Daniel Perry and the Republican Meaning of "Law and Order"

In the Republican view, the purpose of the law is to inflict harm on your enemies.

Ah, Denver. The Sunshine State. Gorgeous. Gorgeous!

We’re coming to Denver on June 21. It’ll be me, Sarah, and Tim—and a special guest: Gov. Jared Polis. Get tickets right here.

Today’s post is unlocked because this story needs to be out there for everyone to consider—so please feel free to share widely.

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An attendee lights a candle at a vigil for Garrett Foster on July 26, 2020 in downtown Austin, Texas. (Photo by Sergio Flores/Getty Images)

1. Law and Order

Andrew Egger talked about the pardon of Daniel Perry this morning, but there’s more in this story that I want to unpack. I hope you’ll stay with me, because I think it’s important.

Perry was serving a 25-year sentence after being convicted of the murder of Garrett Foster. This case is an almost perfect distillation of what Republicans mean when they talk about “law and order.”

On July 25, 2020 Garrett Foster—a retired Air Force veteran—was attending a protest in Austin. Foster was open-carrying a rifle, as is legal under Texas law.

Daniel Perry was driving a car when he encountered this protest. He sped through a red light and accelerated his car into a group of protesters, one of whom was Whitney Mitchell. Mitchell—who was Foster’s fiancé—was in a wheel-chair. (She is a quadruple amputee.)

Foster approached Perry’s vehicle in an attempt to get him to stop ramming pedestrians. His firearm was in a safe position: Safety on, no round in the chamber, and pointed at the ground. Perry shot Foster five times. Foster died.

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The case had everything Republicans love: A peaceful protest with people exercising their First Amendment rights. A veteran lawfully exercising his Second Amendment right. And before the murder the killer had been searching the internet for young girls and sending sexually explicit texts to a minor.

The only problem was the protest itself: It was a Black Lives Matter protest.

And so Daniel Perry—a groomer who was convicted of murder by a jury of his peers—became a conservative cause célèbre.

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We should be clear that there is no reasonable legal defense of Perry. He initially claimed that Foster had not pointed his weapon at him. Here was Perry’s initial statement to police: “I believe he was going to aim at me. I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me.” Other eyewitnesses confirmed that Foster did not raise his weapon. No witnesses testified that Foster did raise his gun.

At the time of the confrontation, Perry’s car was surrounded by protestors—remember, he had intentionally driven into them. Witnesses testified that Perry attempted to get out of his car, but that Foster, standing by the driver’s door, told him not to get out and motioned for him to move on. Had Perry exited the vehicle, it is reasonable to believe that the confrontation would have escalated. Foster seemed—by all testimony—to have been trying to protect the pedestrians from Perry’s vehicle and also protect Perry from the angry people he had assaulted with his car.

But Perry shot and killed Foster anyway. Why?

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First off, Perry is a racist. And when I say “racist” I don’t mean in the Archie Bunker sense. This is a guy who *hates* black people so much that he frequently talked about killing them for sport. The prosecution presented a mountain of evidence on this point and I won’t quote any of it here, but you can read about it if you like.

Second, there is ample evidence that Perry had been working himself up to seeking out a Black Lives Matter protest for the purpose of killing. Radley Balko has the full rundown on this here.

For instance, here is a something Perry wrote in June of 2020: "I might have to kill a few people on my way to work, they are rioting outside my apartment complex."

At trial, prosecutors presented an exchange Perry had with a friend in which he had mused on how to create a situation in which he would be justified to kill:

Perry speculated about how he might get away with such a killing – by claiming self-defense, as he is now doing. Prosecutors presented a Facebook Messen­ger chat between Perry and a friend, Michael Holcomb, which occurred two weeks before he shot Foster. In it, Perry argued that shooting protesters was legal if it was in self-defense. Holcomb, who was called to the stand Wednesday afternoon, seemed to try to talk Perry down. "Aren't you a CDL holder too?" he asked, referring to the men's licenses to carry concealed handguns. "We went through the same training ... Shooting after creating an event where you have to shoot, is not a good shoot."

And while it doesn’t have any bearing on the case, I’ll mention it again: Perry was also actively pursuing underaged girls.

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There is no legal or moral justification for pardoning Perry. His trial was fair. The jury acted reasonably. The laws he broke were well-defined and serious. He is not a good guy who had one bad moment. There is no indication that he has repented and become a different man than the one who fantasized about murder and then carried it out.

The only reason to pardon Perry is political. Pardoning Perry creates political gain for Gov. Abbott because his constituents like Perry. And these voters like Perry precisely because of who he murdered.

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The story doesn’t stop with Perry’s pardon.

In 2023, Abbott and the Republican Texas legislature passed a law which allows the state to remove from office “rogue” locally-elected district attorneys.

The public justification for the law was that some DA’s were too lenient on crime. Today the state is looking into removing José Garza, the DA who prosecuted Perry.

While pardoning Perry, Gov. Abbott claimed that Garza had “demonstrated unethical and biased misuse of his office in prosecuting Daniel Scott Perry.”

Texas Republicans are not content to allow Perry’s murder of Garrett Foster. They also want to send a message that even using the law to bring charges against members of the ingroup who kill members of the outgroup is verboten.

That is what “law and order” means to Republicans. And it is all perfectly legal.

One last thing: I want to give you Radley Balko’s view of Garrett Foster.

