Protect Democracy

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THIS WILL BE MAIN

OOPS SEE ORG

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AN 7 26

Trump DHS is using a Civil War-era statute to arrest protestors for conspiracy

Protesters are being arrested by President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security, a new report from National Public Radio detailed.

Treasure Thoreson, a Minneapolis special education teacher, along with 14 others, has been charged with "conspiracy to impede federal agents" because they were using "blockades" outside of the Whipple Federal Building, where ICE is headquartered.

"The charges against Thoreson are part of an escalating trend," the report said, after reviewing court records from the last five years. The analysis compared how the federal government is using one specific charge against protesters: "conspiracy to impede or injure an officer, which can carry a sentence of up to six years in federal prison," the report said.

NPR claimed that the statute was established during the Civil War and it isn't used often. Since Trump took over, however, more than three dozen people in fewer than 10 cases have been prosecuted using the law. All of them are for protesters of federal immigration enforcement. There have also been nearly 50 people indicted on conspiracy charges using different statutes.

But it was also a law used after the Jan. 6 attackers, particularly against the militia members. All of them were pardoned.

NPR noted that the sudden increase in conspiracy charges is sounding some alarms for legal experts who think it's being stretched to fit the administration's targeting of political activists.

"These cases are part of a broader trend that's worth watching," Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told NPR.

He explained that the cases all appear to be different and the administration is getting around the First Amendment by alleging destruction of property or violence, like what was seen on Jan. 6.

"The government can legitimately prosecute people for that. But some defendants aren't accused of personally engaging in that conduct," Terr says. "The concern there is that the government may be casting too wide a net. It may be lumping in innocent people or people who committed minor misdemeanors, based on their political beliefs."

Civil disobedience and non-violent protests can still break some laws, but the charges are typically minor. Conspiracy is another matter.

"For a conspiracy to occur, Terr says there has to be an agreement among people to commit a crime and, according to the statute involving impeding or injuring an officer, that crime has to prevent the officer from doing their duties through force, intimidation or threat," the report explained.

Terr said that someone showing up to a protest and deciding in the moment to block an ICE van should not be enough to constitute a criminal conspiracy.

NPR said that many of the cases have been dismissed, but there have been some successes. About 30 people outside of Spokane, Wash. were arrested after they linked arms to block the transport of two people detained by ICE. The following day, an internal email seen by Reuters from the Justice Department demanded that U.S. attorneys prioritize charges against protesters who "destroyed property or assaulted law enforcement."

The memo from former Attorney General Pam Bondi said that she wanted the protesters charged "with the highest provable offense available under the law."

Washington and Minnesota are just a few of the examples. Other protesters have been arrested in Chicago and Texas.

Katie Schwartzmann, legal counsel with the organization Protect Democracy told NPR, "It's important to see these indictments and the use of this law for what it is, which is an attempt to scare Americans. But also, Americans should not be afraid to organize peaceful resistance in this moment. Those acts of ordinary people organizing and working together have been the most important force for justice in the history of our country."

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an 10 24

Republican election officials are currently being sued in multiple states for purging eligible voters just before Americans go to the polls in November. Now, one watchdog group fighting back argues the purges are part of a larger GOP strategy.

According to the Independent, voters in both Alabama and Tennessee are suing their respective secretaries of state after finding out they had been removed from voter rolls for being "non-citizens." One of the plaintiffs, 49 year-old Alabama resident James Cozzad, is a registered Republican who voted in the 2016 and 2020 elections without incident. In a lawsuit filed in federal court, Cozzad said he had been "racking my brain to try to figure out how I ended up on the list of purged voters, but I have no clue."

"It feels like they are trying to make me think I’ve broken the law — just for trying to exercise my right to vote. While I hope it was just a mistake, I think if they were just trying to verify something, they would have done so long before the election," he continued. "Now I can understand why some people feel as though their vote isn’t worth casting."

