Haitian Group Files Criminal Charges Against Trump and Vance Over Springfield Threats

[Social Media]

 

A Haitian nonprofit organization has filed criminal charges against former President Donald Trump and Ohio Senator JD Vance, accusing them of inciting threats and fear within the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio. The charges stem from false claims made by Trump and Vance, alleging that Haitian migrants, who are legally in the U.S., were killing and eating pets in Springfield. The Haitian Bridge Alliance, an advocacy group for Haitian immigrants, filed the charges on Tuesday after local prosecutors chose not to pursue the case.

Donald Trump speaking on eating cats and dogs pic.twitter.com/5shUwuFPcs

— non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) September 11, 2024

 

The criminal affidavit accuses Trump and Vance of disrupting public services by instigating widespread bomb and other threats that have led to significant disruptions in Springfield. Additionally, they face charges of making false alarms, telecommunications harassment, aggravated menacing, and complicity. Subodh Chandra, the attorney representing the Haitian Bridge Alliance, stated that the group had to resort to private citizen criminal charges because of the local authorities' inaction.

 

The controversy began when false rumors spread online that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were killing and eating pets. Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, and Vance repeated these claims, further fueling the spread of misinformation. During his first debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump reiterated, "In Springfield, they're eating the dogs—the people that came in. They're eating the cats." However, local authorities, including the mayor and police, quickly debunked these rumors, stating that there were no credible reports to support the accusations.

 

Despite being fact-checked live, Trump and Vance continued to propagate the claims. This has led to increased hostility toward Springfield's Haitian community, with many considering leaving the city due to the escalating backlash. "Their persistence and relentlessness, even in the face of the governor and the mayor saying this is false, that shows intent," Chandra said. "It's knowing, willful flouting of criminal law."

 

The charges were filed in Clark County Municipal Court, where the Haitian Bridge Alliance hopes the case will either prompt further investigation or lead to arrest warrants for Trump and Vance. In response to the legal action, Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, defended the former president, stating in an email to Newsweek, "President Trump is rightfully highlighting the failed immigration system that Kamala Harris has overseen, bringing thousands of illegal immigrants pouring into communities like Springfield and many others across the country."

 

The allegations against Trump and Vance come at a time when Springfield has faced over 30 bomb threats, contributing to heightened fear within the community. Among the threats was an evacuation of City Hall, which received messages containing hateful language targeting immigrants and Haitians. Two elementary schools and the Clark County courthouse were also targeted.

 

Some members of Springfield’s Haitian population have expressed fears for their safety, given the intensifying hostility. Chandra emphasized that the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling granting ex-presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution does not apply in this case, as Trump is now a private citizen. Additionally, Vance’s comments were made outside his capacity as a senator.

 

Nevertheless, Trump has doubled down on the false claims. At a rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Trump again referenced the Haitian migrants in Springfield, suggesting they had “destroyed” the city and must be removed. This followed remarks from Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, who told MSNBC that he was "surprised" that Trump and Vance continued to promote the debunked claims. Rue expressed disappointment that both figures had doubled down on the misinformation, which has caused considerable fear and disruption in Springfield. 

 

The case against Trump and Vance represents a broader concern about how political rhetoric can fuel misinformation and endanger vulnerable communities. The Haitian Bridge Alliance’s pursuit of legal action marks a significant step in defending immigrant communities against false accusations and the threats that arise from them.

 

Based on a report from: Newsweek 2024-09-26

 

 

 

[Chomper Higgot]

Trump and Vance both certainly need to be held accountable for their part in inciting violent threats to the Springfield community and demonizing Haitians across America.
 

But so doubt this suit It will come to anything, certainly nothing as effective as  the votes of Haitian Americans in the upcoming elections, over 500,000 of whom are residents of Florida.

 

’We don’t eat pets,  we vote’ is a message to get the vote out.

 

Trump’s attacks on immigrants have put Florida in play.

 

https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article292806614.html

 

[jerrymahoney]

22 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

 

Trump’s attacks on immigrants have put Florida in play.

That is an opinion expressed in the post above -- it is not an opinion expressed in the linked Miami Herald article.

[Chomper Higgot]

32 minutes ago, jerrymahoney said:

That is an opinion expressed in the post above -- it is not an opinion expressed in the linked Miami Herald article.

Did I say it was?

[mdr224]

Smells like a publicity stunt from democrats

[jerrymahoney]

OOPS format error

 

Edited September 25 by jerrymahoney

[jerrymahoney]

1 hour ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Did I say it was?

Well that's what it says in your post above but the Miami Herald didn't say that in the article you linked.

