Last Updated on February 17, 2022
Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas, a Democrat, is co-sponsoring a quasi-amnesty bill for monument attackers, while herself facing felony charges stemming from a June 2020 Black Lives Matter attack on the Portsmouth, Virginia Confederate war memorial.
Tacking her own self-interests on to a bill originally intended to expunge the records of those convicted of marijuana possession before the state moved to decriminalize the drug, Lucas hopes to extend the bill’s benefits to those tried and convicted in monument attacks, expunging the convictions from their records after a period of 8 years.
National File reached out to Hampton Roads (a metro area which includes Portsmouth) Republican Jarome Bell for comment. Bell summed the additions to the bill up as Lucas’s attempt at creating a “get out of jail free card” for herself.
“If Senate Bill 5043 passes with the Lucas amendment, there will be an automatic expungement of criminal offenses linked to injuring a monument – which is the charge Senator Lucas faces in Portsmouth,” Bell said. “So they are drafting a get out of jail free card for Lucas and all of those people that were charged.”
As I’ve previously reported here at National File, Senator Lucas, along with members of NAACP leadership, faces felony charges in the aftermath of a June attack on the Portsmouth Confederate war memorial. According to investigators, Lucas conspired with NAACP leadership and Black Lives Matter militants to destroy the memorial. According to video evidence, Lucas went as far as to use powers she claimed to hold as State Senator to order police officers to stand down. Lucas then shouted the order for the attack to go forward.
“Go ahead, wreck it!” Lucas instructed the crowd of left-wing radicals gathered around the monument.
When it was all said and done, the monument to Portsmouth’s Confederate dead still stood but had taken severe damage. A portion of the monument – a massive stone sculpture of a Confederate soldier – even toppled on to one of the demonstrator’s heads, leaving the man in critical condition and fighting for his life.
The expungement bill doesn’t represent the first instance of political meddling in Lucas’s case. Shortly following Portsmouth Police Chief Angela Greene’s announcement that she would be criminally charging Lucas and others connected to the monument attack plot, Greene was placed on administrative leave amidst allegations of anti-black racism – though Greene herself is a black woman – and an alleged “conflict of interest” in the Lucas investigation which city officials seem to have declined to elaborate on.
