Donald Trump signs animal cruelty bill targeting ‘heinous and sadistic’ animal ‘crush’ videos

Donald Trump signed the first animal cruelty bill of his presidency on Monday, outlawing narrow types of egregious violence usually committed for the purpose of videotaping them.

The Senate unanimously passed the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act this month after a similar House vote in late October. It applies to non-human mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, building on a 2010 law that criminalized the distributon of so-called ‘crush’ videos—footage meant to satisfy an unusual sexual fetish—by also outlawing the production of the films. 

Producing a crush video typically consists of filming a small animal being killed by stomping on it. But the new law expands the definition to include animals that are ‘purposely crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled, or otherwise subjected to serious bodily injury.’

President Trump said the bill would stop people from sharing footage of animal cruelty. ‘It is important that we combat these heinous and sadistic acts of cruelty,’ he said.

The bill signing came on thesame day the president gave a military dog named Conan a medal

Animal welfare advocate Lara Trump told DailyMail.com on Monday that she is proud her father-in-law put his Sharpie signature on the legislation.   

‘I could not be more excited for President Trump to take this historic step today, publicly signing into law a bill tackling the nefarious and unacceptable world of animal cruelty,’ she said in a statement. 

‘Our companion pets are family members, and our working dogs are our heroes, and any movement to signal and enforce a positive environment for these great animals is a step in the right direction,’ Ms. Trump said.

The new law carves out a broad variety of activity for exemptions, including slaughtering livestock, hunting, trapping, fishing, and medical or scientific research. 

‘[C]ustomary and normal veterinary, agricultural husbandry, or other animal management practice[s]’ are also nestled in a loophole, along with predator control and pest control. 

Anything ‘necessary to protect the life or property of a person’ or done as part of euthanizing an animal is also exempt.

Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and a longtime animal welfare advocate, said ‘[o]ur companion pets are family members, and our working dogs are our heroes’

Lara is a seniot Trump 2020 campaign adviser and the wife of the president’s second-eldest son Eric

The president asked rhetorically on Monday ‘why hasn’t this happened a long time ago?’ 

‘Because Trump wasn’t president,’ he said.

The new law has a maximum penalty of fines and seven years in prison.

Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida, one of its cosponsors, said Monday that ‘[t]he torture of innocent animals is abhorrent and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Signing this bill into law is a significant milestone for pet owners and animal lovers across the country.’ 

Federal prosecutors have brought cases against producers of ‘crush’ videos in the nine years since President Barack Obama signed the original bill into law.  

One woman who filmed herself torturing and maiming small animals for viewers’ sexual gratification pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2015.

In the films, a scantily clad Ashley Nicole Richards, then 24, could be seen stabbing helpless animals including a puppy, a kitten and a chicken. 

She would sometimes chop off their limbs and urinate on them while making sexual comments to the camera. 

Ashley Nicole Richards from Houston admitted to four counts of creating animal crush videos and one film distribution charge in one of the first cases of its kind in the United States, just a few years ago

The Houston Chronicle reported at the time that one video seen by authorities featured Richards puncturing a cat’s eye with a shoe heel. 

Richards and Brent Justice, 54, were the first two people to be charged under the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act.  

Richards was already in state custody in Texas, serving a 10-year animal cruelty sentence.

Federal Judge Sim Lake had dismissed five counts of animal cruelty video creation and distribution against Richards and Justice, citing the films as protected free speech under the First Amendment. 

But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the charges, noting that the First Amendment allows limited restrictions on some speech, including obscenity, and that the federal law was constitutional because of the ‘secondary effects’ of the videos.