The government is dropping its case against the woman who laughed out loud during Jeff Sessions' confirmation hearing in January.
Desiree Fairooz is an activist with the anti-war organization Code Pink. She said her laugh was involuntary, spurred by Sen. Richard Shelby's statement that Sessions' "extensive record of treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented."
"I let out an involuntary laugh, or more of a chortle of disdain," Fairooz told WAMU. "We were not warned not to laugh." Fairooz, a retired children's librarian, was with five other activists — all dressed in pink Lady Liberty costumes — during the attorney general's confirmation hearing.
She was charged with two misdemeanors: disrupting Congress and unlawful demonstration on Capitol grounds. Each charge carries up to six months in prison and a potential fine.
In July, a judge threw out her conviction and called for a new trial. In September, Fairooz rejected a plea deal. The new trial had been set to begin next week.
"Just received this, 'Governments Notice of Nolle Prosequi' What a relief! Guess they've got enough 'laughing' matters to deal with!" Fairooz tweeted Monday.
DOJ Drops Case Against Woman Who Laughed During Sessions Hearing
I posted back in May 2017 that activist Desiree Fairooz was facing prison time for laughing during Jeff Sessions hearing:
During Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearings earlier this year, an activist was arrested after she laughed. After a senator claimed Sessions has a history of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented,” Desiree Fairooz laughed. Fairooz says she laughed because Sessions actually has the opposite history and has opposed equal rights. Now, federal prosecutors are pushing forward with a case against Fairooz and are saying that “the laugh amounted to willful ‘disorderly and disruptive conduct’ intended to ‘impede, disrupt, and disturb the orderly conduct’ of congressional proceedings.” If convicted, Fairooz could face up to six months in prison. (source)
Well here’s an update on that story. A jury found her guilty for guilty of disorderly conduct and unlawful parading after raising a protest sign and yelling after she was escorted away. She now faces up to a year in prison. Fairooz and her attorney formally requested that the judge to throw out the verdict but the prosecutors from the Department of Justice have explicitly asked a judge to uphold the “guilty” verdict and want her to be jailed for her actions. (source)
I was once kicked out of the Supreme Court for laughing. The charges against Desiree Fairooz are serious business.
The Justice Department is prosecuting a woman who laughed during a Senate hearing to confirm Jeff Sessions as attorney general. I can sympathize with her somewhat absurd plight, because I was once tossed out of the press box in the Supreme Court for laughing at the wrong time.
Desiree Fairooz, a librarian in Arlington, Va., and a Code Pink activist, guffawed when Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) asserted that Sessions’s record for “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.” She was speedily arrested by a U.S. Capitol police officer. Justice Department lawyers reportedly charged Fairooz with “disorderly and disruptive conduct” intended to “impede, disrupt, and disturb the orderly conduct” of congressional proceedings.
According to the HuffPost, laughter occurred at other times during the hearing — especially when Sessions made a joke about his marriage. But laughing with the nominee did not pose a grave threat to the dignity of congressional proceedings.
It might seem like a surprise that the Justice Department is prosecuting Fairooz; perhaps the career lawyers in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia who are pursuing the case will win the gratitude of their new boss, but it’s an unusual one. The case is being heard by the chief judge of the D.C. Superior Court.
This isn’t the first time federal cops have attempted to enforce the difference between licit and illicit laughter, though, and unfortunately, it might not be the last. Laughing got me tossed out of the press box at the Supreme Court in March 1995. I was on assignment for Playboy, covering arguments in a case involving an Arkansas woman who had sold a small amount of illegal drugs to a government informant and was later the target of a no-knock police raid. Then, too, some laughter was okay, and some wasn’t: When then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist mocked one lawyer’s assertion, everyone in the house responded with a polite chuckle.
The Clinton administration’s lawyers were asserting that no-knock drug raids were presumptively justified in houses that had flush toilets — because the slightest delay in barging in could allow residents to flush away small amounts of drugs. (That would, of course, mean no-knock raids were preemptively justified in more than 99 percent of households in the nation.) Justice Department attorney Michael Dreeben conceded that a forced entry would not be justified if police knew “that all the drugs in question are stored in relatively indestructible crates.”
John Wesley Hall, the lawyer representing the defendant, retorted that, according to that logic, “the more drugs you’ve got, the more right you have to an announcement” before a police search.
I thought that was hilarious. Alas, my boisterous laugh proved to be a solo performance. All the justices — and almost everybody else in the courtroom — turned and stared in my direction.
