L.A. Supervisors Vote to Have Taxpayers Fund Legal Bills for Pro-Hamas Activists Arrested at UCLA

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has passed a motion to ensure that the public defender’s office provides defense attorneys and legal resources for the pro-Palestinian activists arrested at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) earlier this month.

As Breitbart News noted, the pro-Palestinian “encampment” was cleared by police on May 2 after a week in which activists had seized the center of campus by force, assaulting journalists, using antisemitic rhetoric, and denying Jewish students and others access to public areas on campus.

After 100 pro-Israel vigilantes attacked the barricades on the night of April 30 – May 1, authorities finally intervened.

Last week, the UCLA Daily Bruin, the student newspaper, reported:

On Tuesday, the LA County Board of Supervisors passed a motion calling on the public defender’s office to dedicate resources toward defending UCLA students arrested Thursday during the encampment’s police sweep and make legal aid and defense services clearly accessible to arrestees. Several UCLA students spoke during public comment at Tuesday’s meeting to advocate for the resolution, including multiple members of the Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC).

“We were protesting peacefully [sic] but were harassed by counter-protesters who accelerated the violence, resulting in arrests and attacks,” said Eva Jussim, the USAC external vice president.

…

[Republican] District 5 Supervisor Kathryn Barger was the board’s sole vote against the resolution.

Contrary to the activists’ claim to have protested “peacefully,” activists used force to exclude people from their “encampment” in a public area of campus. This reporter was physically pushed by activists out of the encampment.

There was no motion passed to support the legal defense of pro-Israel vigilantes, though police have prioritized investigations into those who participated.

Indigent criminal defendants are entitled to a public defender, regardless.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.