Category: Police / Law Enforcement / ICE

Haitian group seeks criminal charges vs. Trump, Vance in Springfield court filing

News By Jessica Orozco Updated 41 minutes ago

The Haitian Bridge Alliance filed a bench memorandum and supporting affidavit in Clark County Municipal Court on Tuesday, asking local authorities to charge former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance with multiple criminal offenses related to claims they made about Springfield’s Haitian community.

The memorandum was filed by Guerline Jozef on behalf of the national nonprofit the Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA), asking a Municipal Court judge to charge Vance and Trump with disrupting public services, making false alarms, two counts of complicity, two counts of telecommunications harassment and aggravated menacing.

The filing asks that the court find probable cause for the charges and issue arrest warrants for Trump and Vance.

Under Ohio law, a private citizen seeking to “cause an arrest or prosecution” can file an affidavit with “a reviewing official” — a judge, prosecuting attorney or magistrate — to have them review the facts and decide if a complaint should be filed.

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said Tuesday afternoon that while the city recognizes the serious nature of the allegations, “it is important to allow the legal process to unfold.” He said it is “critical that we’re sensitive to these issues like immigration” and are grounded in facts.

“Springfield remains dedicated to fostering constructive dialogue and addressing concerns with integrity,” Rue said. “Springfield’s priority continues to be the wellbeing of our residents, including the Haitian immigrant community. Any actions that disrupt public services or spread false alarms are taken seriously and we’ll continue to uphold our commitment to protect public order.”

This bench memorandum and affidavit comes through The Chandra Law Firm in Cleveland, and according to its website, Jozef, the HBA’s co-founder and executive director, is seeking Trump and Vance’s immediate arrest for:

  • Disrupting public service “by causing widespread bomb and other threats that resulted in massive disruptions to the public services;”
  • Making false alarms “by knowingly causing alarm in the Springfield community by continuing to repeat lies that state and local officials have said were false;”
  • Telecommunications harassment “by spreading claims they know to be false during the presidential debate, campaign rallies, nationally televised interviews, and social media;”
  • Aggravated menacing “by knowingly making intimidating statements with the intent to abuse, threaten, or harass the recipients, including Trump’s threat to deport immigrants who are here legally to Venezuela, a land they have never known” and “by knowingly causing others to falsely believe that members of Springfield’s Haitian community would cause serious physical harm to the person or property of others in Springfield;”
  • Complicity “by conspiring with one another and spreading vicious lies that caused innocent parties to be parties to their various crimes.”

“Because the prosecuting attorney has not yet acted to protect the community and hold Trump and Vance accountable for what they have instigated, Ms. Jozef asks the court to find probable cause based on the facts presented and issue arrest warrants for both Trump and Vance,” the law firm stated. “The prosecuting attorney then must make a public decision about whether that office stands for the rule of law — or whether it will further coddle Trump and Vance with complete inaction.”

Subodh Chandra, Jozef’s lead counsel, said in a statement that the Haitian community is “suffering in fear” due to Trump and Vance’s “relentless, irresponsible, false alarms, and public services have been disrupted.” Chandra said the two politicians “must be held accountable to the rule of law,” claiming that others who “have wreaked havoc” would have been arrested already.

“They think they’re above the law. They’re not,” Chandra said.

Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung didn’t comment directly on the court filing, but said that 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.” (snip-More)

https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/haitian-group-seeks-criminal-charges-vs-trump-vance-in-springfield-court-filing/ZBLJL63EUBAQBJT2UOC7OSUJVM/#

Ya win some, ya lose some…

I noticed the day’s news yesterday evening; it seemed to stay about even on the good news-bad news bit. For instance, over the weekend, we got the story about the Portage Co. OH sheriff harassing people with Harris-Walz signs, and being outright political. It was separately reported, and I can’t find it now, but when some people tried to get the state’s SoS to somehow stop or discipline the sheriff, the SoS, who truly has no authority in these matters, reportedly declined because of how soon the election is, then also made a political statement, which is unethical in most states, but likely not illegal in a Republican state. Anyway, Monday there is a wonderful story; the Portage Co., OH elections board went to work on the issue.

