Topic: WorldNetDaily
Late last year, WorldNetDaily columnist Jeff Knox whitewashed the case of a family accused of selling guns to Mexican drug gangs in order to portray them as victims of government oppression, or something. He's still at it, despite the family members' conviction on several gun-related charges.
In an Aug. 9 WND column, Knox made a big deal of how "the Reese family not guilty on 24 of the 28 counts against them," but he was deliberately vague about they were convicted of:
Remington Reese, the 20-year old younger son, was acquitted of all charges, while his older brother, Ryin was found guilty on two counts and his father and mother, Rick and Terri, were found guilty on one count each. The charges carry a potential sentence of five years and $50,000 for each count, but those convicted typically receive sentences of about one year.
Those sentences are what judges give to the criminals who knowingly and intentionally lie on federal forms though, not firearms dealers who “should have known” that customers were lying to them.
But as the Associated Press reported, "The charges on which the three were convicted dealt with two undercover operations in June and July of 2011 in which they were accused of wrongly stating they had conducted background checks on the buyers that were brought in with [Jose] Roman," the undercover informant. The AP adds:
During the trial, prosecutors played secretly recorded tapes of Roman talking in the store about taking the guns and ammunition to Mexico. In one of the recordings, he says, "This ammo is going to Mexico, and it's not coming back. And if it comes back it's going to be on some guy's body." In another tape he talked about the guns being used to kill federales.
Rick Reese testified Roman was a boisterous braggart and he never took him seriously.
Knox didn't mention that part, and instead dismissed the idea that the Reeses should have known the buyers' intention (though he's on tape announcing it to them): "Absent an accounting for “Fast and Furious,” aggressively going after gun dealers whose primary crimes appear to have been either paperwork errors or a lack of a psychic ability to read a buyer’s mind is an outrage."
Knox spends much of the column fretting over whether the Reese family will get seized property back.
