Rioters' $500 Fine for Burning Down a Wendy's Sparks Outrage

Conservatives are outraged after two people charged with burning down a Wendy's restaurant in Atlanta in the summer of 2020 were fined just $500 each.

Prosecutors said Chisom Kingston, Natalia Hanna White and John Wesley Wade set a fire that destroyed the Wendy's in June 2020 amid protests sparked by the fatal shooting of Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man, by a police officer during an encounter outside the restaurant.

Kingston and White accepted plea deals on Thursday, just days before they were set to go on trial, WSB-TV reported. Both pleaded guilty to charges including arson in the first degree.

They will each have to pay a $500 fine, complete 150 hours of community service and serve five years of probation, according to the local station. Wade remains in federal custody.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, took to social media to rail against their sentences, comparing it to the punishments meted out to those charged with offenses related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by supporters of former president Donald Trump.

"J6'ers are being locked up for years for walking in the Capitol and some never walked inside at all, but the guys who plead guilty to arson and burned down the Wendy's in Atl in 2020 BLM riots only have to pay a $500 fine!!!" Greene wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

"The scales of Justice have tipped so hard one way they have fallen off!!!"

Representative Mike Collins, a Republican of Georgia's 10th congressional district, wrote: "I'm sure a lot of J6 trespassers would love to pay $500 and go home. If only they had burned down a building, maybe."

Newsweek has contacted Greene and Collins for further comment via email.

The conservative Libs of TikTok account claimed there was a "2-tier justice system" for those arrested during the unrest that erupted in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd and other Black people and those charged in relation to the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"$500 fine for burning down a Wendy's for BLM, and 17 years in prison for knocking over a fence on Jan 6," Libs of TikTok posted on X.

The 17-year prison sentence mentioned in the post was handed to Joseph Biggs, a former leader of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group, and one of the longest sentences handed down in connection with the attack on the Capitol.

Biggs was convicted of charges including seditious conspiracy. He helped lead dozens of Proud Boys members in marching to the U.S. Capitol, where they joined the mob that broke through police lines and disrupted the joint session of Congress that was certifying President Joe Biden's election victory.

Colin Rugg, the co-owner of the conservative site Trending Politics, also criticized the sentence given to Kingston and White.

"For reference, this is the same Fulton County where Donald Trump was charged with 13 felony counts and facing a maximum of 76.5 years in prison," Rugg wrote on X.

However, others noted the differences in the offenses.

"I wasn't aware Wendy's was the seat of power of the United States Government," one person wrote.

Another said: "While both were acts of vandalism, the invasion of the US CAPITOL BUILDING by those seeking to harm reps and senators and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power amounts to treason. HUGE DIFFERENCE!"

Another person replied to Greene, writing: "She is such a liar. The ones being locked up for years committed serious felonies. The ones who 'walked in' are getting light sentences (minimal jail, fines, probation)."

More than 1,200 people across the U.S. have been charged with offenses related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to the Department of Justice. The charges range from low-level misdemeanors for those who only entered the Capitol to felony seditious conspiracy charges against far-right extremists.

About 708 people have been sentenced as of November 6. Some 428 were sentenced to serve time behind bars, while about 134 people received time in home detention.

Analysis by The Guardian newspaper in 2021 found the vast majority of citations and charges against Black Lives Matter protesters in the summer of 2020 were ultimately dropped, dismissed or not filed.

Officials did not file charges for almost all low-level offenses, like disobeying curfews, but most often pursued cases with strong evidence of more serious offenses like looting or assault, the newspaper reported.

According to the newspaper, some prosecutors and law enforcement observers said mass arrests were carried out as a crowd control tactic, in order to silence peaceful protesters and as a way to turn the public against demonstrators by making them seem more violent than they were.