Huffington Post's reporter Ryan J. Rilley, was covering the event at the time, he states that Ms. Fairooz laughter did NOT disrupt the hearing or interrupt Sen. Shelby's speech. She was summarily arrested and charged with "disorderly and disruptive conduct" and "parading, demonstrating and picketing within the Capitol". She has since been convicted and faces up to a year in jail.
This is only the beginning act in dismantling the "Bill of Rights", for every American who dares to express any disagreement with government policy or with any well-placed, exalted government employed demagogue whose wages are paid by the American citizen's taxes.
"Who do they think they are?"
People like Jeff Sessions, who now wields enough power to arrest, prosecute and convict you for laughing. People with the power to punish you for laughing at them.
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A JURY JUST CONVICTED A WOMAN FOR LAUGHING AT JEFF SESSIONS
Vanity Fair MagazineBy Tina Nguyen
May 3, 2017
The Justice Department will not press federal charges against two white Baton Rouge police officers involved in last year's shooting death of a black man, Alton Sterling, multiple media outlets reported Tuesday, bringing renewed attention to how Attorney General Jeff Sessions, already controversial, is choosing to deal with allegations of police bias and racially motivated shootings. The decision is not entirely surprising: federal civil rights charges in such cases are rare, due to the high burden of proof, and even the Obama-era D.O.J. repeatedly declined to charge police officers involved in high-profile deaths. Still, it is stunning to see what cases Donald Trump’s attorney general has decided to prosecute.
On Wednesday, a jury convicted a 61-year-old female activist who had laughed during Sessions’s January confirmation hearing in the Senate. Desiree Fairooz, a longtime protester affiliated with the anti-war group Code Pink, had been escorted out of the room for laughing in response to Senator Richard Shelby's assertion that Sessions had a “clear and well-documented” history of “treating all Americans equally under the law.” (Sessions had, in fact, been denied a federal judgeship in 1986 because of a history of racially charged remarks, and Shelby himself had once run a campaign ad suggesting that Sessions was a Klan sympathizer.) Fairooz, along with two other protesters, faces up to a year in prison.
The Huffington Post’s Ryan J. Reilly, who was covering the hearing at the time, reported that Fairooz’s laugh was not disruptive to the hearing and did not interrupt Shelby’s speech. But Fairooz was arrested by a rookie Capitol police officer on her second week on the job who, according to Reilly, “had never conducted an arrest before nor worked at a congressional hearing.” Nevertheless, Katherine Coronado and the Capitol police booked Fairooz. She was later charged by the government with “disorderly and disruptive conduct” for her laugh, as well as a second charge for “parading, demonstrating, or picketing within the Capitol” as she was being led out.
Fairooz has protested at several congressional hearings, and likely knows the difference between being intentionally disruptive and respectful of decorum. “Why am I being taken out of here?” she asked as she was arrested. “I was going to be quiet, and now you’re going to have me arrested? For what?”
During Fairooz’s trial on Monday, fellow Code Pink activist Ariel Gold testified that Fairooz was reflexively laughing in response to Sessions’s claims, and that she was “appalled” when Fairooz was arrested. Coronado, on the other hand, said she did not think Shelby’s statement was funny enough to warrant a laugh and noted that Fairooz was laughing “very loudly”—enough for people to turn their heads and look at her.
The decision to prosecute the three protesters suggests a distinctly Trumpian approach to law and order has taken hold within the Justice Department. It is also sure to have a chilling effect on protest and other forms of free speech that are already in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. On Sunday, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said that pushing for a change to the nation’s libel laws “is being looked at”—a move that would restrict the press, though one that many legal experts suggest isn’t going anywhere. Trump has previously suggested that “We're going to open up the libel laws so when they write falsely we can sue the media and we can get these stories corrected and get damages.” He has also taken aim at protesters directly, claiming without evidence in February that an unspecified demonstration was composed of “professional anarchists” and “thugs.” He is currently facing multiple lawsuits accusing him of inciting violence against protesters at his rallies.
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