from the stormtrooping-not-at-glamorous-as-promised dept

Some day we’ll look back at this and laugh. I mean, I would hope so.

The DOJ and DHS are still trying to put people in jail for protesting a church whose pastor was also an ICE officer. Ultimately, the protesters entered the church and disrupted the service. Among those entering the church were a few journalists, including (formerly of CNN) Don Lemon and his partner.

While the DOJ has (with limited success) managed to make some minor charges against protesters stick (given the invasion and disruption of a religious service), it has failed to land the biggest fish: Don Lemon and local independent journalist, Georgia Fort.

Not for a lack of trying. The DOJ has done everything it can to put these two in jail. And by “everything,” I mean ignoring two consecutive federal court rulings forbidding the arrest and charging of two journalists. On the back end, the DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has pitched in by tossing subpoenas in the general direction of everyone in hope of finding something it can use to salvage these two high-profile (and highly unconstitutional) arrests.

These subpoenas aren’t being issued for the reasons they say they’re being issued. DHS is deliberately abusing a law that allows it to self-issue subpoenas to obtain evidence of customs violations. Some journalists covering a protest in a church obviously isn’t an issue of customs law, which covers things like import/export fees and verifying the provenance of items entering the United States.

This administration doesn’t really care which law it exploits to get what it wants (or which laws it breaks for the same reason). And that’s how an investigation that’s (somehow) being led by HSI is deliberately misusing administrative subpoenas for the sole purpose of (possibly?) identifying people who participated in this church protest.

This should be satire. Instead, it’s just another day in Trump’s America:

New court filings allege that Homeland Security Investigations agents subpoenaed the outdoor retailer in March, requesting the transaction information for “all persons” in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area who had purchased a specific type of dark green beanie from the company since 2024. REI did not respond to questions about whether it had complied with the request and, if so, how many people are affected.

That is some wild shit. These are not the actions of a normal law enforcement agency. (Then again, any normal law enforcement agency would have settled for whatever disturbing the peace charges they could secure, rather than try, try, and try again to turn protected First Amendment expression into federal felony charges.) These are the actions of aberrant humans who have somehow managed to secure all the power they need to do whatever they fuck they want, so long as whatever the fuck they want coincides with Trump doing whatever the fuck he wants.

There’s no telling at this point whether or not the retailer complied with the subpoena. REI isn’t legally obligated to respond to administrative subpoenas and is fully within its rights to bring it to the attention of the courts if it feels the request is, legally speaking, absurd bullshit.

If this were just REI and a bizarre beanie hunt, it might have been just some exploratory flailing that ultimately confirmed HSI was better off doing some actual, you know, investigating. But there’s plenty of iceberg below this auspicious, beanie-capped tip:

The subpoena to REI was one of 92 sent as part of HSI’s investigation into the defendants, according to the court filings. Other recipients included social media companies, airlines, telecom providers, a car rental company, and a state employment agency. At least one subpoena sent to an unnamed airline, the filings allege, asked not only for information about a defendant’s past flights, but also requested that the airline give HSI a “lookout notification” about the defendant’s travel in the future. 

I’m going to repeat myself. All of these subpoenas were issued under the same authority — an authority that has absolutely nothing to do with the alleged crimes being (supposedly) investigated by the feds. These are all “1509” subpoenas, referencing the statute allowing for their creation. Here’s what they’re supposed to be used for:

In any investigation or inquiry conducted for the purpose of ascertaining the correctness of any entry, for determining the liability of any person for duty, fees and taxes due or duties, fees and taxes which may be due the United States, for determining liability for fines and penalties, or for insuring compliance with the laws of the United States administered by the United States Customs Service…

Obviously, an alleged “invasion” of a church during service by protesters isn’t a violation of customs laws. Neither is entering a church to cover a protest, like the two journalists Trump wants to see rung up/hung up did. And any recipient of these subpoenas should have contacted their lawyers and/or thrown the meaningless summonses into the nearest trash can.

What they shouldn’t do is what T-Mobile did when it received this bullshit demand for info:

Attorneys for Georgia Fort, a journalist and one of the defendants in the Minnesota case, wrote in a court filing that they were “stunned” when they realized that the government had obtained logs detailing six months’ of Fort’s calls and text messages from T-Mobile after the government sent a customs summons to the telecom provider. 

This government can’t win without cheating. And in these cases, it’s finding it can’t even break even without cheating. But just because it can’t get the convictions it needs to make Trump happy doesn’t mean it should be excused for its actions. This is truly dangerous stuff being performed by alleged law enforcement agencies that don’t actually care what the law says or what it actually authorizes them to do.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 4th amendment, censorship, dhs, don lemon, hsi, ice, journalism, malicious prosecution, minneapolis
Companies: rei