In Texas, it is quite legal and just fine for citizens to surround traveling vehicles and harass the people inside to the point of fear for their very lives. The harassed bus driver was awarded a small amount, Not sure what else we expected, maybe due process of law and respect for human life on the highways of the United States, but I guess it is TX, after all. Who needs stinkin’ laws, anyway…

So back up North in Nebraska, there is a Republican with a conscience who honors his oath of office. This is good news, because, of course, because we’ve already read that GA will be required to hand count the number of ballots cast to be sure their number of ballots equals the number of votes tallied. That will surely go well, says the year 2000 …

Finally, one of the worst people in the world exists in the US. Here to give us balance is someone rich who seems to be good.

I’ll wrap this up for now. Who knows what will happen later today?

New Court Filings Place Matt Gaetz at a Party at the Center of the Sex Trafficking Scandal

This is the first public filing that cites sworn testimony alleging that Gaetz attended one of the long-rumored parties with a teenage girl.

https://www.notus.org/florida/new-court-filings-matt-gaetz-dorworth-sex-party

Jose Pagliery September 20, 2024 01:35 AM | Updated: September 20, 2024 10:28 AM

Rep. Matt Gaetz attended a drug-fueled sex party in 2017 with the 17-year-old girl at the center of the alleged sex trafficking scandal, according to legal documents filed to a Florida federal court shortly before midnight Thursday, which cite sealed affidavits from three eyewitness testimonies.

The minor, who was a junior in high school at the time, arrived in her mother’s car for a July 15, 2017, party at the Florida home of Chris Dorworth, a lobbyist and friend of Gaetz’s, according to a court filing written by defense attorneys who interviewed witnesses as part of an ongoing civil lawsuit Dorworth brought in 2023.

The lobbyist claimed he had been unfairly dragged into the alleged sex trafficking scandal that has dogged Gaetz and his allies for years. Dorworth ultimately dropped the case, but lawyers filed these documents in an attempt to recoup attorneys fees for a lawsuit they say should never have been brought.

One eyewitness cited in the court filings, a young woman referred to as K.M., provided a sworn affidavit that claimed the teenage girl was naked, partygoers were there to “engage in sexual activities,” and “alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy … and marijuana” were present. The teenage girl was identified in the filings only as A.B.

“The discovery taken in this case to date reflects that on Saturday, July 15, 2017 … Dorworth, hosted a party at his residence … with the following guests present: (1) A.B.; (2) K.M.; (3) B.G.; (4) Matt Gaetz,” lawyers wrote in the filing, also listing several others. The defense lawyers filed testimonies from those three women — who the attorneys say placed Gaetz at Dorworth’s house that night — under seal pending a judge’s approval to make the records public.

Additionally, Gaetz’s own ex-girlfriend — who was present at the party — provided testimony that lawyers say rebuts Dorworth’s claims that he was not there.NOTUS independently verified that Gaetz and one of the women who testified were previously involved in a relationship; she is only identified in the court filing by her initials, B.G.

The congressman’s ex-girlfriend’s eleventh hour testimony on Sept. 3 came just two days before Dorworth dropped his lawsuit, defense attorneys said in the filing. The defense lawyers also relied on Dorworth’s geolocated cell phone records, which showed that he communicated constantly with the congressman that day.The defense’s court filings show a hired digital forensic examiner identified Gaetz’s number, which has a Florida panhandle 850 area code and texted back and forth 30 times that day and then called Dorworth twice in the hours before the evening revelry. “B.G., another attendee at that party, confirmed A.B.’s testimony under penalty of perjury,” defense lawyers wrote.

