(Headline USA) During his supposed “victory lap” over the recent economic stimulus package, President Joe Biden wound up spending considerable focus on race-baiting claims of a growing wave of anti-Asian sentiment.
The issue was central to the 2020 election, during which the Biden family’s close ties to China emerged while then-president Donald Trump blamed the Asian super-power for allowing the deadly coronavirus to take root.
A growing number of people now consider China to be the top global threat, according to recent polls. But that could pose serious problems for the current administration, which is already facing increasing scrutiny and criticism for its failed immigration policies and other radical over-reaches.
Biden first sounded the alarms about America’s scourge of Sinophobia in a public address last week.
Since then, many in the media have sought to link, without evidence, an attack on three Atlanta massage parlors that occurred after the fact as validation of the president’s baseless claims.
But federal investigators emphasized on Friday that thus far they not found evidence that would support federal hate crime charges against the accused gunman a his motives remain much a source of speculation and mystery.
Seven of the eight people killed were women; six were of Asian descent. For “woke” leftists eager to thread a narrative that might support the Biden agenda, the crime has stitched together stigmas about race, gender, migrant work and sex work.
But the failure to provide evidence of a racially motivated attack may yet backfire on that effort, even raising the specter of a false-flag operation enacted by left-wing radicals to provide an “availability cascade” for the Biden agenda.
Though investigators have not ruled out ultimately filing hate crime charges, they face legal constraints in doing so.
Federal statutes require prosecutors to prove that the victims were targeted because of specific factors, like race, gender identity, religion, national origin or sexual orientation, or the suspect infringed on a federally or constitutionally protected activity.
To successfully prosecute a hate crimes case, prosecutors typically seek tangible evidence, such as the suspect expressing racism in text messages, in internet posts or to witnesses.
No such evidence has yet surfaced in the Georgia probe, according to the officials, who have direct knowledge of the investigation into the suspect, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long.
Still, leftists seem determined to stick with the script even in the absence of evidence.
There are hints that some on the Left seem determined to whip up an Asian advocacy movement similar to the Black Lives Matter riots that consumed national attention for months after George Floyd’s death last May.
Critical-race theorists claim that even if the shooter didn’t specifically target the victims and because some were Asian, he still could have been acting with bias against them.
Both federal and local investigators are still diving into the motive behind Tuesday’s killings.
After his arrest, Long told police he had a “sex addiction” and carried out the shootings because he was trying to snuff out the sources of temptation, according to authorities.
Police said the gunman previously visited two of the spas where four of the women were killed and said the suspect equated the businesses to sex, and that drove him to kill.
Authorities have said he may have been headed to Florida to carry out a similar attack on “some type of porn industry.”
Georgia officials later backtracked on their earlier statements about the case, saying everything was on the table, including a possible hate crime charge, and they were still investigating.
In a statement Thursday, Long’s lawyer, J. Daran Burns, offered condolences to the victims’ families. He said he was working on Long’s behalf “to investigate the facts and circumstances” surrounding the killings.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
