On his final day in office, Jan. 20, 2001, President Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of a pair of radical leftists serving time for bombing the U.S. Capitol building, where a 1983 blast shattered the second floor of the Senate wing.
Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg each served 16 years of lengthy sentences, with Rosenberg escaping 42 years of a 58-year sentence and Evans cutting short a 40-year sentence by 24 years.
The FBI landed formal indictments on Evans and Rosenberg in the 1988 “Resistance Conspiracy” case for their involvement in the bombing of the Capitol along with five others. Evans and Rosenberg had already been in police custody for other crimes of the radical left-wing terror group May 19th Communist Organization (M19), named for the birthdays of Malcolm X and Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. According to a historical chronology of the left-wing group by the Smithsonian Magazine, M19 also carried out successful bombings of an FBI office, the Israel Aircraft Industries building, the South African consulate in New York, and D.C.’s Fort McNair and Navy Yard.
“The attacks tended to follow a similar pattern,” the magazine reported. “A warning call to clear the area, an explosion, a pre-recorded message to media railing against U.S. imperialism or the war machine under various organizational aliases (never using the name M19).”
A historian interviewed by the Smithsonian described the group as an “offshoot” of Weather Underground, the domestic terror group led by Bill Ayers, who bombed the Pentagon and the Capitol in the 1970s and now lives as a prominent academic. M19’s acts of radical left-wing terror appeared to catch a sympathetic eye in Washington that would relieve its members of their time in prison.
According to the New York Post in 2001, New York Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, who today serves as the House Judiciary Committee chairman, played a “crucial role” in Clinton’s decision to commute Rosenberg’s sentence. Nadler’s rabbi, a Nadler spokesman at the time told the Post, gave “compelling information from [Rosenberg’s] parole hearing” to the Manhattan congressman, who, in turn, passed on the material to the White House counsel’s office. That transfer, the Post reported, played a “key role” in the president’s decision to include Rosenberg on his list of 140 last-minute pardons just moments before George W. Bush took the White House.
Rosenberg’s case is a reminder of the long, growing list of left-wing acts of terrorism either excused or endorsed by Democrats and their allies in corporate media, who now condemn the violent attacks on the U.S. Capitol that came from right-wing extremists last week.
Nadler, in his role as House Judiciary chair, has been among the most vocal in Congress, outraged at the Capitol chaos that ensued and demanding that the president be impeached after failing to successfully remove Trump last year.
It was only several months ago, however, that Nadler dismissed violence by Antifa, the radical left-wing terror group of the 21st century, as a “myth,” while the militant anarchists erupted a historic summer of unrest that tore apart downtown city centers.
“Do you disavow the violence from Antifa?” asked writer-producer Austen Fletcher.
“That’s a myth that’s been spread only in Washington, D.C.,” Nadler said.
“About Antifa in Portland?” Fletcher clarified, as its Portland militants held the city under siege.
“Yes,” Nadler concluded.