This marks the first time that sworn testimony has been referenced in public court filings alleging that the congressman attended one of the long-rumored parties tied to an alleged underage sex scandal.Previous reports have revealed details of ex-politician and Gaetz friend Joel Greenberg’s confession letter that was never made public, which described how Gaetz would allegedly pay him to arrange several sexual encounters with young women — including a 17-year-old girl. Greenberg is serving an 11-year prison sentence for a list of charges, including fraud and sex trafficking with a child.

There have also been reports of Venmo payment transactions that were also never released showing the congressman paying Greenberg on at least one occasion.

In 2021, Gaetz appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show and asserted, “The person doesn’t exist. I have not had a relationship with a 17-year-old. That is totally false.” Gaetz has denied allegations that he has ever had sex with a minor or participated in sex trafficking.

The Department of Justice investigated Gaetz and ultimately declined to file criminal charges.

Gaetz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Records also show that A.B., who was born in 1999, attended three weekly deposition sessions in July and testified in front of lawyers in Boulder, Colorado.

The new details were released in a cache of court filings that were ironically made public as a direct result of the congressman’s friend, Dorworth, trying to make this disappear.

When the DOJ dropped the investigation, Dorworth sued several people including Greenberg, and the woman who claimed she was sex-trafficked by Gaetz when she was only 17.

Dorworth responded by text message Friday morning, repeating his claim that he “never met” the teenager, “not once in my life.”

“She is also lying about Matt Gaetz,” he added.

Dorworth said his account is supported by a polygraph test he took years ago during which he was asked about the alleged encounters, and he noted that he is “still suing Joel, his parents and his company in state court.” He also took issue with the way defense lawyers referenced material that he stressed was “confidential.”

—

The story has been updated with Dorworth’s respone. (sic)

Jose Pagliery is a reporter at NOTUS.

Peace & Justice History for 9/20:

September 20, 1830
The National Negro Convention, a group of 38 free black Americans from eight states, met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with the express purpose of abolishing slavery and improving the social status of African Americans. They elected Richard Allen president and agreed to boycott slave-produced goods and encourage free-produce organizations. One of the most active would be the Colored Female Free Produce Society, which urged the boycott of all slave-produced goods.
Read more
 Richard Allen
 
National Negro Convention leaders 1879
================
September 20, 1850
The District of Columbia abolished the slave trade though slavery itself was not outlawed. Washington had been home to the largest slave market in the country. This was an element of the Compromise of 1850.
The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act 
================
September 20, 1906
Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” a realist novel, was published, exposing the dangerous conditions and deplorable sanitation in Chicago’s meat-packing plants. Reaction from readers was intense, including President Theodore Roosevelt who coined the term “muckrakers” to describe Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and other writers who exposed corruption in government and business [what we’d now call investigative reporting].

“The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society …
if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing
but muck, their power of usefulness is gone.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
More on the muckrakers 
================
September 20, 1932
Rabindranath Tagore urges resistance to practice of “untouchability,” British India.
================
September 20, 1946
The first Cannes Film Festival began in that French Riviera resort town. It had originally been planned for 1939 but Hitler’s invasion of Poland that year, and later France, delayed plans until after the war.
The first Grand Prix and the International Peace Prize were awarded to “The Last Chance” by Leopold Lindtberg of Switzerland, a movie (shot on location) about how three Allied soldiers, including two escaped prisoners of war, lead a group of Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied northern Italy across the Alps to safety in nominally neutral Switzerland. Cannes festival history 
================
September 20, 1997
3,000 protesters helped to rip up the railroad tracks leading from Krummel nuclear power station to the main Hamburg-Berlin line. The previous year two doctors had sued for closure of the plant due to the increased incidence of leukemia among the population around the plant.
In January, a train carrying nuclear waste derailed near the reactor at Krummel.
At the time, Germany’s 19 nuclear reactors generated 34 per cent of the country’s electricity; in 2005 it was down to 26 percent.
================
September 20, 1999
A multinational peacekeeping force landed in East Timor in an attempt to restore law and order to the territory. Indonesian militias had killed thousands following the overwhelming vote by the East Timorese for independence from Jakarta on September 4.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september20

