Trump DOJ Can’t Score ICE Protest Convictions Because Federal Officers Keep Lying

Failures

from the fake-it-til-you-break-it dept

This remains one of the most unintentionally funny things the Trump administration has ever done. Of course, this regime isn’t known for its sense of humor, so anything generating a laugh exists despite the regime, rather than because of it.

But laugh we will! Trump is throwing billions at ICE, hoping a whole bunch of money will finally allow it to arrest 3,000 migrants per day and deport over 1,000,000 Mexican-looking people a year. On top of that, Trump has sent thousands of military troops (a subject of ongoing litigation) to the Los Angeles area, apparently hoping to quell the current dissent being offered up by a state Trump thinks is a Communist paradise in need of liberation.

He just keeps losing, even though most of his recent losses won’t actually bear his name. His federal agencies can’t meet arrest quotas and definitely can’t justify the mobilization of the military — not when there’s nothing happening in Los Angeles that can’t be handled by local law enforcement.

ICE continues to act like a rogue agency. And the DHS encourages this behavior by constantly touting the massive increase in assaults on ICE officers, albeit only by highlighting percentages, rather than the actual number of assaults, which shows a 700% increase in assault on ICE officers is actually only about 70 more total “assaults” compared to the same six months last year.

“Assault” doesn’t mean the same thing to cops as it means to citizens, and it means even less to ICE and its massive (non-literal) army of supporting federal law enforcement officers.

But it’s not fooling federal grand juries, which have, so far, refused to give the administration everything it wants when it presents assault cases to jury members. The DOJ has racked up a string of losses while targeting ICE protesters in Los Angeles, which is even more embarrassing than DOJ prosecutors simply being unable to ring up ham sandwiches/protesters on federal charges.

It’s even worse than simply failing to convince a grand jury to do the thing grand juries do best: hand out indictments following a one-sided presentation. Law enforcement officers try to apply the “trial tax” during criminal trials by reminding people accused of crimes (people most judges and juries believe are guilty, despite the constitutionally-backed standard of “innocent until proven guilty”) that it’s their word (accused criminals) again the cop’s (an unimpeachable force of good).

Well, in grand jury presentations, it’s the government’s word against no one’s. This is a non-adversarial process that allows the government to make unchallenged accusations and present unchallenged evidence. But even with the scale tipped heavily in the government’s favor, the DOJ still losing most of the cases it bringing to grand juries in California.

Thirty-eight cases have been brought against ICE protesters and other people ICE officers have encountered. So far, the DOJ has only secured seven federal indictments. In some cases, felony charges have been reduced to misdemeanors, taking these cases out of the DOJ’s hands. In other cases, grand jury members have refused to buy the DOJ’s overwrought bullshit, returning “no bill” declarations that have forced federal prosecutors to drop cases.

The most ironic aspect of the DOJ’s ham sandwich failures is this: the people undercutting their cases are people directly employed by federal law enforcement agencies. All cops lie. But federal cops are costing DOJ lawyers their cases by offering up testimonial bullshit so literally incredible that even grand jury members aren’t willing to convert these assertions into criminal charges. Government lawyers insisted an unlawful amount of “resistance” or “assaults” had occurred during Los Angeles anti-ICE protests. The actual testimony says otherwise:

The DHS’s own subsequent reports, however, reveal multiple factual discrepancies in the narrative initially presented by officers and prosecutors. While the complaint suggested Cerna-Camacho, Ramos Brito and Mojica attacked agents in protest of the sisters’ arrest, records show the women were arrested in a separate incident – which occurred after the men were detained.

Border patrol agent Eduardo Mejorado, a key witness considered a victim of the assaults, appeared to initially give inaccurate testimony about the order of events. He “clarified” the timeline when questioned, a DHS special agent wrote in a report three days after charges were filed. A supervisor on the scene also documented the correct chronology in a later report and “apologized” for errors, saying, “Due to the chaos of the events that day, some events may have been miscommunicated.”

Yep, when an officer “clarifies” that errors were made and some “miscommunication” may have occurred, you can safely assume officers lied because they thought they would get away with it, especially when having to do nothing more than say some shit in front of grand jurors.

When the grand jury rebuffed the government’s advances, half-assed apologies were made. But a half-ass apology for misleading grand jurors won’t put the gild back on the lily nor the lipstick back on the pig (so to speak…). Nor will it make the targeted ham sandwiches any more worthy of criminal charges, which means the DOJ is losing most frequently in the place it desperately needs to be winning the most: the Democratic Republic of California that has been constantly (and deceivingly) portrayed as the host of a city under so much siege that it’s time to call in the Marines.

And it’s only a matter of time before this DHS agent is fired. After all, they admitted actual recordings directly contradicted the sworn statements made by federal officers, even if the affidavits couched it in language meant to persuade jurors the government was still in the right, even if its assault claims were lies:

The DHS special agent also noted that defense lawyers had presented video they said was “in direct contrast to the facts” laid out in the initial complaint. The footage, seen by the Guardian, appeared to show an agent pushing Ramos-Brito, not the other way around, before he was taken to the ground along with Mojica, who was also not seen in the footage shoving or assaulting agents.

The agent acknowledged the officer’s shoving and said the subsequent “fight” was “hard to decipher”. The agent also claimed Ramos-Brito’s behavior before he was pushed included “pre-assault indicators”, such as “clenching fists” and “getting in [the agent’s] face”.

Take a look at that last line: that’s the attempt to salvage obvious lies with even more lies, or at the very least, an extremely slanted take on events captured on camera. When the flagrant bullshit fails in court, the government immediately pretends what was declared “obvious” in initial assertions is actually so nuanced no court (or grand jury) should rule against officers’ extremely subjective (and extremely self-serving) portrayals of confrontations anyone’s capable of seeing with their own eyes. “Your eyes are lying,” says the government.

California grand jurors aren’t falling for this, especially after law enforcement officers at all levels have spent every year since the inception of their offices undermining the trust placed in them by the public, when not being undermined by facts that directly contradict their false assertions.

Cases continue to be rejected by federal grand juries. The government, however, continues to claim it’s always right, even when it’s demonstrably wrong. A spokesperson for US Attorney (and “ardent Trump supporter”) Bill Essayli (last heard berating lower-level prosecutors for being unable to spin blatant lies into indictment gold) claims journalistic reports on the DOJ’s failures are nothing more than the printing of “factual inaccuracies and anonymous gossip.”

Well, I don’t have anything to say about the alleged “gossip,” but I do have to agree with the DOJ spokesperson: this reporting contains plenty of “factual inaccuracies.” Unfortunately for Bill Essayli and everyone applying pressure from above, the “factual inaccuracies” all belong to the DOJ, DHS, and every federal officer offering up lies during grand jury proceedings.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, bullshit, dhs, doj, ice, martial law, mass deportation, trump administration