When you hear the words “conspiracy” and “Donald Trump” in the same sentence, what comes to mind? You might think of Trump’s stolen election lies, his embrace of QAnon, or any other number of the conspiracy theories he’s promoted over the past 10 years. But recently, I noticed that conspiracies have also been cropping up in federal indictments, as Trump’s Justice Department has increasingly levied conspiracy charges against activists protesting ICE.
Under US law, a conspiracy is just an agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act. But Steffen Seitz, a litigation fellow at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, told me that conspiracy law poses a special threat to social movements because it “drastically increases the universe of evidence that might be relevant” to prove that people coordinated with each other.
As I write in a new piece for Mother Jones:
Tacking on a conspiracy charge to a protest case does a bit of bibbidi-bobbidi-boo: Suddenly, two people who attend the same demonstration become co-conspirators. ICE watch group chats become fertile ground for FBI investigation. And a sweatshirt that archly says “I’m Antifa!” becomes evidence of violent intent, as the DOJ claimed in its June indictment of 15 Minnesota anti-ICE activists. Benign statements are interrogated, paranoid connections are drawn from mere proximity, and disparate facts are pulled into a single narrative, offered up to judges and juries as proof of synchronized criminal activity.
Does that last part sound familiar? In my piece, I argue that it’s no accident that protest conspiracy charges have surged as conspiracy theorists have become entrenched in our federal government. Both are a way for Trump to obfuscate where true power lies—and claim victimhood while bringing the full force of the security state to bear against his opponents.
— Schuyler Mitchell
