A reporter covering protests at President Donald Trump's inauguration faces 75 years behind bars — while a multimillionaire Trump supporter attending the festivities and busted for sexual abuse walked away with a $50 fine, according to reports.
Last week, a grand jury slapped Aaron Cantú, who's written for The Guardian and The Nation, with felony rioting at the Jan. 20 protests in Washington D.C. — even though a video shows him wiping tear gas from his eyes, according to The Daily Beast.
If convicted and hit with the max, he'll likely die behind bars.
Meanwhile, Trump supporter John Boswell — a barrel manufacturing executive arrested for grabbing a maid's buttocks in a room at the Mayflower Hotel he booked for the inauguration — pleaded guilty to misdemeanor sex abuse in D.C. Superior Court last month.
The Washington Post reports that Boswell, according to a police report, remarked "This is very nice stuff. I like that!" during the assault. His sentence of 10 days in prison and probation was suspended and he was reportedly ordered by a judge to contribute $50 to a victim's compensation fund.
The 70-year-old married father of three insisted to Post in an interview, "I patted her on the lower back . . . It was just a friendly gesture."
Cantú was not named specifically by prosecutors as the cause of any of the destruction, and the indictment named him only as being present while the damage happened, reports the Santa Fe Reporter, where Cantú has worked since April.
Gregg Leslie, legal defense director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told the Santa Fe Reporter:
"That's the amazing thing about the DC protests, is that they know that a handful of people threw bricks through windows and one person threw something at an officer. And they arrested over 200 people. They know that everyone they arrested was not participating in a crime."
Julie Ann Grimm, the newspaper's editor and publisher, added: "Aaron is an experienced journalist who disclosed this pending case during the hiring process. We stand behind him."
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