Former President Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate, and Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, attend the 9/11 Memorial Service on the 23rd anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024, in New York.
Yuki Iwamura/AP
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Yuki Iwamura/AP
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The leader of a nonprofit organization representing the Haitian community invoked private citizen rights to file a lawsuit Tuesday against former President Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, over the chaos and threats Springfield, Ohio, has endured since Trump first spread false claims about legal immigrants during a presidential debate.
The Haitian Bridge Alliance made the decision after the local prosecutor failed to act, said its attorney, Subodh Chandra of the Cleveland-based Chandra Law Firm.
Individual complaints are rare, but not unheard of, in Ohio. For example, a grocery store might charge a customer for a bounced check. State law requires a hearing before the affidavit can be filed. As of Tuesday afternoon, no complaints had been scheduled.
Trump and Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, are charged with disrupting public services, false alarms, telecommunications harassment, aggravated menacing and aiding and abetting. The filing asks Clark County Municipal Court to find probable cause and issue arrest warrants for Trump and Vance.
“Their persistence and their relentlessness, even when the governor and the mayor say it’s not true, demonstrates willful intent,” Chandra said. “This is a willful violation of criminal law.”
Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump-Vance campaign, said: “President Trump is rightly highlighting the failure of the immigration system overseen by (Vice President) Kamala Harris, which has led to thousands of illegal immigrants pouring into communities like Springfield and many others across the country.”
The 15,000 to 20,000 Haitian immigrants who have arrived in Springfield in recent years, in many cases after being recruited for local jobs, have been granted temporary protected status allowing them to stay legally in the United States.
More than 30 bomb threats have been made against public and local buildings and schools, leading to closures, the deployment of additional law enforcement and the installation of surveillance cameras. Some Haitian residents in the city have also expressed fear for their safety as public criticism has mounted, and Mayor Rob Rue has received death threats.
“If anyone other than Trump and Vance had done what they did — wreaking havoc in Springfield, making bomb threats, evacuating and closing government buildings and schools, threatening the mayor and his family — they would have been arrested by now,” Chandra said. “They are not above the law.”
Chandra said the U.S. Supreme Court’s July decision granting former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution doesn’t apply in this case because Trump is currently a private citizen and Vance was not acting in his capacity as a senator when he amplified rumors that members of Springfield’s 15,000-strong Haitian community were eating people’s pets.
