Few of us get to have the attorney general put the full force of the federal law enforcement machine behind us personally, crimes usually being more generic and prosecuted (or not) based upon the conduct more than the marque. But our new Attorney General, Pam Barbie Bondi has emphatically stated that crimes against Elon Musk are special.

“I’ve made it clear: If you take part in the wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, we will find you, arrest you, and put you behind bars,” Bondi said.

Crimes against Chevy? Whatevs.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk blasted the attacks as “terrorism” and called them “unequivocally a hate crime” in X posts on Monday.

The phrase “hate crime” has become a loaded mantra of the left over the past few years, the older brother of “hate speech” which, by inclusion of the word “hate,” elevates the offense from a banal crime to a moral crime, as if a murder for money leaves the victim any less dead than a murder for hate. But I digest.

Are the attacks on Tesla’s “unequivocally” hate crimes? In New York, vandals painted and scratched Swastikas on Teslas. These are deplorable crimes, both in themselves as crimes and the inexplicable idiocy of vandalizing cars of people who did nothing, absolutely nothing, to “deserve” the damage inflicted upon their vehicle by the unduly passionate.

Two people approached a Tesla parked on the Lower East Side of Manhattan one night last month and spray-painted a bright red swastika on it. A few weeks later, another pair walked up to a Tesla parked in Brooklyn and carved a swastika on its door, along with the word “Nazis.”

The irony is that the sort of people who bought Teslas, before Musk became Trump’s chainsaw, were likely very liberal and deeply concerned about climate change, purchasing electric vehicles as an expression of their position on fossil fuels. In other words, these were the last people these vandals should be harming, being people who share their feelings toward Trump, Musk and progressive values. When the bought their Teslas, it was a statement of unity with the cause rather than an endorsement of Musk’s wanton destruction of the federal government infrastructure.

But now Musk is hated, and so now Teslas are the targets of their mindless hatred. But does that make it a “hate crime”?

Many people would find it hard to imagine a more clear-cut example of a hate crime than vandalizing someone else’s property with a swastika, which has for almost a century been a terrifying and widely recognized symbol used to threaten Jews and other minorities.

But given the rash of protests targeting the electric car company that have taken place nationwide, it appears clear that the vandals in New York City were using the swastikas to attack Elon Musk, the Tesla founder and a top adviser to President Trump — not to broadcast their own support of Nazism.

Even if one accepts the premise that it’s a hate crime to commit crimes out of hatred of blacks or Jews or trans or gays for their status, these people hate Elon Musk. They hate Donald Trump. Neither are members of groups targeted for their characteristics. They’re just personally hated for what they do. Is there anything wrong with that?

What raises the question is the use of Swastikas and the word Nazis to characterize Musk, as these are recognized as symbols of hate. But what if the vandals used these symbols because they believe they correctly apply to Musk. They see him as a Nazi. They believe he gave the Nazi salute. They believe he is complicit in Trump’s attacks on DEI, which they believe to be nothing more than aid and concern for marginalized groups that have suffered historically and deserve a leg up in compensation for the discrimination that kept them down.

Is it a crime to hate Musk? Unequivocally no. Is it a crime to believe Musk is a Nazi? Nope again. Is it a crime, then, to vandalize Teslas with Swastikas? You bet it is, but the crime is the vandalization, whether done with a Swastika or any other image.

The question boils down to this: Is it a hate crime to use a swastika to denounce someone you think is a Nazi, instead of using it to express your own support for Nazis? And is it a hate crime if the perpetrator knows nothing about the person who owns the car, and is instead motivated by animosity toward an automaker and its owner?

“Not every swastika is indicative of a hate crime,” said Richard A. Wilson, a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law. “It depends on the context, the intended message and intended target.”

Had Musk been Jewish, would that change the nature of the crime against other people’s Teslas? Even if he were Jewish, would that change the fact that the crime was committed because of what Musk is doing rather than his religion or ethnicity?

Surely, it would not be a hate crime to call Hitler a Nazi, because he was, if nothing else, a Nazi. And if one came across Hitler’s Mercedes Benz 770 parked outside a hipster coffee shop in Brooklyn, would it be a hate crime to paint a Swastika on it because, once again, he is a Nazi?

If law enforcement cannot establish that the vandalism was motivated by animosity toward someone’s race or religion, for example, then the act “might be political speech — still a crime of damaging personal property, just not a hate crime,” he said.

And, indeed, it is a crime, and a crime that should be investigated and its perpetrators prosecuted. That it involved the use of a Swastika contributed nothing to the crime, and would similarly have added nothing had the crime been committed because of animosity toward Musk’s religion rather than animosity toward Musk’s actions. If Trump’s personal lawyer, Bondi, needs a reason to elevate these acts of vandalism over others, perhaps the fact that it was a monumentally stupid crime, since the victim wasn’t Musk but wholly unrelated individuals, would be a better metric. But then, if stupid was a crime, what would she do about Hegseth?