“Are all Americans and their beliefs equally protected by law?”

It’s a question that was raised by the County Prosecutors Association of NJ in a released statement denouncing what the collective group, comprised of county prosecutors across the state, deemed a terrorist attack on the nation’s capitol in Washington D.C. on Wednesday.

The organization’s leadership, of which Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni is first vice president, in its Thursday statement, called the event “an unprecedented and malicious attack on a pillar of our nation’s democracy” referring to the storming of the capitol and interruption of the slated certification of electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden in “a free and fair election.” The action, the release said, was “sickening” and “not patriotism but rather terrorism.”

The group’s statement went on to call attention to the “response” to the Black Lives Matter protest in Washington this past summer and a lack of adequate preparation/response to this highly anticipated, “well publicized event” to control the actions by what they called a “mob of rioters” that, given the divisive climate, was easy to predict would turn violent.

The prosecutors reaffirmed that it is their sworn duty to ensure “equal treatment under the law” and “call out when it is not the case.” The actions by anyone who supported it, they said, would “not be tolerated.”

The statement in its entirety …

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