The Independent further reported that thousands more voters have been purged from the rolls in states with Republican election chiefs — including Virginia, where the Department of Justice alleges Republican Secretary of the Commonwealth Kelly Gee has also removed thousands of voters. Even though there is no evidence that non-citizens have tried to vote in the Old Dominion State, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin bragged about kicking approximately 6,000 voters from the rolls for allegedly being illegal immigrants.

These voter purges are notably taking place during the so-called "quiet period," in which states are barred from making drastic changes to their election systems and voter rolls within 90 days of an election. Watchdog group Protect Democracy attorney Anna Dorman is arguing that Republican secretaries of state — along with GOP groups filing frivolous lawsuits in the courts — are acting in "bad faith" and that their arguments are "not strong on the merits."

"Their sole purpose is to use the legitimacy of the court system to launder conspiracy theories and make them feel more legitimate, so that if the election results don’t go the way these people want in November, they have some additional conspiracies to put forward to try to undermine peaceful transfer of power," Dorman told the Independent.

The outlet reported that GOP-aligned groups have filed nearly 100 election-related lawsuits in 2024 alone, which are largely what Protect Democracy calls "zombie lawsuits." The group uses that term to describe litigation that will almost certainly get thrown out at first glance due to there being no factual basis to plaintiffs' claims of fraudulent activity.

“They’re part of a messaging strategy, not a legal strategy,” a Protect Democracy report read. “Regardless of whether this legal strategy will get anywhere, in any courtroom, it telegraphs a clear intent to subvert the election if Donald Trump loses.”

Earlier this year, both former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago to announce an initiative aimed at curbing non-citizen voting. Johnson unsuccessfully tried to include legislation that would require voters show proof of citizenship (like a birth certificate or a U.S. passport) upon registering to vote in the latest must-pass government funding bill. The Brennan Center for Justice estimated there are several million U.S. citizens who would not be able to meet that burden of proof due to difficulty locating or obtaining citizenship documents, meaning they would be disenfranchised.

Click here to read the Independent's report in its entirety.

READ MORE:['They're just coming after us': Project 2025 org is now harassing voter registration groups

THE FIVE STEPS TO VICTORY

In Podhorzer’s presentations, winning the vote was only the first step to winning the election. After that came winning the count, winning the certification, winning the Electoral College and winning the transition–steps that are normally formalities but that he knew Trump would see as opportunities for disruption. Nowhere would that be more evident than in Michigan, where Trump’s pressure on local Republicans came perilously close to working–and where liberal and conservative pro-democracy forces joined to counter it.

It was around 10 p.m. on election night in Detroit when a flurry of texts lit up the phone of Art Reyes III. A busload of Republican election observers had arrived at the TCF Center, where votes were being tallied. They were crowding the vote-counting tables, refusing to wear masks, heckling the mostly Black workers. Reyes, a Flint native who leads We the People Michigan, was expecting this. For months, conservative groups had been sowing suspicion about urban vote fraud. “The language was, ‘They’re going to steal the election; there will be fraud in Detroit,’ long before any vote was cast,” Reyes says.

Trump supporters seek to disrupt the vote count at Detroit’s TCF Center on Nov. 4Elaine Cromie—Getty Images

He made his way to the arena and sent word to his network. Within 45 minutes, dozens of reinforcements had arrived. As they entered the arena to provide a counterweight to the GOP observers inside, Reyes took down their cell-phone numbers and added them to a massive text chain. Racial-justice activists from Detroit Will Breathe worked alongside suburban women from Fems for Dems and local elected officials. Reyes left at 3 a.m., handing the text chain over to a disability activist.

As they mapped out the steps in the election-certification process, activists settled on a strategy of foregrounding the people’s right to decide, demanding their voices be heard and calling attention to the racial implications of disenfranchising Black Detroiters. They flooded the Wayne County canvassing board’s Nov. 17 certification meeting with on-message testimony; despite a Trump tweet, the Republican board members certified Detroit’s votes.

