House Democrats are gearing up for investigations into the Trump administration’s push to investigate left-wing political protests.
House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) asked Attorney General Todd Blanche on Monday for records relating to DHS and DOJ’s use of undercover agents to surveil left-wing protesters in Minneapolis over the past year.
Garcia is also seeking records relating to “Operation Puppet Master,” a recently revealed DHS probe into supposed backers of Minneapolis protests that saw the department take a strikingly expansive view of its powers, including issuing an administrative subpoena for the SEIU’s financial records.
DHS’s Minneapolis investigation began alongside Operation Metro Surge, during which the Trump administration flooded the city with federal immigration enforcement officers. Homeland Security Investigations, a DHS agency empowered to conduct undercover operations, took the lead on infiltrating protests, which ranged from plans to block ICE enforcement to an April No Kings rally. HSI authorized the investigations after DHS officers killed two protesters.
“Instead of investigating the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, DHS sought to criminalize U.S. citizens exercising their constitutional rights and protesting the Trump Administration’s abuses,” Garcia wrote in the letter. “DHS crossed the line of routine law enforcement into targeting political dissent—a violation that is unacceptable to American democracy and demands strict accountability for all those involved.”
Reps. Delia Ramirez (D-IL), Jim McGovern (D-MA), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) separately said last week that they were opening an inquiry into National Security Presidential Memorandum-7. Under that memo, the White House directed federal law enforcement to target opposition groups and treat a broad array of left-wing beliefs as indicia of likelihood to commit acts of domestic terrorism.
A DOJ spokesperson didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
In a new filing in the Minneapolis conspiracy case on Friday, federal prosecutors defended the surveillance.
“The UCAs gained access and were members of DAMN and attending meetings for organizations that they are investigating is a standard law enforcement practice,” the filing reads.
A large portion of the filing focuses on a claim of selective prosecution. Attorney Kevin Riach, who revealed the scope of the surveillance in a filing earlier this month, indicated in an earlier court filing that he intends to make a future claim of selective prosecution; he has not yet done so. Prosecutors nonetheless devoted parts of the filing to argue that no partisan political attacks were presented to the grand jury that returned the indictment.
Prosecutors also wrote that their investigation “revealed that Defendants raised money to support their blockades and other obstructive actions and the subpoenas were tool used to attempt to discern the source of that funding.”
A Minnesota federal prosecutor hired under Trump II named Sommer Honeycutt was listed as having signed the filing. Metadata on the document lists Brian W. Lynch, a federal prosecutor who marched on the Capitol on January 6, as its author.
Lynch, a longtime gang prosecutor, co-directs Joint Task Force Vanguard, the DOJ’s effort to use organized crime and counterterrorism investigative methods to target the Trump administration’s political opponents.
The document lists Lynch as working in the Office of Deputy Attorney General; the DOJ earlier told TPM that Vanguard reports directly to the Deputy Attorney General, a role until recently held by Blanche.
