The granddaughter of Hillary Clinton's "hero and mentor" was charged with a felony for destroying a university president's office over the Israel-Gaza war.
As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Stanford University student Zoe Edelman was one of a dozen people charged over the violent break-in last June.
Once inside, the masked suspects barricaded themselves in and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen.
Zoe Edelman is the granddaughter of Marian Wright Edelman, a liberal civil rights lawyer and founder of the Children's Defense Fund.
Hillary Clinton was a recent Yale Law School graduate when she worked for Edelman's organization in 1973. Clinton has often cited her work for the Children's Defense Fund throughout her career in politics to shore up her progressive bona fides.
Clinton has not always seen eye to eye with her "mentor." Their relationship was strained by President Bill Clinton's enactment of welfare reform, which led to public criticism from Edelman and her husband, Peter Edelman, resigning from the White House in protest.
Despite their past differences, Clinton and Edelman have patched up their relationship in recent years. Edelman's organization honored Clinton as a "voice for children" in 2013, and Clinton called Edelman a "hero and mentor" in 2020.
Zoe Edelman, a senior at Stanford, was pictured with Clinton at a 2022 gala in Washington D.C.
District Attorney Rosen said Edelman and 11 other students "broke windows and furniture, splashed fake blood, and disabled security cameras." They were charged with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass.
The suspects had a methodical plan to break into the building, hide their identities and conscript "lookouts" to avoid police detection. A search of their cell phones turned up detailed operations planning, which included an "occupation" guide justifying vandalism as a revolutionary act.
“Vandalism? Occupying a space removes the space from the capitalist landscape," the guide said. "A group may decide it is better to destroy or vandalize a space than to return it to its usual role in good condition. The role of vandalism may be different in each situation, but it should not be disowned outright.”
A student journalist who was embedded with the group but did not participate in violence was not charged.
"Dissent is American. Vandalism is criminal," said Rosen. "There is a bright line between making a point and committing a crime. These defendants crossed the line into criminality when they broke into those offices, barricaded themselves inside, and started a calculated plan of destruction."
The radicals involved in the Stanford vandalism were a mixture of undergraduate and graduate students, according to the school's newspaper.
