News just moved today that federal prosecutors in Minneapolis have brought conspiracy charges against 15 Minneapolis demonstrators whom the government has identified as being members of “Antifa.” (I don’t know when or if “Metro Surge” officially ended. But apparently most of the incidents are more recent than the period this winter when Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed.) Our team is currently reviewing the indictment; check out Kate Riga’s latest for more details about the case. But I checked in with staff and our initial sense is that it is likely yet another case of overcharging, perhaps comparable to what happened in Broadview. It contains the same legal theory in which a protest amounts to a conspiracy in which every member of the protest is legally responsible for anything any other protestor does. It’s a dagger at the heart of the 1st Amendment.

I want to share a few more thoughts about yesterday’s news out of the defunct Broadview Six case, specifically the all-but-unprecedented release of the transcript of the grand jury sessions from which the indictments came. This was always a case of wild over-charging at a minimum. And that raised the question of just how prosecutors managed to get the case through a grand jury, even with how low a bar that usually is. Well, now we know. They cheated. They wouldn’t take no for an answer.

As David Kurtz notes here, this case seemed fuzzier than most of the other Trump retribution prosecutions. While the indictments singled out a Democratic candidate and lawmaker and those closely associated with them, none of those were high-profile Trump “enemies” like Tish James or James Comey. The prosecutor who initially led the case showed no signs of being especially Trumpy. Defense attorneys tried from the beginning to pry free evidence of White House and/or DOJ interference or direction in bringing the case. But prosecutors said they looked and there was no communication about it. The judge accepted that statement at face value.

It was almost certainly false.