An Ivy League-educated lawyer who firebombed a cop car during the 2020 George Floyd riots was sentenced on Thursday to just a year and a day in prison, concluding a pair of cases marked by surprising leniency from the Biden Justice Department.
Colinford Mattis’s sentence was the second of its kind delivered by U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan of the Eastern District of New York after Urooj Rahman, a public interest lawyer who joined Mattis in the firebombing, was sentenced in November to 15 months. In a pre-sentencing memo, prosecutors said they viewed “Mattis’s conduct here as equally culpable to Rahman’s conduct” and recommended a sentence of 18 to 24 months—well beneath the initial guideline of 10 years. Mattis’s attorney, Sabrina Shroff, declined to comment.
Mattis and Rahman leveraged their prestigious degrees, left-wing legal advocacy, and personal connections—including with one former Obama administration official who posted Rahman’s $250,000 bail—to curry favor with the Justice Department. Liberal media outlets like NPR and New York magazine produced fawning coverage of the two after their arrest.
[This pattern of leniency seems oddly incongruent with Merrick Garland’s treatment of January 6 rioters — especially considering the violence directed at police in this case. — Ed]
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