Laurence Tribe, the Constitutional law prof at Harvard, has concerns about Bernie.

[Jarqui]

238. No. I heartily disagree. That is not factually correct or fair. It's wrong and misleading.

First of all, in a post I made here some years ago, one of the top Clinton Foundation donors gave Politifact millions before the 2016 election - became their top donor handily. I posted the links to back that up on this site around the time when it went down. Politifact had gone to town on Hillary's statements during 2008. They were not the same in 2016. Like the DNC, in my opinion, they suffered some "influences" from one campaign. This is but one example.

Now the facts:

Sanders had claimed he voted for the 1994 Crime bill because of the assault weapons ban and the Violence for Women's act that were contained in it. That is all accurate for the final vote on the bill. He was outspoken on all these issues.

Politifact (Clinton Foundation Funder?) claim:

"But here’s the bottom line. Sanders voted for at least one version of the bill that didn’t include the assault weapons ban -- undercutting his core claim.
...
In October 1993, Brooks tried again and introduced the original Violent Crime and Control Law Enforcement Act of 1994. This version didn’t include an assault weapons ban nor protections for women.

It passed in the House by a voice vote on Nov. 3, 1993, so it’s unclear whether Sanders voted in favor. We found no evidence Sanders opposed the bill, and in three roll call votes, Sanders, along with most Democrats, said "aye" to amendments that didn’t include a ban."

Here's the bill Politifact link
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-103hr3355ih/pdf/BILLS-103hr3355ih.pdf
to prove that it did not contain "an assault weapons ban nor protections for women".

In order for Politifact to know that, they must have read the 17 page bill, right? All they had to do was read the purpose of the bill at the top to know what it was about:

"To amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets
Act of 1968 to allow grants to increase police presence,
to expand and improve cooperative efforts between law
enforcement agencies and members of the community
to address crime and disorder problems, and otherwise
to enhance public safety"

So Politifact had to have known that there was nothing whatsoever in the bill that would cause 'mass incarceration' beyond helping law enforcement. Aside from no assault weapons ban or protections of women, there was no "three strikes", no “mandatory minimums” and no “truth in sentencing” clauses that would concern Bernie or anyone else for the mass incarceration that the 1994 Crime bill was eventually criticized for. All Politifact had to do was read the bill they linked ... which I expect they did with the Clinton Foundation Funder maybe clouding their eye glasses.

So it is a bullshit claim by Politifact. There was no incarceration trade off to be made because like assault weapons and Violence Against women act, there was nothing that would threaten increased incarceration in the bill when Bernie cast that vote.

As such, I rate this Politifact claim:

or maybe more objectively


The Politifact political fairy tale spin continues ...

"Second, Brooks amended the bill again, this time stripping the legislation of the assault weapons ban but keeping the violence against women provisions.

Sanders voted for the bill without the gun ban."

The House never put the assault weapons ban in - the Senate did in Nov 1993. Brooks stripped the Senate's assault weapons ban out when the House got the bill back. Here's the resulting bill that passed the House:

Here's "In the House of Representatives, U. S.,
April 21, 1994.
Resolved, That the House agree to the amendment of
the Senate to the bill (H.R. 3355) entitled ‘‘An Act to amend
the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 ..."
https://www.congress.gov/103/bills/hr3355/BILLS-103hr3355eah.pdf

I agree there is no assault weapons ban. It does, however, establish a commission to "examine the extent to which assault weapons and high power firearms have contributed to violence and murder in the United States", "bans firearms and other weapons in a 100 yard radius of school property ..." and other laws discouraging weapons and covering "weapons of mass destruction". It does have "TITLE XVI—VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN".

But most importantly, it doesn't have the three strikes law. It has a significant portion of truth in sentencing provision (that only four states took advantage of). It had mandatory minimum sentences for severe crimes but not mandatory minimum sentences for controlled substances that the final bill slipped in - and caused so much outcry.

So again, the incarceration issue in the Crime bill wasn't a big issue at that time when Sanders voted it back to the Senate. No big "trade off" was required.

I rate Politifact's assessment of this as:

or


Politifact wraps up with

"Sanders says he voted for the 1994 crime bill because "there is a ban on assault weapons in that bill."

There were many votes surrounding the crime bill. The trouble with Sanders’ claim is that his contention that he voted for the crime bill because of the assault weapons ban is at odds with votes for the bill that include no such ban."

The point of all this discussion was Sanders had been outspoken on incarceration, etc:

and Violence against Women

When he was asked why he voted for the 1994 crime bill he cited the Violence Against Women portion of the 1994 Crime bill and the assault weapons ban. There were many other things in that bill that appealed to Sanders like
- education and job training for those incarcerated
- a bunch of things for helping convicted junveniles
- more police and help for them.
- Gun crime legislation
- Drug rehab for prisoners
- Community development and funding
- Discrimination, Women, victim/abused & Civil rights.
- Stalker and Demostic violence.
- crime data tracking,
etc. etc

There were a whole bunch of bills on this going back years. Biden's Violence for Women Act was a 1990 bill. There were a bunch of others that effectively got their ideas incorporated.
There were all kinds of amendments as it grew from a little bill to 507 pages and then cut down to 356 pages.

To cherry pick one issue here (the bad part of the crime bill - incarceration) is bullshit.

In fact a more recent article argues against the very thing Sanders is accused of - that the 1994 Crime bill increased incarceration.
The Clinton-backed 1994 crime law had many flaws. But it didn't create mass incarceration
https://www.vox.com/2016/2/11/10961362/clinton-1994-crime-law

For the House, the three strikes and manadatory sentences for drugs came that were substantial in increasing incarceration came at the end with the assault weapons ban.

So Sanders is right. Politifact is just plain unfair and wrong.