SouthernWorldwide.com – An activist who protested outside the home of White House adviser Stephen Miller and distributed flyers containing his Virginia address will not face state criminal charges. This decision comes after a local prosecutor determined there was no probable cause for such charges.
In a comprehensive 166-page court filing, Arlington and Falls Church Commonwealth Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti stated that she had reviewed the evidence against Barbara Wien. She found that “nothing in the proceeds of the search warrant supports criminal prosecution” for violations of a state law. This law criminalizes the use of someone’s identity or address as a means to coerce, intimidate, or harass, with violations constituting a misdemeanor.
“It would neither accomplish the ends of justice nor discharge the Commonwealth’s ethical obligations of fair prosecution to initiate any charges,” Dehghani-Tafti wrote. She further elaborated that charging Wien for protesting the Trump administration’s policies would likely infringe upon her constitutionally protected free speech rights.
Wien, a former college professor and a long-standing political activist in Arlington, Virginia, had been under a state investigation since the previous year. This investigation began after she distributed flyers in August and September of last year. These flyers depicted Miller on a “Wanted” poster, accusing him of “crimes against humanity.”
The flyers prominently featured his Arlington address. They also included a QR code that encouraged people to demand a congressional investigation into his actions.
A second flyer, distributed within his neighborhood, identified Miller as “the alt-right extremist behind Trump’s most abhorrent policies, Project 2025 and your new neighbor in Arlington, Va.”
In her decision not to pursue charges, Dehghani-Tafti highlighted that the “wanted” flyer did not call for any specific action at or near Miller’s residence. It also did not instruct the viewer to take any action against Mr. Miller.
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“The sole call to action was to a traditionally and clearly protected political activity, encouraging residents to petition Congress to investigate Mr. Miller’s actions based on the wanted flyer’s allegations,” the prosecutor stated in her filing.
