SHANNON BREAM (HOST): Listen, you and I were talking about how this political season is just so heated up. The guy says that he was, you know, cutting up the star to auction it off, it looked destroyed when he was done with it. So, I mean, either way -- or like vandalizing these homes in Pennsylvania, I'm assuming all of that is illegal activity.
JONNA SPILBOR: Absolutely illegal and it will land you in jail, plus I think, you know, Donald Trump's star, he was going to probably auction is off as dust or particles because that's what he was doing it to it. That's vandalism, that will get you a felony conviction if you're convicted of it. But what I see is even worse, is taking vandalism and then adding an element of hate speech to it in my opinion, elevates vandalism to a hate crime. And the word that were on the senator's house, they're disgusting and they're hateful words. And that's even worse than simple vandalism.
BREAM: Yeah, I think it was neighbors around his house, I'm not sure if it was his house as well. But if you -- so you're saying if people ad the element of referring to specific parties, specific policies, those kinds of things, it could take it to a targeted hate crime type of situation?
SPILBOR: Well let's be clear, political parties aren't protected, right? But you are protected against crimes that are motivated by a hate for someone based on race, religion, color, creed, et cetera. So when you add an element of calling somebody a Nazi, which is horrible, or I think one of the other words they used was “slaver,” these are horrible, hateful words. So you could paint a happy face on the side of somebody's house; that's vandalism. You paint those words, to me, that's a hate crime.