Florida sheriff fed up with school shooting hoaxes posts boy’s mugshot to social media

This is sickening, so of course it is Florida.  Seriously this is an adult sheriff mad at other adults and taking it out on a child.  This is an 11 year old, impressionable child who has not formed critical thinking skills.   In Florida this boy couldn’t read books with LGBTQ+ characters or plots, But we think they are smart enough to process the wrongness of their actions?  If someone had talked him into taking off his clothing and letting them take pictures, we would not blame the kid would we.  Seriously this is a 5th grader, being perp walked by adults.  Tell me how this teaches the kid anything but the bigger the bully who carries a gun the more they can push around others.  This trauma of being arrested, placed in a cop car, treated like a criminal is going to scar this child for life.  Being locked in a cell, hell did they book and process him … with all that entails.  Where is the right of the minor to have his parents present.   There are better ways to handle this.  All because adults don’t want to give up their damn guns.  Hugs.  Scottie

A Florida sheriff fed up with a spate of false school shooting threats is taking a new tactic to try get through to students and their parents: he’s posting the mugshot of any offender on social media. (Sept. 17, 2024)

Clark State security finds suspicious package on campus, rules out threat

(I clicked on a Springfield New-Sun article the other day; they let you read everything if you start an account or register or whatever; email address, user name, and a password. Anyway, it’s a very polite paper, and the work, so far as I’ve seen, is exemplary. If you click through to the page, take a look at their headlines to see how things are going in Springfield, thanks to the Republican ticket. Some of it is good news for residents; there is balance.)

News By Brooke Spurlock 3 hours ago

Clark State is investigating after officials found a suspicious package this morning on the College’s Springfield campus.

The college’s security found the package around 8 a.m. on the Leffel Lane campus and immediately contacted police, according to a statement on the college’s website.

“Police responded quickly and determined that the package was not of concern and no threat exists,” the statement said.

Administrators and police searched the buildings and campus before the Springfield Police Division said the campus was safe at 11:12 a.m.

Clark State closed all of its campuses this week and moved to remote classes through Friday as a result of two email threats of a potential bombing and shooting from last weekend.

https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/clark-state-security-finds-suspicious-package-on-campus-rules-out-threat/4Z2NNWTAZRDS7MS4L7EUN76AFA/#

Haters are going to hate, Republicans are going to try to spark hate everywhere. Lies are not a bad thing to them as long as they win so they can continue to hate.

Ohio Town Evacuates City Hall And Elementary School After Bomb Threat Following Trump’s “Pet Eating” Lies
Springfield Cancels Annual Street Festival Over Threats
Ohio College Cancels All Events After Shooting Threat
Second Ohio College Cancels Classes Over Threats
Ohio Gov: Haitians Are Here Legally, They’re Good Workers, “This Piece Of Garbage Is Simply Not True”
Ohio Lt Gov Jokes About Racist Anti-Haitian Claims

A day after a Springfield school and other public buildings were evacuated and closed due to bomb threats, and the same day that two other Springfield elementary schools were evacuated and one middle school closed due to a new, separate bomb threat, Husted posted a photo of two geese on X Friday morning with the comment, “Most Americans agree that these migrants should be deported.” Husted’s spox has refused to comment. He first appeared here in 2012 when as Ohio secretary of state he eliminated extended hours for early voting.

Ohio AG Doubles-Down On “Witnesses” To Pet Eating
Miami’s NBA Team Condemns Anti-Haitian Racism
DeSantis Busted In Huge Lie About Abortion Petitions
Far-Right Oklahoma Schools Chief Faces New Scrutiny
Frequent Porn Shop Patron Wants To Ban Birth Control
Ohio Sheriff Calls For Menacing Harris Supporters

“When people ask me…What’s gonna happen if the Flip – Flopping, Laughing Hyena Wins?? I say…write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards! Sooo…when the Illegal human ‘Locust’ (which she supports!) Need places to live…We’ll already have the addresses of the their New families…who supported their arrival!” Zuchowski wrote.

