Trump’s Paramilitary Ruffians Are Killing Our People and Assaulting Our Rights in Minneapolis and Beyond
None of this Would Be Happening without the Roberts Court
Our screens are filled with heartbreaking images of the gang of marauders Donald Trump has inflicted on Minneapolis killing yet another American, ER nurse Alex Pretti, in cold blood. And, again, Trump’s top lieutenants rushed to defend the outrageous violence, immediately responding by smearing him and trying to murder the truth in broad daylight and with malice aforethought.
None of this would be happening if John Roberts had not invented immunity for Trump, whose violent wishes incited other loyalists to attack our Capitol on January 6, resulting in the deaths of five Capitol Police officers and the wounding of 140 others. Roberts, along with three Trump appointees and two other Republicans whose wives also compromised their impartiality, connived to rip up the rule of law for Trump, as I detail in my book, Without Precedent. Roberts himself orchestrated and wrote the reckless edict that freed Trump from facing a jury and the substantial evidence of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt assembled by federal prosecutor Jack Smith.
No wonder Trump went out of his way last March to enthusiastically thank Roberts, who paved the way for his return to power and illegitimately aggrandized him with more power than he’d ever had. For months before that foul ruling, Trump had been promising to pardon the 900+ people who were convicted of crimes against our nation on January 6. In his opinion in Trump v. United States, Roberts went even further, seeking to cement the notion that a president’s pardons are “official acts” beyond any judicial or legislative review or constraint. Almost one year ago today, after the Roberts Six helped sweep Trump back into power, he pardoned more than 1,500 of his rioters who violently tried to keep him in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election.
And now we are witnessing the results of Trump unleashing more than 3,000 heavily armed agents in Minneapolis and beyond. His swarming surrogates were loudly–and wrongly–told by Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, that they have “absolute immunity” in the aftermath of Jonathan Ross killing Renee Nicole Good by shooting her point-blank through the left temple as her car turned away from him. Trump appointee Kristi Noem perversely called the Minnesota mom—who told Ross “I’m not mad at you,” moments before he killed her—a “terrorist,” but the only ones terrorizing the residents of Minneapolis-St. Paul are those who report to Noem.
Trump’s adjutants at the heads of the Department of Justice and the FBI–Pam Bondi and Kash Patel–have actively blocked Minnesota law enforcement from investigating Good’s homicide, pushed for Good’s wife to be prosecuted, and have kept police away from vital evidence–resulting in six federal prosecutors and an FBI agent resigning. And Trump’s proxies are doing the same again. After Pretti was shot, his stormtroopers again did nothing to try to save his life; instead they counted the bullet holes. Two Trump thugs fired ten bullets to execute Pretti and then fled the scene of the crime, with their faces masked and their identities cloaked. Now Bondi is attempting to extort Minnesota’s voter rolls in exchange for ending Trump’s violent siege of the Twin Cities.
This blatant abuse of power–and the reckless assertion of absolute immunity itself–warrants impeaching Trump, Vance, Noem, Bondi, and Patel, along with imposing criminal and civil liability for the violent destruction they have unleashed and condoned in Minnesota and elsewhere. Their underlings–including Stephen Miller, Greg Bovino, and Todd Lyons–also need to be held accountable for deliberately depriving people of their rights while praising the killers. Modern history provides many precedents for how independent tribunals have held government actors accountable for violating human rights. A Minnesota Supreme Court judge, William Christianson, presided over key Nuremberg trials, which St. Paul resident, Captain Horace Hansen, helped prosecute, as the Minnesota Military & Veterans Museum in Little Falls marked in November. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is using a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to collect ICE crimes. State and federal legislative committees can also conduct investigations.
Every state must also review its criminal and tort laws to ensure they are adequate to respond to Trump’s round-up gangs and their illegal, violent actions. If not, states should enact emergency legislation akin to the Ku Klux Klan Act (42 USC 1983) to ensure that any federal agent “who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, … subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States [or their state] or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws [including the state Constitution and statutes], shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.” Justice cannot wait forever, and litigation and litigators, like Democracy Forward and the ACLU, need support to pursue it.
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Additionally, if current defamation laws are not robust enough, let’s reform them, too. Maybe the law needs to be strengthened to make it clear that murder victims and their families–as well as states, cities, towns, and state or local officials–can sue Trump and his defenders for their slander. To reduce barriers, perhaps the law should be changed to allow families and governments to be reimbursed for their legal fees and expenses, and defamation damages for the surviving families should be set exceptionally high. Why not? Every lawful tool available to secure justice should be on the table.