A few minutes later, a Supreme Court police officer tapped me on the shoulder and notified me that I would have to move to a rear alcove — out of sight. As The Washington Post’s Al Kamen reported the next day, officials said I had violated an obscure Supreme Court rule that requires reporters sitting in the front of the press section to follow the same dress code as members of the Supreme Court bar do. By wearing a Lord & Taylor dress shirt, but not a coat and tie, I ran afoul of the rules, but it was my illicit laugh that drew the attention of anyone in a position to enforce the provision. (“Maybe he should try Brooks Brothers,” Kamen joked in his column.) In my situation, at least, there were no criminal charges filed.
While my ejection, and Fairooz’s case, may seem funny, it’s actually a dangerous precedent to permit the Justice Department to prosecute people who laugh during official proceedings. Will applause and raucous cheering be the only legally permitted noises that citizens can make while listening to politicians? Should we imitate repressive governments, such as Thailand’s, and make a criminal offense of lese majeste — insulting the ruler?
The federal government nowadays is generating so many absurdities that even cynics cannot keep track. We all need to maintain our humor to preserve our sanity — and our freedom. As H.L. Mencken aptly observed, “One horselaugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.”
Fairooz was convicted yesterday on criminal misdemeanor charges (one for “unlawful parading” and one for “disorderly conduct”), and will face up to one year in jail (up to six months per charge). For laughing at a nominee during their confirmation hearing.
Activist (and former librarian) Desirée Fairooz made national headlines last week with the news of her conviction for disruption of Congress, which could land her a year in federal prison.
American Libraries recently talked to Desirée Fairooz. They discuss her case, free speech, and the importance of libraries.
Desiree Fairooz—who was arrested for laughing at a confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions—faces up to a year in prison for the tiny outburst. The New York Times reports:
A jury on Wednesday convicted three Code Pink protesters on charges that they disrupted the confirmation hearing of Jeff Sessions for attorney general — including a Virginia woman who said all she did was break out in laughter. Each could face up to 12 months in prison.
The Virginia woman, Desiree A. Fairooz, was found guilty of the two charges she faced: disorderly conduct and parading or demonstrating on Capitol grounds.
Two of her fellow activists also faced trial. They were found not guilty of disorderly conduct but received a guilty verdict from the jury for parading or demonstrating.
To quote Slate.com:
Fairooz was reacting to Republican Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby’s claim that Sessions’ “extensive record of treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.” (Sessions has a long history of hostility toward civil rights activism and has often expressed support for segregationist and white-nationalist viewpoints.)
Gehayi here. I’m not surprised she laughed. Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying. And honestly, can you imagine the 61-year-old Desiree telling fellow prisoners about this?
“What’re you in for?”
“Arson. What’re you in for?”
“Murder. What’re you in for?”
“Laughing at a man who was lying about the Attorney General.”
Apparently, it’s illegal to laugh at Jeff Sessions
By Dana Milbank, Washington Post, September 5, 2017
Did you hear the one about Jeff Sessions?
I’d like to tell you, but I can’t. You see, it’s illegal to laugh at the attorney general, the man who on Tuesday morning announced that the 800,000 “dreamers”--immigrants brought here illegally as children--could soon be deported. If you were to find my Sessions jest funny, I would be an accessory to mirth.
This is no joke, because liberal activist Desiree Fairooz is now being put on trial a second time by the Justice Department--Jeff Sessions’s Justice Department--because she laughed at Sessions during his confirmation hearing. Specifically, she laughed at a line about Sessions “treating all Americans equally under the law” (which is, objectively, kind of funny).
Police asked her to leave the hearing because of her laugh. She protested and was charged. In May, a jury of her peers found her guilty of disorderly conduct and another offense (“first-degree chuckling with intent to titter” was Stephen Colbert’s sentence at the time). The judge threw out the verdict, objecting to prosecutors’ closing argument claiming that laughter alone was enough to convict her.
But at a hearing Friday, the Justice Department said it would continue to prosecute her. A new trial is scheduled for November. Maybe Sessions, repeatedly and publicly criticized by Trump, thinks Justice’s anti-laughing crackdown will protect whatever dignity he has left.
If Justice Department prosecutors are determined to go after those who laugh at Sessions, they are going to need an awfully big dragnet. Sessions’s mannerisms, the things he says and the way he says them dare you to laugh. It’s practically entrapment!
If the attorney general is going to continue doing laughable things and the Justice Department is going to keep making laughing at him a crime, we are going to need some new guidelines about which laughter is illegal (Fairooz claims her offense was “involuntary,” “reflexive” and at most a “chortle of disdain,” while others have described it as “two snorts” and a “giggle”) and a schedule of penalties.