Read the full article. Replies to his post are turned off. Zuchowski made news several years ago for a rant about the name change for the Cleveland Indians, which he claimed was “erasing our heritage.”

Trump Golf Course Gunman Backed Trump In 2016
Cultists Create Fake Profiles For Golf Course Gunman
Neighbor: People Feared “Cuckoo” Florida Gunman

“I’ve seen the guns myself and all, and, yeah, they had a lot of guns and stuff over there, and, yeah, a lot of people were afraid of him back in the day,” she said.

DeSantis: Florida Will Conduct Its Own Shooting Probe
Trump Blames Biden And Harris For Florida Gunman: Their Inflammatory Language Causes Me To Be Shot At

“These are people that want to destroy our country. It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat. They do it with a combination of rhetoric and lawsuits they wrap me up in.

Peace & Justice History for 9/16

September 16, 1837
William Whipper, a wealthy negro from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, published “An Address on Non-Resistance to Offensive Aggression” in the The Colored American, outlining his commitment to a strictly non-violent response to the evils of slavery. This landmark essay predated Thoreau’s on “Civil Disobedience” by 12 years.

“ …fatal error arises from the belief that the only method of maintaining peace, is always to be ready for war.”
William Whipper
Whipper edited a newspaper, The National Reformer, a publication of the National Moral Reform Society, and furnished food and transportation assistance to fugitive slaves who reached Pennsylvania.
A biography of William Whipper 
September 16, 1939
August Dickmann, a German and a Jehovah’s Witness, became the first conscientious objector (CO) to be executed by the Nazis during World War II. The execution by firing squad took place in Sachsenhausen concentration camp before all prisoners, including 400 Jehovah’s Witness inmates.

NY Times, Sept 16, 1939
Though threatened by Commandant Hermann Baranowsky with the same fate, none of the remaining 400 Witnesses renounced their CO position. Later, the Nazis commonly executed Witnesses by guillotine or hanging, not wanting to spend bullets on COs. German military courts sentenced and executed 270 Jehovah’s Witnesses, the largest number of COs executed from any victim group during World War II.

August Dickmann
He Died for a Principle
September 16, 1974
A federal judge dismissed all charges against American Indian Movement (AIM) leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means stemming from the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

.Dennis BanksRussell Means

On February 27, 1973, AIM and supporters seized control of Wounded Knee to draw attention to corruption and conditions on the Pine Ridge (Lakota Sioux) reservation.
Wounded Knee was the site where, on December 29, 1890, over 200 Sioux men, women and children were mercilessly gunned down by U.S. cavalry.
We Shall Remain  The Legacy of Wounded Knee 
September 16, 1974
President Gerald Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War deserters and draft-evaders, provided they swear allegiance to the country and agree to work two years in the branch of the military they had abandoned. He did this one month following his pardon of resigned former President Richard Nixon.
September 16, 1991
The Philippine Senate rejected a treaty allowing continued operation of U.S. military bases in the Philippines. The Americans had occupied the Philippines since 1898 (except after surrendering control to the Japanese in 1942 until the end of World War II), though on a “temporary” basis. More than two dozen U.S. military installations were established in the country, even after independence in 1945, notably Clark Air Base and the naval station at Subic Bay, the largest U.S. military installations in Asia.
September 16, 2003
New York Stock Exchange Chair Dick Grasso resigned amid a furor over his compensation package that would reach $139.5 million in one year.

Dick Grasso
The details of the plan and the reaction

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september16

Strangely Blogged

This blog kills fascists. Eventually. It’s a process I’m working on. Be patient with me.

