Beacon

The Justice Department has effectively issued a “stand-down order” to federal law enforcement and U.S. attorneys to stop them from investigating “incitement, violence, and vandalism” committed by Hamas supporters who hold U.S. visas, according to a complaint filed with the Justice Department and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The complaint, filed this week by the America First Legal Foundation, a conservative legal advocacy group, accuses the Biden administration of turning a blind eye to the massive uptick in violence against Jews across America in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel.

The Biden administration is dragging its feet on the prosecution of Hamas sympathizers across the country, including among U.S. visa holders and other foreign nationals living in America, according to the group, which cites information from U.S. officials and career Justice Department attorneys.

“It appears that concerns regarding the potential electoral consequences of protecting Jewish Americans and enforcing American anti-terrorism laws and/or sympathy for Hamas’s aims are inappropriately biasing the Department’s decision-making,” the organization writes in the complaint.

In addition to the Justice Department complaint, America First Legal has filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the Education and Homeland Security Departments to unearth information about pro-Hamas activity on U.S. college campuses, which have seen a rise in anti-Semitic violence and public support for terrorism against Israel. The probes could provide answers as to why the Biden administration is not deporting or prosecuting U.S. visa holders and other foreign nationals who have celebrated Hamas’s terror campaign and committed violence against Jews.

“On October 7, pro-Hamas extremists, many of whom are foreign nationals, launched a campaign of intimidation and violence against American Jews in the streets and on campuses,” Reed Rubinstein, America First Legal’s senior counselor and director of oversight and investigations, told the Free Beacon. “However, the Biden administration’s Department of Justice—which fully mobilized federal law enforcement against American parents speaking out at school board meetings—has been conspicuously silent.”

“This silence is purposeful,” said Rubenstein—the product of “leftist anti-Israel ideologues in the bureaucracy and, in part, White House political concerns that protecting American Jews will suppress Democrat voter turnout among the pro-Hamas community.”

The Justice Department did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment.

America First Legal’s complaint urges the Justice Department’s inspector general to open an investigation into claims the Biden administration is ignoring pro-Hamas activity across the country.

“Despite patent, nationwide lawbreaking, often by foreign nationals, targeting American Jews and Jewish institutions, the Department has taken no such action,” the complaint states. “This is very difficult to understand. The Department’s political echelon has made ‘domestic terrorism’ a central talking point and a singular domestic intelligence, investigative, and enforcement priority.”

The advocacy group calls on the department’s inspector general to “investigate whether political considerations have impermissibly infected the Department’s investigative and enforcement decision-making with respect to the above-described pro-Hamas activity, individuals, and groups in the United States.”

U.S. law states that any individual who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization” cannot hold a visa.

American First Legal is requesting scores of internal records from the Homeland Security and Education Departments that will shed light on departments’ communications with colleges and far-left advocacy groups in the wake of Hamas’s terror attack.

“Despite the clear danger Jewish, pro-Israel, and pro-American students across the country continue to face on American college campuses, college and university presidents and administrators continue to coddle, encourage, and facilitate pro-Hamas outrages,” American First Legal wrote in its FOIA request. “DHS, however, has apparently failed to act.”

Republican senators have also been pressuring the Biden administration to deport foreign students and other visa holders who have participated in pro-Hamas protests, including those on college campuses.

America First Legal FoundationHamas supportersVandalism