Exclusive: DOJ Taps Gang, Terrorism Prosecutors to Crack Down on Political Groups

The Department of Justice has tapped two prosecutors with expertise in organized crime and terrorism prosecutions to implement a White House directive to crack down on its political opponents, a department spokesperson confirmed to TPM. 

The department told TPM in a statement that the initiative they are leading, called Joint Task Force Vanguard, began in March 2026 in response to NSPM-7, a national security memorandum ordering federal law enforcement and prosecutors to treat ideologies that oppose the administration as signs of domestic terrorism.

Vanguard has already taken credit for several cases filed across the country. In Minneapolis, it accused a group of anti-ICE protesters of forming a supposed “Antifa” conspiracy. In Atlanta, it brought federal charges this month against two people involved in the Georgia Cop City case; their state-level indictments were dismissed one week later.

Brian W. Lynch, a Violent Crime and Racketeering Section prosecutor since 2020 with experience on the Guantanamo prosecution team, and Jason Kellhofer, a longtime counterterrorism prosecutor in Raleigh, North Carolina, are running the initiative as co-directors. They’re likely to bring extensive experience with tools used to take down sophisticated and violent criminal organizations, as well as to nip terrorist plots in the bud: real-time interception of communications, aggressive use of conspiracy statutes, confidential informants. They’re now running a task force whose purpose is to implement NSPM-7, which directed law enforcement to treat beliefs like “anti-Americanism, anti-Capitalism, and anti-Christianity” as warning signs for political violence.

The move suggests that the DOJ plans to use tactics normally reserved for the department’s most dangerous targets — terrorists, organized crime — on protesters. 

“It means that they’re looking at group criminality, conspiracy, racketeering, and what that means is that they’re going after tough charges,” Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Georgetown Law School, told TPM. “To the extent that that makes sense for the mafia or for violent street gangs, it makes less sense for political protesters.”

Early cases

The effort began in March in response to NSPM-7, a DOJ official told TPM in a statement. Lynch and Kellhofer report directly to Todd Blanche in his ongoing capacity as Deputy Attorney General. (Blanche also now serves as Acting Attorney General.) 

The DOJ described Vanguard’s purpose as “enforcing a comprehensive national strategy through investigating, prosecuting, and disrupting entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation designed to suppress lawful political activity or obstruct the rule of law.” 

It also pushed back against criticism that the approach targets people for their speech, casting the task force’s work as part of a broad fight against political violence. The DOJ said that Vanguard would pursue cases “while upholding the cherished principles of the First Amendment.” 

TPM has identified four cases brought under the task force. Not all of them are focused on the kinds of protester cases that provoke concern among civil liberties advocates. Out of the four, one focused on right-wing extremism. Vanguard this month charged a South Carolina man for allegedly posting flyers with swastikas, a noose, and a Totenkopf on a Charlotte, North Carolina Jewish community complex. The man was allegedly inspired by neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen. In another June case, Oklahoma prosecutors charged a man over threats he allegedly made to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD).

In other cases brought by Vanguard, the DOJ’s approach — inflected by mob and terrorism cases — is already visible. 

In Minneapolis, prosecutors recently accused a group of anti-ICE demonstrators of conspiring to impede or injure federal law enforcement. One woman “side swiped” a police car, causing a collision, the indictment says. Another man allegedly kicked a government vehicle, “causing dents.” 

Prosecutors there appear to have obtained extensive information from Signal chats and other communications between the protesters, saying in a court filing that they’ve collected 2.5 terabytes of “surveillance and body camera videos,” “Signal messages” and more, adding up to more than 20 terabytes total. 

In Georgia, Vanguard brought charges against two people who participated in the Cop City protest. Cop City, a protest movement against a law enforcement training facility that started in 2021, evolved into a Georgia state RICO prosecution after the encampment was cleared in 2022. Georgia prosecutors brought a RICO indictment against more than 60 people in 2023, though it was dismissed. The dismissal is now on appeal. 

The task force took credit this month for federal charges against two Cop City protesters, Katie Marie Kloth and Tyler John Norman. A Georgia judge also dismissed state charges against the two this month, finding that the state took too long to prosecute. 

From blogging to prosecuting

Normally, federal prosecutors’ political backgrounds would be irrelevant to any discussion of their actions. For decades, the DOJ has been rare among global law enforcement agencies in its independence from its country’s political processes. President Richard Nixon was forced to resign after trying to interfere in the department; Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stepped down during the George W. Bush administration after removing several U.S. attorneys for partisan political reasons. Republicans capitalized on an airport tarmac conversation between Obama-era Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton as fodder for claims of improper interference in the DOJ’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Trump caused several scandals during his first term that stemmed from attempts to interfere in the DOJ. 

But Trump has brought all that to an end during his second term. He’s personally directed prosecutors to charge his critics; the DOJ helped deliver a settlement in which the IRS agreed to never audit Trump for any past tax returns. Prosecutors have pursued hundreds of cases against anti-Trump protesters across the country that they were then forced to drop after the evidence failed to sustain the charges in court. 

All of this has led to judges across the country losing trust in the DOJ, and also to closer scrutiny of the federal prosecutors who bring politicized cases. 

Kellhofer worked in DOJ headquarters as an acting deputy chief in the counterterrorism section, per a bio released as part of a conference he participated in at Duke Law School. He’s prosecuted material support for terrorism cases, and once charged a Russian military contractor in a bribery and murder-for-hire scheme. 

Lynch joined the DOJ in 2020 after spending years working violent crime as a state prosecutor in Ohio. As a JAG, he helped with prosecutions in Guantanamo and advised in a U.S.-supervised court in Afghanistan, per a LinkedIn profile for Lynch. He’s used the RICO statute to prosecute gang members across the country, a review of court records shows. 

Lynch, TPM found, also posted several times on conservative website American Thinker; the last post was in 2020. A description of his career in one post matched his LinkedIn profile; a DOJ spokesman confirmed to TPM that he was the author. 

One column accused the media of soft-pedaling attacks by Islamic terrorists and, in the wake of violent events, hoping that the perpetrators are conservatives; another accused President Obama of engaging in “banana republic tactics.” 

As COVID spread across the country in May 2020, Lynch published an article criticizing media organizations for what he described as having “gleefully reported” that the death toll at the time exceeded U.S. losses in the Vietnam War. He argued that it was all part of a conspiracy to hurt President Trump. 

“The progressive and mainstream media despise President Trump and his supporters,” Lynch wrote. “The media have an incentive to keep America shut down and prevent the economy from rebounding.”

“To that end, the media will stop at nothing to prevent President Trump’s re-election in 2020, even if that means financial ruin for a sizable portion of the American population,” he added. “While the threat from the virus (particularly to the elderly and vulnerable groups) is real, the fake news media’s coverage is a disgrace and destroyed whatever sliver of credibility the institution still had.”