Trump's Troops still at it

There are some goons who need to spend some time in stir.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

JFC

Shooting at unarmed protesters from behind a barrier.

Insane.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

source

What could go wrong?

What are those federal resources he's sending?  If it's to "supplement ongoing federal investigations," shouldn't it be investigators or investigating equipment?  Pretty sure it's federal shocktroopers.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Trump’s authoritarian crackdown

Under fire for dispatching federal law enforcement into cities in defiance of local leaders, in part to create TV imagery that sends an authoritarian thrill up President Trump’s leg, top officials are offering several new defenses. All are profoundly weak — which is why senior members of previous Republican administrations are now condemning what’s happening.

One of these is Michael Chertoff, the former director of homeland security under George W. Bush, who said in an interview that the department appears to be overstepping its mission, and that Trump’s threat to send law enforcement into Democrat-run cities is “very problematic” and “very unsettling.”

[...]

“It undermines the credibility of the department’s principal mission.”

  WaPo

Abolish DHS.

With imagery mounting of militarized law enforcement battling protesters even as Trump threatens to send in more agents while running ads against Joe Biden featuring this exact imagery, Trump’s senior officials must now place a legal and substantive gloss on what’s happening.

Let's not gloss over the fact that the Trump campaign is using what's happening in the country NOW, on Trump's watch, to warn people against a Joe Biden presidency where what's happening NOW will supposedly be happening on a Biden watch as a result of Joe's incompetency.

[Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security,] now insists he’s prepared to “pull my officers out,” but only “if the violence stops,” as if this somehow makes it okay to steamroll local officials’ opposition.

And with Trump threatening to send law enforcement into Chicago, Wolf is claiming that this will be about battling drugs and urban crime. That’s meant to suggest this is not another federal crackdown on protests, as if that validates overruling Chicago officials who oppose this.

[...]

“While it’s appropriate for DHS to protect federal property, that is not an excuse to range more widely in a city and to conduct police operations, particularly if local authorities have not requested federal assistance,” Chertoff told me. “That’s our constitutional system.”

[...]

"[B]eginning to operate on the street [...] raises all kinds of issues under the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which gives the states police power rights, as well as potentially 1st Amendment issues,” Chertoff continued.

[...]

And the fact that Trump is explicitly singling out cities “run by Democrats” makes this still worse, Chertoff suggested.

[...]

“Essentially, he’s suggesting this is a political maneuver,” Chertoff told me. “As someone who’s spent four years at the department, the idea that people would be suggesting that it’s going to be a tool of political activity is very unsettling.”

“It’s very problematic legally as well as morally,” Chertoff added.

"Problematic."  And Susan Collins' brow will furrow.

Trump’s next target is Chicago, and The Post reports that homeland security investigators will not play a street-policing role, instead helping investigate gangs. But the mayor of Chicago is not on board.

And as legal experts point out, even if this ends up withstanding legal scrutiny, the use of federal law enforcement in a “domestic policing role” is blurring an important line.

[...]

Tom Ridge, another homeland security secretary under Bush, has also opened fire, noting that DHS’s mission is to protect against “global terrorism” and was “not established to be the president’s personal militia.”

Which earned hiim a Trump Tweet:

The reference to global terror is instructive. After all, critics of the “war on terror” under Bush might point out, as Jamelle Bouie did, that building up a massive militarized force such as DHS has always invited overreaching and authoritarian abuses of the kind we’re seeing now, and that they should prompt a rethink of DHS’s fundamental mission and makeup.

Abolish DHS. Without a clear operation against foreign terrorists, the DHS must justify its existence and is doing so by turning to domestic operations.

Indeed, it’s worth recalling that only weeks ago, Trump’s authoritarian fever dreams were doused by some of his other top officials. After Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to send the military into cities, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper distanced himself, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark A. Milley put out a remarkable statement calling on members of the military to remember their commitment to our founding documents and values.

So he's gone around them and created a patchwork federal "law enforcement" organization to do the same thing, clothed in military uniforms.

“They stepped back from something that was inappropriate, and said, ‘we’re not going here,’” Chertoff said of Esper and Milley. “And I think that DHS ought to do the same thing.”

Not with a Trump toady at the helm - and an "acting" one at that.

The lack of Senate confirmation is the key there. As Nick Miroff and Matt Zapotosky point out, it’s no accident that unconfirmed officials like Wolf “appear almost daily on cable television to praise Trump’s resolve.”

That’s what Trump wants them to do. But the growing roar of criticism from the other direction may render this new push impossible to sustain.

We can only hope, before they have the whole country embroiled.

“I like acting [...] It gives me more flexibility. Do you understand that? I like acting."

  Guardian

I haven't noticed any news stories lately about Chicago being overrun by violence.

"What the hell is going on at DOJ" indeed

A senior Department of Justice official on Wednesday corrected comments by Attorney General William Barr, who minutes earlier had said 200 arrests had been made within two weeks in Kansas City as part of Operation Legend, a federal anti-crime effort.