This Tenet Thing–

Since 2016, I’ve felt sort of hyperaware about the potentiality of Russian disinfo because obviously, WikiLeaks and the IRA. Per the Senate Intelligence Committee, in multiple volumes, this was anything but a hoax. The claim Trump didn’t welcome it and appreciate it is more than answered by his campaign’s silence about it and even attempted cover-up. Money was funneled through Facebook and Twitter ads and RW-pressure groups like NRA. I joke that we are still living in 2016 because we are still finding out how that election was, well, weird. 

I deleted a post about how weird it was that Benny Johnson was a dupe to launder Russian talking points in the Tenet exploit because I realized that his basic dopiness and right-wing credulity is a whole fucking bigger mood than I was handling at the moment. We get that RW dopey incendiaries are out here–and they are pretty well-funded domestically as it is. Like, you pick a random concern-trolling “Liberty” “Freedom” “Heritage” or “Family”-labelled group from the last 100 years, and it was probably founded by some freaky Christian billionaire bigot family like the DeVos, Wilkes, Prince, Mellon, Coors, Koch, Busch, etc. The family-tree of theocratic and Bircher-light think tankitude has been incestuous and generously endowed since forever. 

But where there is money and batshit, you have a real problem–people who love the hell out of money and don’t care what degree of batshit they spew. If you wanted useful idiots for foreign actors, this is one way you could open up a path for useful idiots to wrongfully mobilize people by playing on their fears and so on. Propaganda is cheap and effective. Even when we try to sanction the fuck out of the players to try and make it prohibitively costly to shit in the US litterbox–someone will try it.

Part of the reason why is we have a great big permission-structure to lie on the GOP side of things. We talk about it, but I don’t think we talk about it as much as we need to. The media is in part at fault, but also, money has generated a whole right-wing puke funnel, just feeding viewers like baby birds. And the results of the propaganda: fear and anger–short circuit logical critical thinking pathways. Well-fed ducklings become sitting ducks. 

The internet influencer thing though, is even more perverse. There’s no reason to believe these people are anything but cons. I’ve thought of it as the “Triumph of the Swill”, because it’s propaganda without even artistry or competence. It relies on people being poorly educated or getting hopped-up on the idea that contrarianism is “independent thinking”–because you are a super genius of rare qualities, you can see through Big Atmosphere’s lies since Joseph Priestly and reject climate change, or see where that shill Jenner was headed with his vaccination/germ theory nonsense. You have clearly beat the mentality of Darwin and Le Compte de Buffon regarding that evolution jazz, too. 

Conspiracy theories proliferate and why not? Anything might be true once anything can be called false. 

Why not DARVO Russia and Ukraine? Why not introduce a little Holocaust denial? Why not suggest civil wars are actually good and healthy, or that secession could be beneficial to a large US State?

Harmful, wrongheaded views can be pimped out to attractive or engaging morons, who speak down to controversy-curious people without the tools to resist. They’ll even have you believing education itself is a problem and suggest you do away with it. 

I think it’s good it’s being addressed, but the right wing is super-great at trying to say their free speech right are denied whenever they get told to stop being shills for utter bullshit. I get the feeling the pool of people who have been Russian-cash injected and super-bullshit charged will widen. And yes to people maybe being made examples of, because the shit has to stop. 

But we clearly have a problem with toxic “elements” in our political environment. Some remediation feels like a good thing. Geting people to realize and care that one side has been enabling foreign propaganda to influence us and to recognize it as a national security threat is very important–that we haven’t been screaming about it enough since 2016 feels like a failure. 

