PORTLAND, Maine (AP) A white man accused of violating a federal hate crimes law when he and a nephew attacked two black men in Maine invoked former Republican Gov. Paul LePage in a phone call in which he predicted he’d never be convicted in Maine.
Maurice Diggins told his wife on the call that Maine people “want to keep the streets safe” and paraphrased LePage’s 2016 remarks about out-of-state drug traffickers “impregnating our women and selling our kids drugs.”
Diggins, who’s white, is being tried before an all-white jury in the first case in Maine to be under a 2009 federal hate crimes law.