Election boards were one pressure point; another was GOP-controlled legislatures, who Trump believed could declare the election void and appoint their own electors. And so the President invited the GOP leaders of the Michigan legislature, House Speaker Lee Chatfield and Senate majority leader Mike Shirkey, to Washington on Nov. 20.

It was a perilous moment. If Chatfield and Shirkey agreed to do Trump’s bidding, Republicans in other states might be similarly bullied. “I was concerned things were going to get weird,” says Jeff Timmer, a former Michigan GOP executive director turned anti-Trump activist. Norm Eisen describes it as “the scariest moment” of the entire election.

The democracy defenders launched a full-court press. Protect Democracy’s local contacts researched the lawmakers’ personal and political motives. Issue One ran television ads in Lansing. The Chamber’s Bradley kept close tabs on the process. Wamp, the former Republican Congressman, called his former colleague Mike Rogers, who wrote an op-ed for the Detroit newspapers urging officials to honor the will of the voters. Three former Michigan governors–Republicans John Engler and Rick Snyder and Democrat Jennifer Granholm–jointly called for Michigan’s electoral votes to be cast free of pressure from the White House. Engler, a former head of the Business Roundtable, made phone calls to influential donors and fellow GOP elder statesmen who could press the lawmakers privately.

The pro-democracy forces were up against a Trumpified Michigan GOP controlled by allies of Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chair, and Betsy DeVos, the former Education Secretary and a member of a billionaire family of GOP donors. On a call with his team on Nov. 18, Bassin vented that his side’s pressure was no match for what Trump could offer. “Of course he’s going to try to offer them something,” Bassin recalls thinking. “Head of the Space Force! Ambassador to wherever! We can’t compete with that by offering carrots. We need a stick.”

If Trump were to offer something in exchange for a personal favor, that would likely constitute bribery, Bassin reasoned. He phoned Richard Primus, a law professor at the University of Michigan, to see if Primus agreed and would make the argument publicly. Primus said he thought the meeting itself was inappropriate, and got to work on an op-ed for Politico warning that the state attorney general–a Democrat–would have no choice but to investigate. When the piece posted on Nov. 19, the attorney general’s communications director tweeted it. Protect Democracy soon got word that the lawmakers planned to bring lawyers to the meeting with Trump the next day.

Reyes’ activists scanned flight schedules and flocked to the airports on both ends of Shirkey’s journey to D.C., to underscore that the lawmakers were being scrutinized. After the meeting, the pair announced they’d pressed the President to deliver COVID relief for their constituents and informed him they saw no role in the election process. Then they went for a drink at the Trump hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. A street artist projected their images onto the outside of the building along with the words THE WORLD IS WATCHING.

That left one last step: the state canvassing board, made up of two Democrats and two Republicans. One Republican, a Trumper employed by the DeVos family’s political nonprofit, was not expected to vote for certification. The other Republican on the board was a little-known lawyer named Aaron Van Langevelde. He sent no signals about what he planned to do, leaving everyone on edge.

When the meeting began, Reyes’s activists flooded the livestream and filled Twitter with their hashtag, #alleyesonmi. A board accustomed to attendance in the single digits suddenly faced an audience of thousands. In hours of testimony, the activists emphasized their message of respecting voters’ wishes and affirming democracy rather than scolding the officials. Van Langevelde quickly signaled he would follow precedent. The vote was 3-0 to certify; the other Republican abstained.

After that, the dominoes fell. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and the rest of the states certified their electors. Republican officials in Arizona and Georgia stood up to Trump’s bullying. And the Electoral College voted on schedule on Dec. 14.

HOW CLOSE WE CAME

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ref an 7 24

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in a 93-page opinion has dismissed the Espionage Act/classified documents case against ex-president Donald Trump, claiming Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment by Attorney General Merrick Garland “violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.” Legal experts, calling her ruling “wrong,” say U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is to blame.

Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury on 37 felony charges, 31 of them under the Espionage Act, in the case related to his alleged unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return hundreds of documents, many classified, some top secret, and some so secret they include the nation’s nuclear secrets.

“There’s no case any more, it’s been dismissed,” observed former U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg, a former Counselor to the U.S. Attorney General, on MSNBC. He said he is “confident” Judge Cannon’s ruling would be appealed.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported the bombshell news:

IFrame Content

Other legal experts agree.

“This ruling (which is wrong six ways from Sunday) can (and will) be immediately appealed to the Eleventh Circuit,” wrote professor of law Steve Vladeck. “To me, the only question is whether the Special Counsel also asks for the case to be reassigned on remand…”

Former federal civil rights prosecutor Dr. Kristy Parker, Counsel at Protect Democracy, said: “Hard to characterize how wrong this is — at least in a world where law matters. We may not be in that world any longer.”

Last month in oral arguments the argument Smith’s appointment was unlawful was made to Cannon, MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin noted Monday morning, saying that the judge appeared at the time to dismiss that claim.

“People tried this against Special Counsel Robert Muller,” MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian stressed, “and were unsuccessful and it’s really important to point out and so viewers understand there’s nothing in this opinion that speaks to the merits of this case, to the classified documents to the allegations of obstruction of justice. This is an entirely procedural issue. It’s a constitutional question. It’s whether whether the law establishing the Special Counsel violates the appointments clause, and she also actually made a ruling on a separate argument about the appropriations clause. And and she, and she’s decided that the way Congress is funding the way the Special Counsel is funded, is not appropriate either.”

Constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis described the dismissal as “Insanity.”

Noting today is also the start of the 2024 Republican National Convention, founder and Executive Director of Protect Democracy, Ian Bassin, a former Associate White House Counsel, blasted the Trump-appointed judge:

“Cannon likely thought releasing her latest gift to Trump at the opening of the RNC would help him, but changing today’s headlines to a pic reminding that Trump stole our nation’s most sensitive nat’l security docs and hid them in his bathroom may not be the gift she thinks it is.”

Cannon likely thought releasing her latest gift to Trump at the opening of the RNC would help him, but changing today’s headlines to a pic reminding that Trump stole our nation’s most sensitive nat’l security docs and hid them in his bathroom may not be the gift she thinks it is. pic.twitter.com/9aUEg3yGLh

— Ian Bassin 🇺🇸 (@ianbassin) July 15, 2024

MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney called Cannon’s decision, “Absolutely incredible,” while concurring the ruling will be appealed.

“That’s it,” she added. “Unless the 11th Circuit & ultimately SCOTUS disagree, Trump goes free for walking out of the White House with top secret documents. At best, this is seriously delayed. Disgusted.”

Some legal experts, including Vance, point to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ separate concurrence in the Trump immunity case as giving Judge Cannon the roadmap to come to this decision.

“This was the argument advanced by Justice Thomas in his concurrence in Trump v. US, which no other Justice signed into at the time,” Vance noted.

Professor of law Leah Litman observed, “Justice Thomas’s ‘Cannon-currence’ worked.”

Parenthetically, she explained, “In the Trump immunity case, Justice Thomas wrote separately to suggest the special counsel was unlawfully appointed; the reasoning laid out the roadmap for this (wrong) result/decision.”

“Justice Thomas strikes again,” wrote professor of law Melisa Murray. “Not only did a majority of the Court give presidents almost unfettered license in the immunity case, Justice Thomas concurred separately to question the constitutionality of the special counsel. He laid the table and Judge Cannon took a seat.”

“Surprising absolutely no one,” observed legal journalist Cristian Farias. “This is a Federalist Society pipe dream, one they could never achieve during the Mueller years. And precisely what Clarence Thomas, all alone, suggested should happen in the Trump immunity case.”

But, he added, “This is not the end.”

Read the social media posts above or at this link.

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