Also the Feds need to do Posobiec and Flynn. because I can’t believe those asses aren’t being handled from elsewhere. 

at September 06, 2024  

Labels: 2016 Presidential election, assholes, GOP, journalism, new media, old media, propaganda, social media, trump

Justice Department Announces Terrorism Charges Against Senior Leaders of Hamas

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Defendants Are Senior Leaders of Hamas Responsible for Planning, Supporting, and Perpetrating Hamas’s October 7 Terrorist Attacks in Israel Resulting in the Brutal Murders of More Than a Thousand Innocent Civilians, Including Over 40 American Citizens

Note: The complaint was unsealed on Sept. 3 and can be viewed here. 

The Justice Department announced today the unsealing of terrorism, murder conspiracy, and sanctions-evasion charges against six senior leaders of Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization. The charges relate to the defendants’ central roles in planning, supporting, and perpetrating the terrorist atrocities that Hamas committed in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 (the October 7 Hamas Massacres), involving the murders and kidnappings of countless innocent civilians, including American citizens, which was the culmination of Hamas’s decades-long campaign of terrorism and violence against Israel and its allies, including American citizens. The defendants are either deceased or remain at large. 

“The Justice Department has charged Yahya Sinwar and other senior leaders of Hamas for financing, directing, and overseeing a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the national security of the United States,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “On October 7th, Hamas terrorists, led by these defendants, murdered nearly 1200 people, including over 40 Americans, and kidnapped hundreds of civilians. This weekend, we learned that Hamas murdered an additional six people they had kidnapped and held captive for nearly a year, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23 year old Israeli American. We are investigating Hersh’s murder, and each and every one of Hamas’ brutal murders of Americans, as an act of terrorism. The charges unsealed today are just one part of our effort to target every aspect of Hamas’ operations. These actions will not be our last.”

“Yahya Sinwar and the other senior leaders of Hamas are charged today with orchestrating this terrorist organization’s decades-long campaign of mass violence and terror — including on October 7th. On that horrible day, Hamas terrorists viciously massacred nearly 1,200 innocent men, women, and children, including over 40 Americans, kidnapped hundreds more, and used sexual violence as a weapon of brutality,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. “Since that horrific day, we have worked to investigate and hold accountable those responsible, and we will not rest until all those who kidnapped or murdered Americans are brought to justice. Our thoughts continue to be with the families of all the victims of this barbaric terrorist attack.”

“From the moment Hamas launched its horrific attack on October 7, the FBI has been dedicated to identifying and charging those responsible for these heinous crimes,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “The FBI has and will continue to relentlessly investigate these attacks on civilians, including Americans. Hamas is a Foreign Terrorist Organization with a long history of violence, and the group’s actions have resulted in increased terrorism threats in the U.S. and against American interests throughout the world. Countering terrorism remains our number one priority, and our work continues.”

“The core mission of the National Security Division is to protect Americans from violent terrorists and extremist organizations like Hamas,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “The atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel on October 7 are intolerable, and the Justice Department will not rest in our pursuit to hold Hamas accountable for perpetrating its campaign of terror, death, and destruction.”

“For decades, Hamas and its leadership have dedicated themselves to the eradication of the State of Israel, and to murdering, maiming, and brutalizing anyone — including dozens of Americans — who stood in their way,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York. “The October 7 Hamas Massacres – in which over 40 American citizens were murdered – is only the latest act of savagery carried out by Hamas. This office has long been dedicated to serving as a bulwark against terrorism, and striking blows against its leaders. Our commitment is clear: if you hurt one member of our community, you hurt all of us — and we stand with all victims of Hamas’ reign of terror. We will bring justice to this terrorist organization from the top down for the atrocities they have committed.”  

According to court documents, Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyya, commonly known as Hamas, is a terrorist organization that was founded in 1987, and has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the United States since 1997. From its inception, Hamas’ stated purpose has been to create an Islamic Palestinian state throughout Israel by eliminating the State of Israel through violent holy war, or jihad. Hamas also promotes attacks against the U.S. and its citizens and, over more than two decades, Hamas has murdered and injured dozens of Americans as part of its campaign of violence and terror. (snip-More)

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-terrorism-charges-against-senior-leaders-hamas