White House Refuses to Rule Out Summary Executions of People on Its Secret Domestic Terrorist List

President Donald Trump has shattered the limits of executive authority by ordering the summary executions of individuals he deems members of designated terrorist organizations He has also tested the bounds of his presidential powers by creating a secret list of domestic terrorist organizations established under National Shield Presidential Memorandum or NSPM- Are Americans that the federal administration deems to be members of domestic terrorist organizations subject to extrajudicial killings like those it suggests are members of designated terrorist organizations The White House Justice Department and Department of War have for more than a month failed to answer this question Lawmakers and other cabinet representatives tell The Intercept that the pregnant silence by the Trump administration has become especially worrisome as the death toll mounts from attacks on alleged members of designated terrorist organizations in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean and as Trump himself makes ever more unhinged threats to imprison or execute his political adversaries In early September The Intercept revealed that elite Special Operators killed the shipwrecked sufferers of a September attack on a suspected drug smuggling boat They have since struck more than other vessels The administration insists the attacks are permitted because the U S is engaged in non-international armed conflict with designated terrorist organizations it refuses to name Experts and lawmakers say these killings are outright murders and that Trump could conceivably use similar lethal force inside the United States The Trump Administration is trying to justify blowing small boats out of the water by arbitrarily calling them designated terrorist organizations a label not grounded in U S statute nor international law but in solely what Trump says Sen Tammy Duckworth D-Ill reported The Intercept If Trump is using this justification to use military force on any individuals he chooses without verified evidence or legal authorization what s stopping him from designating anyone within our own borders in a similar fashion and conducting lethal militarized attacks against them This illegal and dangerous misuse of lethal force should worry all Americans and it can t be accepted as normal Related Facing Years in Prison for Drone Leak Daniel Hale Makes His Event Against U S Assassination Initiative For almost a quarter century the United States has been killing people including American citizens on occasion around the world with drone strikes Beginning as post- counterterrorism operations these targeted killings in Afghanistan Iraq Somalia Yemen and other nations relied on a flimsy legal rationale that consistently eroded respect for international law Details of these operations were kept secret from the American people and civilian casualties were ignored denied and covered up The up-to-date attacks on alleged drug boats lack even the rickety legal rationale of the drone wars sparking fear that there is little to stop the U S regime from taking the unprecedented step of military action against those it deems terrorists within the nation s borders The military has carried out known attacks in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since September killing at least civilians Last week footage of the September double-tap strike shown to select members of Congress ignited a firestorm Trump revealed on camera that he had no issue with releasing the video of the attack This week he denied ever saying it in another example of his increasingly unbalanced behavior The community deserves to know how our establishment is justifying the cold-blooded murder of civilians as lawful and why it believes it can hand out get-out-of-jail-free cards to people committing these crimes stated Jeffrey Stein staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union s National Safety Project on Tuesday as the ACLU the Center for Constitutional Rights and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit for the immediate release of a classified Justice Department s opinion and other documents related to the attacks on boats The Trump administration must stop these illegal and immoral strikes and authorities who have carried them out must be held accountable Since October The Intercept has been asking if the White House would rule out conducting summary executions of members of the list of any such groups or entities designated as domestic terrorist organization s under NSPM- without a response Similar questions posed to the Justice and War departments have also been repeatedly ignored despite both departments offering replies to myriad other queries The Justice Department responded with a message that did not answer the question Political violence has no place in this country and this Department of Justice will investigate identify and root out any individual or violent extremist group attempting to commit or promote this heinous activity a spokesperson stated The Intercept The Trump administration should answer all questions about the terrorist lists Rep Ro Khanna D-Calif notified The Intercept The American people have a right to answers about who is on them and what that means for all of us Rebecca Ingber a former State Department lawyer notes that while the designated terrorist organization label is entirely manufactured the administration is relying on it to summarily execute people in the boat strikes making their application of the terrorist label on the domestic front especially concerning A large number of of us have warned that there is no legal limiting principle to the Administration s suggests of authority to use force and to kill people Ingber now a law professor at Cardozo Law School in New York stated The Intercept This is one of the a multitude of reasons it is so critical