Barr’s comments had come during a news conference Wednesday about the operation, which is said to be sending hundreds of federal agents into the metro area to stop a surge of violent crime in the city.

“Just to give you an idea of what’s possible, the FBI went in very strong into Kansas City and within two weeks we’ve had 200 arrests,” Barr had said.

  KC Star

Wrong.

Speaking with McClatchy after the Wednesday event, the senior Justice Department official clarified that the 200 figure included arrests dating back to December 2019.

It also included, the official said, both state and FBI arrests in joint operations.

Bill Barr is a proven liar. (Ask Robert Mueller.) Believe nothing he says.

The official said Barr was referring to the number of arrests made in the city since the launch of Operation Relentless Pursuit, a precursor effort to Operation Legend that surged federal agents in U.S. cities facing crime waves, including Kansas City.

I guess it's fitting they give them military operations type names.

Wednesday’s statement by Barr came just two days after the first charge was announced in connection with Operation Legend.

Monty W. Ray, 20, of Kansas City, was arrested Friday by an Independence officer and an agent with the U.S. Marshals Service. Ray was charged Monday in federal court with being an unlawful drug user in possession of firearms, according to a criminal complaint.

Since you can't charge someone with protesting, I guess. Or for caring firearms in Missouri, for that matter.

Prior to the DOJ’s correction of the misinformation, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas had cast doubt on the claim. Lucas said that he was aware only of one arrest that had been announced by the U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas City.

“You can’t verify it because nothing can be verified... This is where some of the confusion goes on,” Lucas said.

[...]

Matthew Miller, a former DOJ official, was shocked by Barr’s statement after The Star reported on its inaccuracy.

“Wow. Barr says today there have been 200 arrests in the past two weeks. KC says the real number is more like one. Then DOJ backtracks and says 200 is since December and includes local arrests. What the hell is going on at DOJ?” tweeted Miller, who led the DOJ’s public affairs from 2009 to 2011 during President Barack Obama’s administration.

Probably wasn't actually shocked.

On Thursday, the White House touted the operation as a successful federal response to violent crime.

Not a federal responsibility.

Tim Garrison, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, [...] said Monday that any federal agents making arrests as part of the new operation to reduce violent crime locally will be clearly identifiable.

Like they are in Portland?

He said the effort would not bear any resemblance to the operation playing out in Portland, Oregon.

Except for the part where they are federal officers interfering in states' policing activities, the actual operation.

“These agents won’t be patrolling the streets,” Garrison said. “They won’t replace or usurp the authority of local officers.”

Then why are they there?

“At a time when confidence and trust in the Department of Justice and federal law enforcement is at a low point, the last thing you want is to have someone suggest you are padding your numbers to make a political point or that the Attorney General is unaware of the situation on the ground in Kansas City,” said Stephen Hill, Jr., who served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri from 1993 to 2001 during Bill Clinton’s presidency. “Either one hurts the effort and the public confidence it needs to be successful.”

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced the expansion of Operation Legend into additional cities around the country, defying local government officials who have warned that he lacked the authority to send federal agents into their streets.

[...]

Following the expansion announcement, Lucas said Trump was “exploiting the pain of our particularly Black community” during an election year.

“I do have concerns with the president’s racial undertones in his rhetoric. When I was growing up they used to call it dog-whistling. I think the president has exceeded that,” Lucas said.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Careful Secretary, you'll lose your job

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has expressed concern within the administration about federal law enforcement officers wearing military-style uniforms while responding to protests.

[...]

"The secretary has expressed a concern of this within the administration that we want a system where people can tell the difference,” [Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman] said. “I’m not aware of any direct conversations with DHS on this particular deployment or their particular operations in Portland over the last week or so.”

Hoffman also stressed “unequivocally” that no Pentagon assets have been or are planning to be deployed to Portland.

[...]

Similar concerns were raised in June during the height of nationwide protests against racial injustice, particularly after federal law enforcement agents forcibly cleared protesters from Lafayette Square across the White House

After the June protests, Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley told the House Armed Services Committee in July they have learned of the need to better differentiate between law enforcement and the military. Milley specifically raised the issue of uniforms.

  The Hill

Wish in one hand...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The "Take no Responsibility" administration in overdrive

I'm failing to see the distinction.

Attorney General William Barr says law enforcement officers were already moving to push back protesters from a park in front of the White House when he arrived there Monday evening, and he says he did not give a command to disperse the crowd, though he supported the decision.

[...]

“They told me they were about to make the announcement and I think they stretched the announcements over 20 minutes. During the time I was there, I would periodically hear announcements,” Barr said.

[...]

Barr said it was a Park Police tactical commander — an official he never spoke to — who gave the order for the law enforcement agencies to move in and clear the protesters.

“I’m not involved in giving tactical commands like that," he said. “I was frustrated and I was also worried that as the crowd grew, it was going to be harder and harder to do. So my attitude was get it done, but I didn’t say, ‘Go do it.’”

