Grafton Thomas, who is accused of stabbing multiple orthodox Jews at a Hanukkah party outside of New York City Saturday night, now faces multiple federal hate crimes charges.
Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, confirmed the new charges to TPM Monday. The New York Times first reported the new charges.
“Thomas is charged with five counts of obstructing the free exercise of religion in an attempt to kill,” Biase said in an email.
“Each of the five counts carries a maximum prison term of life.”
Thomas pleaded not guilty to five counts of attempted murder and a count of burglary in court on Sunday.
A spokesperson for Mr. Thomas’ attorney, Michael Sussman, told TPM that Sussman would hold a press briefing midday Monday, and that he otherwise was not responding to questions.
I’m guessing he has some mental health issues in addition to the legal problems he now has.
I have personally had Hasidic landlords that were outright con-men, thieves, liars, and received sexual favors from black women tenants I knew personally. Hasidic Jews are the greatest consumers of prostitutes in NYC outside of Manhattan. If you don’t already know that, try speaking to someone outside your caste.
Your religion does not make you a good person, in fact, it often enables and justifies ugly treatment, theft, and abuse to those outside that religion. I can readily understand that black folk suffer the depredations of landlords who consider them subhuman on a spiritual level just to start.
Most of the time someone goes nuts for a reason. If the victims were cops, I wouldn’t find it difficult to imagine a black man had gone mad after suffering at their hands. I would be looking to the reason this man went mad before I chalked it up to plain-old antisemitism and reported it.
That others are bad folk does not absolve this guy attacking people with a knife. He is no innocent babe in the woods.
I did not say that. I stated that in my experience there is widespread abuse of black people by landlords in depressed areas - where I have lived, personally - that are almost entirely of the religion espoused by the people who were attacked.
You assume from your lack of knowledge. I will continue to speculate with my actual knowledge.
The writer might have done so too. I don’t pay for a cut and paste job with the same shop-worn opinions as the next fuck down the line.
Trump and the GOP couldn’t be happier…a chance to throw the book at an “anti-semite” as a political rodeo to burnish their pro-Jew bona fides AND the perp is black, so they don’t have to even consider mental illness, despite his family and pastor saying he has a long history of it.
This dude is about to get carved up nine ways to Sunday for political gain. And don’t get me wrong…there’s definitely something horrifyingly wrong in NY and across the country that this shit is bubbling up, not least of which that rising anti-semitism seems to be the historical litmus test for rising fascism…but we have to be able to differentiate where appropriate. Real and true antisemitic attacks or really any kind of pattern of this kind of brazen attack happening repeatedly is likely to trigger mentally ill people to participate too.