that Congress push back on the President s claim that he can just label transporting drugs an armed attack on the United States and then claim the authority to summarily execute people on that basis Related Trump Has Appointed Himself Judge Jury and Executioner Last month members of Congress spoke up against Trump s increasingly authoritarian measures when a group of Democratic lawmakers posted a video on social media in which they reminded military personnel that they are required to disobey illegal orders This led to a Trump tirade that made the White House s failure to dismiss the possibility of summary executions of Americans even more worrisome This is really bad the president wrote on Truth Social and Dangerous to our Country Their words cannot be allowed to stand SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS LOCK THEM UP A follow-up post read SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR punishable by DEATH Trump also reposted a comment that explained HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD What s greater part telling is that the President considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law the six lawmakers Sens Elissa Slotkin Mark Kelly and Reps Jason Crow Chris Deluzio Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan all of them former members of the armed forces or the intelligence society replied in a joint message Every American must unite and condemn the President s calls for our murder and political violence Trump later claimed he did not call for the lawmakers executions For decades Trump has called for violence against including executions of those he dislikes including a group of Black and Latino boys were wrongly accused of raping a white woman jogger in New York s Central Park in immigrants at the southern limit those who carry out hate crimes and mass shootings demonstrators protesting the death of George Floyd the chief suspect in the fatal shooting of a Trump supporter in Portland Oregon former chair of the Joint Chiefs Gen Mark Milley and former Rep Liz Cheney In August Trump also called for Capital capital punishment explaining If somebody kills somebody in the capital Washington we re going to be seeking the death penalty Related Lethal Illusion Understanding the Death Penalty Apparatus In January promptly after being sworn in Trump also signed an order to expand the death penalty and Attorney General Pam Bondi has spent the year carrying out orders to put more Americans to death Eleven states have executed people since January according to the Death Penalty Information Center the highest annual total in more than a decade White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers failed to answer questions about Trump s history of threatening to kill people and his latest unhinged behavior As Trump lobs threats at political foes and his administration seeks to put convicted and supposed criminals to death at home and abroad NSPM- directs hundreds of thousands of federal officers to target U S progressive groups and their donors as well as political activists who profess undefined anti-American antifascist or anti-Christian sentiments The memorandum harkens back to past leadership enemies lists and efforts that led to massive overreach and illegal acts of repression to stifle dissent That includes the House Un-American Programs Committee which began in the s the FBI s secret Counter Intelligence Initiative or COINTELPRO which began in the s and the Patriot Act enacted in the wake of which led to abuses of Black brown and Muslim communities along with racial social environmental animal rights and other social justice activists and groups NSPM- is a greater infringement on freedoms than the Patriot Act Trump s NSPM- represses freedom of speech and association Inspecting any organization with anti-capitalism or anti-American views is anti-American NSPM- is a greater infringement on freedoms than the Patriot Act announced Khanna We re seeing the greatest erosion of civil liberties and human rights in our modern history NSPM- directs Bondi to compile a list of any such groups or entities to be designated as domestic terrorist organization s and Bondi has ordered the FBI to compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism according to a Justice Department memo disclosed by reporter Ken Klippenstein on Saturday The department also shared the December memo Implementing National Protection Presidential Memorandum- Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence with The Intercept The Justice Department memo notes that under Section of NSPM- the FBI in coordination with its partners on the Joint Terrorism Task Forces and consistent with applicable law shall compile a list of groups or entities engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism and provide that list to the Deputy Attorney General The FBI s Joint Terrorism Task Forces are located in each of the FBI s field offices and specifically assistance President Trump s executive orders according to a top FBI official The Justice Department memorandum offers a fictitious apocalyptic vision of urban America which the Trump administration has previously employed to justify its military occupations including mass rioting and destruction in our cities violent efforts to shut down immigration enforcement and targeting of society functionaries or other political actors While Trump has even falsely claimed for example that members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua have engaged in hand-to-hand combat with U S troops on the streets of Washington D C state attorneys general have repeatedly and successfully argued that troop deployments in Chicago Los Angeles and Portland Oregon were illegal because Trump administration contends of rampant civil unrest were uncovered to be overblown or fictional The December Justice Department memo also proposes that certain Antifa-aligned extremists