  Politico

Im not sure a denial could get more pathetic.

[T]he White House and others said repeatedly that the attorney general ordered officers to clear the park.

[...]

[A]dministration officials have spent much of the week trying to explain how the situation escalated and why smoke bombs, pepper balls and police on horseback were needed to clear the largely peaceful crowd.

Earlier in the week, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told reporters it was Barr who made the decision to push back the security perimeter outside the White House on Monday morning. McEnany said that when Barr arrived at Lafayette Park later that day to survey the security situation, he was surprised to see that action had not yet been taken.

“So he said that we needed to get going with moving that perimeter. He told the officers that out there,” McEnany said Wednesday. A person familiar with the matter also said earlier this week that Barr told law enforcement to take action to move the perimeter when he arrived in the park.

Pass the buck administration.

Many of the apparently federal agents [patroling DC] have refused to identify which agency they work for. [Eagle-eyed protesters have identified some of them as belonging to Bureau of Prisons’ riot police units from Texas, but others remain a mystery.

[...]

Just like its laws, there are too many federal agents for the government to keep track of.

[...]

[A]bsent identifying signs of actual authority the rows of federal officers appear all-but indistinguishable from the open-carrying, white militia members cosplaying as survivalists who have gathered in other recent protests against pandemic stay-at-home orders. Some protesters have compared the anonymous armed officers to Russia’s “Little Green Men,” the soldiers-dressed-up-as-civilians who invaded and occupied eastern Ukraine. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to President Donald Trump Thursday demanding that federal officers identify themselves and their agency.

[...]

[I]t helps to understand the dense and not-entirely-sensical thicket of agencies that make up the nation’s civilian federal law enforcement. With little public attention, notice and amid historically lax oversight, those ranks have surged since 9/11—growing by roughly 2,500 officers annually every year since 2000. To put it another way: Every year since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has added to its policing ranks a force larger than the entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Nearly all of these agencies are headquartered in and around the capital, making it easy for Attorney General William Barr to enlist them as part of his vast effort to “flood the zone” in D.C. this week with what amounts to a federal army of occupation, overseen from the FBI Washington area command post in Chinatown. Battalions of agents were mustered in the lobby of Customs and Border Protection’s D.C. headquarters—what in normal times is the path to a food court for federal workers. The Drug Enforcement Administration has been given special powers to enable it to surveil protesters. It is the heaviest show of force in the nation’s capital since the protests and riots of the Vietnam War.

[...]

The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which serves as the general academy for federal agencies who don’t have their own specialized training facilities, lists around 80 different agencies whose trainees pass through its doors in Georgia, from the IRS’ criminal investigators and the Transportation Security Administration's air marshals to the Offices of the Inspector General for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Railroad Retirement Board. Don’t forget the armed federal officers at the Environmental Protection Agency or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Law Enforcement, whose 150 agents investigate conservation crime like the Tunas Convention Act of 1975 (16 USC § 971-971k) and the Northern Pacific Halibut Act of 1982 (16 USC § 773-773k).

[...]

A morning run around the National Mall and Capitol Hill might see you cross through the jurisdictions of the federal U.S. Capitol Police, the Park Police, the National Gallery of Art police, the Smithsonian Office of Protective Services, the Postal police, Amtrak police, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing police, the Supreme Court police, the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service, the Government Publishing Office police, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service. (Only recently did the Library of Congress police merge with the Capitol Police across the street into one unit.) Run a bit farther and you might encounter the FBI Police or the U.S. Mint police. And that’s not even counting the multistate Metro Transit police and the local D.C. Metropolitan Police.

[...]

[T]he roughly 20,000 federal prison guards known formally as the Bureau of Prisons—whose riot units make up a sizable chunk of the officers imported to D.C. and who represent the single largest component of federal officers in the Justice Department—are concerning to see on the streets in part because they’re largely untrained in civilian law enforcement; they normally operate in a controlled environment behind bars with sharply limited civil liberties and use-of-force policies that would never fly in a civilian environment.

[...]

[U]nder the Trump administration, many of these agencies have been rudderless—overseen by rotating series of acting officials. More than half of all federal civilian law enforcement right now is being led by temporary acting officials, everything from ICE and CBP to DEA.

[...]

Beyond those 132,000 federal civilian law enforcement, the U.S. has tens of thousands of military law enforcement officers, including military police units and investigators like the 2,000 agents of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the 1,200 agents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service or the 900 agents of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. Plus, the 40,000 armed personnel of the U.S. Coast Guard, which has broad law enforcement powers on the nation’s rivers, lakes and oceans, but is counted as part of the military.

Then there are the officers who can be spotted across Northern Virginia in white marked patrol vehicles labeled only as “United States Police,” the purposefully vague public name given to what is formally known as the CIA’s Security Protective Services, who provide security to the CIA and the Office of Director of National Intelligence. They carry weapons, but have limited law enforcement authority. (As one agent told me, only half-joking, “We can’t arrest you, but we can kill you.”)

  Politico

Police state. ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.