[rudi49jr]

7 hours ago, mdr224 said:

Smells like a publicity stunt from democrats

Trump and especially Vance keep pushing the fairy tale of Haitians eating pets, despite it having been conclusively debunked. They also keep calling them ‘illegal immigrants’, which is not true either, since the Haitians in Springfield are there legally.

 

Smells like hate and fear mongering from the Republicans.

Edited September 26 by rudi49jr

[billd766]

6 minutes ago, rudi49jr said:

Trump and especially Vance keep pushing the fairy tale of Haitians eating pets, despite it having been conclusively debunked. They also keep calling them ‘illegal immigrants’, which is not true either, since the Haitians in Springfield are there legally.

 

Smells like hate and fear mongering from the Republicans.

It doesn't smell like hate and fear mongering from the Republicans to me. It smells like cowardice from the gop in NOT stopping or clamping down on false statements and blatant lies from Trump and Vance.

 

IMHO if the gop and its many committees don't clamp down and stop both of them, there will be little left of the gop as it is now in December 2024. Already some of the bigger names in the gop have announced that they will be voting for Kamala Harris at the election in November.

 

The gop cannot afford to lose their votes and that of their supporters, this close to the election.

[impulse]

29 minutes ago, rudi49jr said:

Trump and especially Vance keep pushing the fairy tale of Haitians eating pets, despite it having been conclusively debunked.

 

That is an impossibility.   How, exactly, did they conclusively debunk it? 

 

Unless they have footage of every soul in the town, 24/7 and watching the footage revealed that nobody ate a cat.

 

Do you have a link to that footage?

 

[placeholder]

14 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

That is an impossibility.   How, exactly, did they conclusively debunk it? 

 

Unless they have footage of every soul in the town, 24/7 and watching the footage revealed that nobody ate a cat.

 

Do you have a link to that footage?

 

Another acolyte of the Donald Rumsfield, the guy who helped get us into the Iraq war under false pretenses. Here's his well-known quote: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

In other words, according to your way of thinking, anybody can allege anything, and if there's no evidence to support it, that's irrelevant.

[Chomper Higgot]

47 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

That is an impossibility.   How, exactly, did they conclusively debunk it? 

 

Unless they have footage of every soul in the town, 24/7 and watching the footage revealed that nobody ate a cat.

 

Do you have a link to that footage?

 

There is no proof of something that doesn’t exist.

 

It’s for Trump and his supporters, both foreign and domestic, to demonstrate the truth of Trump’s pejorative claims.

[impulse]

1 hour ago, Chomper Higgot said:

There is no proof of something that doesn’t exist.

 

It’s for Trump and his supporters, both foreign and domestic, to demonstrate the truth of Trump’s pejorative claims.

 

I wonder where we are on the schedule of lefty goalpost moving:

 

1)       Nobody’s eating cats

2)       Well, maybe there was a video of someone eating a cat, but it was a white lady

3)       Okay, so she is black.  But that doesn’t mean she’s an immigrant.

4)       So maybe she is an immigrant, but that doesn’t mean she’s a Haitian

5)       So what if they found more witnesses that dined with Haitians eating cats?

6)       Cat’s aren’t an endangered species, what’s the big deal?

7)       They’re just practicing voodoo, an indigenous religion

😎      Cat eating is a protected religious activity.

9)       Anyone who’s against eating cats is racist and intolerant and anti-religion

 

Reminds me of the “illegals voting” lefty goalpost.  Went from “impossible, can’t happen, that's been conclusively debunked” to “it’s a small number” to “well, it wouldn’t have changed the election results anyway”.

 

Edited September 26 by impulse

[newnative]

Lock both of them up.  They can be cell mates.

[mfd101]

I've never eaten pussy, at least not in Thailand. But I have eaten rat on one occasion, to the amusement of my family who were already feasting on a couple.

 

And any dog that gets run over is thrown in the boot and off to the farm for a feast.

 

But my family are Khmer, not Haitian.

[nauseus]

7 minutes ago, mfd101 said:

I've never eaten pussy, at least not in Thailand. But I have eaten rat on one occasion, to the amusement of my family who were already feasting on a couple.

 

And any dog that gets run over is thrown in the boot and off to the farm for a feast.

 

But my family are Khmer, not Haitian.

 

What a relief.

[Chomper Higgot]

2 hours ago, impulse said:

 

I wonder where we are on the schedule of lefty goalpost moving:

 

1)       Nobody’s eating cats

2)       Well, maybe there was a video of someone eating a cat, but it was a white lady

3)       Okay, so she is black.  But that doesn’t mean she’s an immigrant.

4)       So maybe she is an immigrant, but that doesn’t mean she’s a Haitian

5)       So what if they found more witnesses that dined with Haitians eating cats?