On behalf of the people they are elected to represent, state leaders should also consider making clear that any assertion of immunity from criminal or civil law will be considered null and void when federal agents are operating within state borders without its governor’s consent. We should let juries decide the facts, including any purported claim of self-defense, without allowing fabricated impunity to block accountability.
Why should we accept claims of federal supremacy when the federal government is being used as an illegitimate tool to punish states that did not vote for Trump and as a weapon to gain access to voter rolls? Plus, until the reckless funding of these roving bands of attackers that was pushed through by cowardly Trump-backers can be clawed back, it seems clear we need better state laws to protect our rights. Penalize uninvited agents who hide their faces. Fine them if they don’t wear nametags and turn over body-cams. Prosecute them for fleeing crime scenes. Anyone, no matter their title, who helps conceal the identities of killers should be charged as an accessory after the fact or with obstruction of justice. This crisis demands new and bold thinking.
Secret police have no place in America.
They have no right to kill Americans who peaceably assemble and dissent, who blow whistles, or who film the agents’ violent acts. They have no right to maim or blind witnesses. They have no right to kill a lawfully armed American with a holstered gun. They have no right to break down doors of people’s homes or shatter their car windows without a warrant issued by an impartial judge based on real evidence of a crime–or an actual emergency to save someone’s life. They have no right to disturb our peace.
Just as Trump does not have a right to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, despite his menacing jokes, his agents have no legitimate license to kill our First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights, which apply to citizens and immigrants alike (expressly to “people” or “persons”). The founding generation, which demanded those rights be written into binding law before voting to ratify the Constitution, had seen firsthand how liberties were arrogantly violated by the redcoats, who asserted the power of writs of assistance–general warrants that allowed them to invade people’s homes. So where are the judges on the nation’s highest court who repeatedly invoked so-called “originalism” to dismantle precedents like Roe.
It sure seems like it was just marketing by them, along with Leonard Leo’s Federalist Society. Where are those supposedly principled “conservative” lawyers, those summer soldiers, now, in these times that try our hearts and souls? We the People have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and no president—MAGA or otherwise—should have the power to trample on those rights and abuse our cities. Standing united against secret police in America should be uncontroversial, but FOX and other stenographers continue to replay Team Trump’s made-for-TV claims in spite of the facts.
No one should enjoy immunity for giving or following illegal orders that plainly violate our Bill of Rights. No president should be allowed to pardon people who break the law at his behest or immunize his co-conspirators in the deprivation of our rights.
As Rep. Jamie Raskin recently wrote, January 6 never ended. Trump’s ongoing insurrection–enabled by the Roberts Court–continues in his attacks on our laws, our neighbors, and our communities. That includes the harassment known as #KavanaughStops, taking place because the Roberts Court issued shadow docket dictates overturning temporary restraining orders. Now those #KavanaughStops have metastasized into #KavanaughKillings. The predictable and deadly consequences of the Roberts Court’s decrees inventing immunity for the insurrectionist-in-chief–and emboldening him with 20 unprecedented emergency rulings in his favor last year–must be roundly condemned.
The courageous, compassionate nonviolence of Minnesotans is a beacon of hope for what kind of world is possible when we stand together in solidarity. There is so much we are going to need to fix once we prevail, including reforming the Court itself, in order to right the wrongs and help our freedoms thrive. As America marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, let us renew our commitment to each other and to the inalienable rights our founding fathers so bravely proclaimed.
#NoKings #NoKings #NoKings Forever.
What I’m Reading:
The American Crisis, a series by Thomas Paine, who wrote Common Sense.
Judge Michael Luttig’s illuminating analysis of the Declaration of Independence and how Trump’s actions, as of July 4th of last year, aligned with King George.
Please watch my interview with Judge Luttig on this constitutional crisis.
And, the Bill of Rights of our Constitution.
That includes the Fifth Amendment, which provides that “no person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law….”
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Wow, you really managed to thoroughly cover a lot of ground again, Lisa. Thank you. And, your insight that connects everything we're watching to the completely corrupt MAGA 6 of the Roberts court is such welcome clarification.
I couldn't agree more, we have our work cut out for us.
Excellent verbal weaving of the strands forming the cloth of our country.
And for clearly identifying threads which require our attention. Thank you, Lisa.