Garrett Foster was not a far-left anarchist, a “rioter,” or an antifa “terrorist.” He wasn’t even a leftist. He was a self-described libertarian who believed in gun rights and supported the Libertarian Party presidential ticket in 2020.

He also seemed like a decent human being.

Not only did Foster act lawfully on the night he was killed, he did precisely what gun rights advocates like Abbott, Carlson, and other gun rights supporters say the Second Amendment exists to protect — he defended himself and others from a man he had good reason to think intended them harm.

He also showed remarkable composure and restraint. When Perry drove into the crowd and nearly struck Foster’s disabled fiance, Foster didn’t lash out in anger. Witnesses said he approached the vehicle, gun barrel down, with his finger off the trigger. He then gave Perry a warning and urged him through the crowd. When Perry started to get out of his car, Foster told him to stay in the vehicle, presumably to avoid more confrontation.

We finally find a “good guy with a gun.” He gets murdered. And then the state protects his murderer.

That is the reality in Texas and also one possible future for America.

Don’t accept it. Join us to work for a different future.

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2. More Rule of Law Stuff

So we have one justice on the Supreme Court who has left FedSoc conservative legal theory and is basically an Epoch Times-style crank and this guy’s wife is even further out to lunch.

Sure we couldn’t have two of—

Oh shirt:

After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag.

One of the homes flying an inverted flag during that time was the residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in Alexandria, Va., according to photographs and interviews with neighbors.

The upside-down flag was aloft on Jan. 17, 2021, the images showed. President Donald J. Trump’s supporters, including some brandishing the same symbol, had rioted at the Capitol a little over a week before. Mr. Biden’s inauguration was three days away. Alarmed neighbors snapped photographs, some of which were recently obtained by The New York Times. Word of the flag filtered back to the court, people who worked there said in interviews.

While the flag was up, the court was still contending with whether to hear a 2020 election case, with Justice Alito on the losing end of that decision.

Alito’s explanation is that it was his wife hoisted the upside-down flag and she did it in response to some anti-Trump lawn sign put up by a neighbor. Maybe this is true, maybe it’s not. Who knows.

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What I do know is this: When you have a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court you have an obligation to the country to play perfect baseball.

You don’t put up yard signs. You don’t do bumper stickers. If you have an obnoxious neighbor whose house is bedecked in political paraphernalia with which you disagree, you smile and go about your day.

Because yes, you may have a First Amendment right just like everyone else. But you have a duty to avoid even the appearance of partiality. And you owe that duty to both the institution and the citizenry which you serve.

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The craziest thing for me about Clarence Thomas and now Sam Alito is the sense of overweening entitlement they exhibit. It’s not enough that their country bestowed on them a scrotum-tightening amount of power, for life. They seem to believe that they must not have to sacrifice anything in return, that they owe nothing to the citizenry.

They seem to view their posts not as acts of service, but as rewards which entitle them to be served.

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3. Lounge Talk

I hope to never fly enough to gain access to airport lounges. But they do sound fun.

American Airlines opened the world’s first airport lounge, then an invite-only affair for VIPs, in 1939. By the end of the 20th century, lounges had cemented their reputation as the domain of road warriors—mostly solo travelers headed to, say, medical-device sales conventions or engineering-job-site visits. The experience was less brussels-sprout hash and champagne and more “cheese and crackers and $5 beers,” Brian Kelly, the titular guy behind the Points Guy website (and arguably the most influential person in the travel-status game), told me. But behind those generously staffed check-in desks, things have been changing. Private-lounge networks have rapidly expanded over the past decade, as scores of new travelers have begun demanding entry. What awaits inside is changing, too. . . .

Perhaps the most salient characteristic of the modern airport lounge is that it is busy. . . . As Americans have rushed back into travel after a pandemic lull, they’ve also rushed to apply for new credit cards, the fanciest of which promise bounties of travel-related perks, including lounge access. Now a broader cohort of fliers is squeezing in alongside the usual business travelers. . . .

The lounge’s booming popularity complicates its premise. This expanding group of high-spending customers is valuable to airlines, which operate most lounges, and to credit-card issuers, who have joined the lounge market with their own club networks. (High-fee credit cards, Kelly told me, have become the most common way for airline-perk neophytes to access lounges, no matter whether they’re run by airlines or banks.) But to attract these customers, lounge operators need to uphold the impression that lounges are exclusive—a special place far from the airport cattle call, not one crammed with too many other valued customers. The operators’ solution to this dilemma has been to build fast and build big, putting up huge, extravagant new clubs as quickly as the vagaries of airport construction will allow. Globally, more than 3,000 airport lounges are now open, with most major operators promising to add at least a few new locations this year.

Most of the existing lounges max out somewhere around the ambience of a Panera, with booze instead of lemonade. The food and drinks are free, and that’s usually their main selling point. With the new mega-lounges, though, airlines and credit cards alike talk a big game about their culinary acumen, cocktail programs, and spa amenities, which include massages, private showers, and manicures. In United Airlines’ new 35,000-square-foot, three-story lounge in Denver, one of its two bars evokes a brewery, complete with tasting flights from Colorado brewers. Delta is opening the first in a series of ultra-premium clubs in June: a 38,000-square-foot mega-lounge at New York’s JFK airport containing, among other things, a full-service French bistro. American Express’s largest-ever lounge, which opened recently in Atlanta, has a backroom whiskey bar, a menu designed by a celebrated local chef, and 4,000 square feet of outdoor space from which loungers can watch planes roll by.

Read the whole thing.