Officials in President Donald Trump's administration have accused both Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz of "domestic terrorism." One legal expert says is arguing that phrase is being used for a specific reason.
In a Tuesday interview with Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern, Julia Gegenheimer — a former attorney in the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Civil Rights Division who is now a special litigation counsel at the Georgetown University Law Center – said the Trump administration's use of the word "terrorism" is done with intent to cause harm to leading Democrats in Minnesota.
"It is profoundly disturbing. And the reason why this feels different to you is that it is a bit of a different flavor," she said. "It’s pitting the federal government against the states and creating tension where it doesn’t need to be. And frankly, it’s implicitly encouraging acts of political violence against these elected officials by turning them into the enemy."
The Trump administration has so far issued subpoenas to both Frey and Walz along with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, alleging that they conspired to impede law enforcement operations. Stern remarked that the Trump administration was not only "falsely accusing" Frey and Walz of committing political violence, but effectively sowing the seeds for violence to be committed against them. Gegenheimer agreed and asserted this was part and parcel of Trump's agenda in Minneapolis.
"We’ve seen this throughout history, even recent history: When you put people in opposition like that — when you portray them as the enemy, when you describe them as kind of threatening a person’s way of life or things that they hold dear — that creates the conditions under which people are more likely to resort to political violence, and it becomes more and more the norm," Gegenheimer said.
Stern reminded readers that the Trump administration has taken numerous actions to antagonize residents of blue states, along with those states' leaders, in an effort to frame them as the "enemy of the federal government and even the American people." Gegenheimer pointed to the administration's deployment of troops in Washington D.C. and Chicago, Illinois as further illustrations of what she characterized as a politically motivated retribution campaign against people who didn't vote for him.
"It doesn’t take too much reading between the lines to see that that’s what’s going on," she said.