profess extreme viewpoints on immigration radical gender ideology and anti-American sentiment and a willingness to use violence against law-abiding citizenry to serve those beliefs Over the last decade Republicans have frequently blamed antifa for violence and used it as an omnibus term for left-wing activists as if it were an organization with members and a command structure In September Trump signed an executive order designating antifa as a domestic terror organization despite the fact that it is essentially a decentralized leftist ideology a collection of related ideas and political concepts much like feminism or environmentalism Last month the State Department designated four European groups Antifa Ost based in Germany Informal Anarchist Federation International Revolutionary Front a mostly Italian group and Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense both Greek organizations as foreign terrorist organizations because of their alleged threats and attacks against political and economic institutions in Europe The State Department communicated that the FTO designation specifically supports NSPM- The Treasury Department s Office of Foreign Assets Control also designated the groups as specially designated nationals Michael Glasheen a longtime FBI agent serving as operations director of the bureau s national assurance branch was flummoxed by questions about antifa while testifying on Thursday before the House Committee on Homeland Guard He disclosed antifa was the bulk immediate violent threat facing the United States but could not answer basic details about the movement including its size or where it is headquartered The FBI Glasheen explained has conducted more than domestic terrorism investigations this year including approximately antifa investigations and logged a percent increase in arrests He also drew attention to a concerning uptick in the radicalization of our nation s young people specifically those who may be motivated to commit violence and other criminal acts to further social or political objectives stemming from domestic influences Related The Feds Want to Make It Illegal to Even Possess an Anarchist Zine Last month a federal grand jury in Fort Worth Texas indicted nine alleged North Texas Antifa Cell operatives one of them a former Marine Corps reservist on multiple charges including attempted murder stemming from a shooting during a July protest at the ICE Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado in which a local police officer was injured The Justice Department alleges that the North Texas Antifa Cell is part of a larger militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups primarily ascribing to an ideology that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Regime law enforcement personnel and the system of law The December Justice Department memo states that within days the FBI shall disseminate an intelligence bulletin on Antifa and Antifa-aligned anarchist violent extremist groups including their organizations structures funding sources and tactics so that law enforcement partners can effectively investigate and protocol makers can effectively understand the nature and gravity of the threat posed by these extremist groups The memo calls for bounties and a configuration of informants The memo also calls for bounties and a framework of informants The FBI shall establish a cash reward system for information that leads to the triumphant identification and arrest of individuals in the leadership of domestic terrorist organizations reads the document noting that the bureau also aims to establish cooperators to provide information and eventually testify against other members and leadership of domestic terrorist organizations Neither NSPM- nor the December memo mentions summary executions and both speak explicitly in terms of prosecution and arrest of members of domestic terrorist organizations Attacks on members of designated terrorist organizations are justified by another document a classified opinion from the Justice Department s Office of Legal Counsel that contends that narcotics on supposed drug boats are lawful military targets because their cargo generates revenue for cartels whom the Trump administration asserts are in armed conflict with the United States Attached to that secret memo is a similarly secret list of designated terrorist organizations The December memorandum directs Justice Department prosecutors to focus on specific federal crimes highlighted in NSPM- and flags more than federal charges including crimes that may be capital offenses under specific aggravating circumstances such as killing or attempting to kill a federal officer and murder for hire It s notable that the alleged members of designated terrorist organizations summarily killed in boat strikes would never if tried in court receive the death penalty The administration is creating new categories of organizations outside of the law creating immense uncertainty about who and what they intend to target and how Faiza Patel the senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice s Liberty and National Assurance Activity notified The Intercept drawing attention to the administration s invented term designated terrorist organizations But drug trafficking is not war and these actions are patently illegal in the absence of Congressional authorization she added At the same time National Shield Presidential Memorandum is aimed at domestic terrorist organizations another term that has no basis in U S law It is designed to ramp up law enforcement scrutiny of groups espousing a broad swath of First Amendment-protected beliefs from anti-Christianity to anti-Americanism NSPM- does not in any way shape or form authorize military strikes and using it for that would be plainly unlawful The post White House Refuses to Rule Out Summary Executions of People on Its Secret Domestic Terrorist List appeared first on The Intercept