Barbara Wien posted flyers exposing White House adviser Stephen Miller’s address and calling for “NO NAZIS.” Drawing on Marc Caputo’s Axios story, Jessica Schwalb reports for the Washington Free Beacon (links omitted):
On Sept. 11, a day after conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was killed by a politically motivated assassin, Barbara Wien, a retired 66-year-old American University professor, posted the flyers around Miller’s Arlington neighborhood showing a photo of the Trump adviser in a red circle with a cross through it. They also included a QR code that linked to the Instagram account of Arlington Neighbors United for Humanity, an activist group that has praised Antifa and left chalk messages outside Miller’s home accusing him of “destroying democracy.”
Secret Service surveillance footage shows Wien walking by that same day and making eye contact with Miller’s wife, Katie, who was on her front porch, Axios reported. Wien made an “I’m watching you” gesture, pointing two fingers to her eyes.
Federal authorities have been frustrated in their efforts to search Wien’s phone. They want to ascertain exactly what’s heppening here and whether Wien lied when she was interviewed by the FBI. As Axios puts it, “The Justice Department’s push to investigate a progressive activist accused of doxxing top Trump adviser Stephen Miller has been stymied by two judges and a Virginia prosecutor[.]”
The story puts me in mind of the dystopian novel Invitation to a Beheading, by Vladimir Nabokov. Nabokov was an imaginative writer. Nabokov could probably have invented this detail, but might have found it too obvious for satire. Wien claims to be a harmless academic “in the field of peace studies.”
It’s not funny. Miller has joined a growing list of senior Trump-administration political appointees—at least six by the count of The Atlantic—living in Washington-area military housing, where they are shielded from potential violence.
