Against Trump's Ideological Witch Hunt, Unlikely Allies Join Forces - The Right Against the President

Minneapolis (KB) - Three right-wing conservative and libertarian organizations are going to bat in court for left-wing protesters they would normally oppose. The reason is an executive order that turns political beliefs into grounds for suspicion. Before the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota in Minneapolis stands an alliance that, by every rule of political logic, should never have come together. The criminal case is United States v. Sant et al., 0:26-cr-00115-KMM-DTS. The presiding federal judge is Katherine M. Menendez, while the current fight over the release of secret ICE files is before U.S. Magistrate Judge David T. Schultz, who is set to hear the matter on Thursday.

On one side are the 15 left-wing activists from Direct Action Minnesota, whom federal prosecutors accuse of using criminal means in their fight against the immigration agency. On the other are three right-wing conservative and libertarian organizations - the Cato Institute, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and the Society for the Rule of Law - that are stepping in to protect those very activists. The prosecution is being led by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Minnesota under U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen; which individual Assistant U.S. Attorneys are serving as trial prosecutors in the case cannot be reliably determined from the available records. Here, the first people stepping in front of those being targeted are their declared political opponents.

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The case is known as the Minneapolis 15. A sweeping investigation by the immigration agency ICE in the Twin Cities led to the indictment in June of a group of protesters who became known by that name. They are accused of using criminal methods to obstruct the administration's harsh crackdown on immigrants. According to the indictment, they were members and supporters of Direct Action Minnesota, a group said to have confronted the administration's measures with aggressive actions.

Up to that point, the whole thing might have looked like an ordinary criminal case. But a defense filing made public earlier this month revealed the scope of the undercover operation. ICE had deployed investigators against a far broader circle than the group that was actually indicted. That included local labor unions and the youth-led climate movement Sunrise Movement. Government agents sat in rooms where no one expected them to be and listened to people whose common trait was their opposition to the administration. A movement only learns it has been under covert surveillance after that surveillance has already done its work, and after that, no one trusts the stranger in the room anymore.

The defendants are now demanding that the judge overseeing the case force the release of additional confidential files. Those records, they argue, would show that the government targeted them because of their political views rather than because of the acts listed in the indictment. Spying on a labor union and a climate group has nothing to do with blockading a building.

On Tuesday, the unlikely allies stepped in on the protesters' side with an amicus brief. The Cato Institute and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression are part of it. So is the Society for the Rule of Law. The three are represented by the nonprofit legal organization Protect Democracy. What has become public so far, they argue, supports the defendants' allegations. Organizations that stand politically far apart from the defendants and have spent years trying to place strict limits on government power now fear something bigger than the fight over immigration.

The three groups are not arguing about whether the defendants are guilty or innocent. Their objection is aimed at what triggered the investigation. If a political belief is enough to put investigators inside meetings, then every organization that becomes inconvenient to a government exists at its mercy. The freedom to organize and to dissent does not depend on the goodwill of whoever happens to hold office. Deny it to the left today, and the next president inherits the same tool to use against the right.

The brief traces the investigation back to a document the president issued after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The document is called National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7. In it, Donald Trump demanded a tougher crackdown on groups associated with "anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity." The order pushed those beliefs into the vicinity of terrorism and political violence.

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The public evidence confirms that the investigation in this case grew out of NSPM-7, the brief says. It also points to a broader intent to target people who opposed immigration enforcement and joined organizations the government disliked. The document, the groups argue, uses the label of domestic terrorism to justify criminal investigations into disfavored groups that otherwise would never have been targeted. An order created in response to the murder of a man on the right turned its eye toward his political opponents. The logic of that reversal does not need much explanation. A document written in the name of security needs enemies, and it finds them where the government already expects them to be.

Whether the government has to reveal more will be decided by U.S. Magistrate Judge David Schultz. He is set to consider the defendants' request this Thursday. Until then, it remains hidden just how deeply the undercover investigators penetrated these groups and how many names the government is still keeping under wraps.

Federal prosecutors are pushing back. Last week, they asked the court to deny the release of additional files. They say they have already turned over more evidence than the law requires and that the defendants have not cleared the high bar required to prove selective prosecution. That bar is high because prosecutors are given enormous discretion in deciding whom to prosecute. That makes it all the more serious when the government's own files show that political beliefs played a role in the investigation.

The conduct of the alleged members of Direct Action Minnesota, or DAMN, was very different from that of the thousands who peacefully took to the streets earlier this year after the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, prosecutors said. DAMN members are accused of blockading a federal building and following federal agents all the way to their homes.

The defendants actively conspired to shut down a federal facility and succeeded on at least 2 occasions, prosecutors say. DAMN members were also openly hostile toward people who advocated peaceful protest. But between a criminal blockade and a climate group being spied on lies the entire distance now being fought over before the judge.

Both sides are fighting over folders of files, but the question underneath them is older than this case. A government that sorts its opponents by their beliefs and attaches suspicion to opinion alone draws the line of what is permitted wherever power happens to sit. Those lines move with political majorities, and they rarely return to the place where they were first drawn. The libertarian and conservative defenders understood that when they stepped in on behalf of the left-wing defendants. The protection you deny to someone you hate today may no longer be there for you tomorrow.