6)       Cat’s aren’t an endangered species, what’s the big deal?

7)       They’re just practicing voodoo, an indigenous religion

😎      Cat eating is a protected religious activity.

9)       Anyone who’s against eating cats is racist and intolerant and anti-religion

 

Reminds me of the “illegals voting” lefty goalpost.  Went from “impossible, can’t happen, that's been conclusively debunked” to “it’s a small number” to “well, it wouldn’t have changed the election results anyway”.

 

You missed your vocation, but sadly for you the golden era of the Nickel Weeklies has passed.

 

Try the NYP, perhaps they’ll buy your fictional musings, you have talent for this stuff, don’t waste it.

 

[Cory1848]

6 hours ago, impulse said:

 

That is an impossibility.   How, exactly, did they conclusively debunk it? 

 

Unless they have footage of every soul in the town, 24/7 and watching the footage revealed that nobody ate a cat.

 

Do you have a link to that footage?

 

What the heck kind of argument is that? I’ll apply the same reasoning. I’ll call you, Impulse, an eater of cats. I heard it somewhere; maybe it was on TV, I can’t recall. Do you have a link to footage of your movements 24/7 to conclusively prove that you’ve never eaten a cat? No? So you’re a cat eater, and a monster, and a destroyer of civil society, and you should be deported immediately.

[Tug]

I am hoping for a win on this lawsuit it’s obvious it’s racist to the core but more importantly it’s putting lives at risk creating chaos in a struggling city all for free publicity for the trump clown show…..enough we need serious leaders not racist trolls ditch the albatross flush the orange tu#d!

[johng]

2 minutes ago, Tug said:

it’s putting lives at risk

Rubbish !   serious leaders do not flood the country with illegal aliens  and claim that is for the collective good  diversity equity inclusivity  💩

[SingAPorn]

The Haitian diaspora should rather get together to tackle the criminal mob mafia gangs that are ruling their own lawless country.

[johng]

1 minute ago, SingAPorn said:

mafia gangs that are ruling their own lawless country.

 

Yep then they wouldn't have to claim refugee status in other countries...though I suspect that there is a much bigger "criminal gang" behind the gangs in their lawless country  stopping any sort of advancement for the whole country so the cycle continues.

[placeholder]

1 hour ago, SingAPorn said:

The Haitian diaspora should rather get together to tackle the criminal mob mafia gangs that are ruling their own lawless country.

And Italian Americans immigrant ancestors should have returned to Italy to fight the mafia and corruption and And  Jewish Americans immigrant ancestors should have stayed and fought oppression, and all the other millions upon millions of immigrants seeking refuge in America from oppression and poverty in American should have stayed in their homelands rather than emigrate.

[Chomper Higgot]

11 hours ago, SingAPorn said:

The Haitian diaspora should rather get together to tackle the criminal mob mafia gangs that are ruling their own lawless country.

Just like the American Diaspora registering to vote and put an end to the ambitions of a convicted criminal to be back in the WH.

 

 

Edited September 27 by Chomper Higgot

[Tug]

11 hours ago, SingAPorn said:

The Haitian diaspora should rather get together to tackle the criminal mob mafia gangs that are ruling their own lawless country.

Like the quakers fleeing England and the Irish fleeing the famine in Ireland and on and on its the very fabric of the American story.trump is doing his regular tricks of sowing hate at the expense of a vulnerable minority .he is what he is a low life and living proof that money can’t buy class or character.ditch the albatross flush the orange t@r& !!

[gargamon]

15 minutes ago, Tug said:

Like the quakers fleeing England and the Irish fleeing the famine in Ireland and on and on its the very fabric of the American story.trump is doing his regular tricks of sowing hate at the expense of a vulnerable minority .he is what he is a low life and living proof that money can’t buy class or character.ditch the albatross flush the orange t@r& !!

It's Hitler's playbook, directly from Mein Kampf, the only book Trump has ever read and that he keeps on his nightstand. I paraphrase, “you need to give your supporters someone to rally against“. Hitler did it with the jews, Trump is currently doing it with Haitian immigrants, but it's easy to see that is his modus operandi.

[WDSmart]

Oh, yeah! I hope this is successful.

[Chomper Higgot]

9 hours ago, gargamon said:

It's Hitler's playbook, directly from Mein Kampf, the only book Trump has ever read and that he keeps on his nightstand. I paraphrase, “you need to give your supporters someone to rally against“. Hitler did it with the jews, Trump is currently doing it with Haitian immigrants, but it's easy to see that is his modus operandi.

To be fair, I don’t think Trump has ever read that particular book. 
 

Or for that matter, any book.