Now you can add kidnapping to Donald Trump’s rap sheet
Among the many human rights violations committed almost daily by the Trump administration, one particularly egregious breach of the public trust is effectuated under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security, and goes by the name “Operation Legend.” It’s really a “black op” in the truest sense of the expression, because it was legally stillborn almost the instant it was conceived.
Operation Legend’s ostensible remit is to employ anonymous federal law enforcement officers, deployed in anonymous uniforms without name tags and mobilised in unmarked rented vans, to protect federal property from vandalism in American cities. So far so good if that’s all they do. But it’s not all they do, and somebody is going to be in big trouble some day because of it.
For one thing, the federal officers in question are abducting peaceful protesters off the street and detaining them for unspecified reasons and unspecified intervals without habeas corpus or Miranda rights. This is actually illegal, and it doesn’t even matter if the people they are abducting are committing crimes. (In point of fact they are not, as nearly as can be ascertained.)
One reason it’s illegal is because a federal officer can only lawfully arrest someone if the suspect is committing a federal crime (as opposed to an ordinary state crime covered by local statute), otherwise enforcement of the crime is strictly up to the states. Since these anonymous federal thugs are abducting innocent protesters exercising Constitutionally protected speech away from federal property, the officers are actually the ones who are committing a federal crime. It’s known as kidnapping.
If it can be shown that Donald Trump is the ultimate mastermind behind these kidnappings, then you can add “kidnapper” to Trump’s growing list of nefarious crimes to date. Thus, Trump’s crimes include rape, child rape, sexual predation, murderer, theft, money laundering, fraud, embezzlement, treason and now kidnapping. That’s quite a list.
Right now Operation Legend officers are deployed in Portland, Oregon, but Trump is planning to take the whole thing on the road and into other major cities across the nation. (Trump And Barr intend expanding to Chicago, Albuquerque, Kansas City and Missouri.)
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler had this to say about Operation Legend: “It’s the presence of these federal officers, the way they came into the city, the way they have trampled over the Constitution, the way they have pulled people into vans, they way they have fired munitions at nonviolent demonstrators, in one case nearly killing somebody, the way they’ve trampled over the requirement for probable cause, this is what is making Portlanders so angry right now.” In other words, everything was fine until the feds showed up and turned a peaceful situation rotten.
“We don’t want you here, we don’t need you here, and we want you to go home before somebody gets killed,” the Mayor added. In the lawless cesspool that is the corrupt Trump White House, that isn’t likely to happen soon. The only thing that might stop him is the certain conviction that Trump will lose the election if he doesn’t stop. Concern about the Constitutional rights of the protesters doesn’t enter in.
Whatever the outcome, it matters that DHS is using black ops for their dirty work. It’s the kind of thing one expects to find in third world countries, tinpot dictatorships and fascistic regimes like Nazi Germany or Russia or North Korea, not in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
There are a million reasons why Donald Trump is unfit to serve as president of the United States and must go in November, and this has been another one. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.