Will Trump and Vance face criminal charges for their Springfield lies?

A mural painted on an alley wall this month in Springfield, Ohio.

Sept. 26, 2024 3 AM PT

A San Diego-based nonprofit that helps Haitians in Springfield filed an affidavit alleging criminal violations by Trump and Vance.
Springfield has seen at least 33 bomb threats since Vance and Trump began accusing Haitian immigrants of eating dogs and cats.

Hello, and happy Thursday. There are 39 days until the election and today we are talking about falsely shouting “fire” in a crowded theater.

That, of course, was the analogy coined in 1919 by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes when trying to draw boundaries around the 1st Amendment right to free speech. He was basically arguing that there is a limit to what phony-baloney someone can say when people could be harmed by said phony-baloney, even deceptions told for political reasons, an especially revered form of phony-baloney.

Which brings us to Springfield, Ohio, where Haitians — who most definitely have been harmed by the whoppers of Donald Trump and JD Vance — may have a novel route to some accountability: A citizen complaint asking a judge to hold Trump and Vance criminally liable for their pet-munching fairy tales.

Ohio has a weird law that says any person can file an affidavit with a judge asking for someone to be arrested (or at least investigated) for certain crimes, if they can lay out a strong enough case.

The law has been used successfully before — including in the police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014. After prosecutors in that case failed to indict the officers involved, a citizen affidavit convinced a judge that there was probable cause to believe the officers had committed crimes. While that ruling ultimately didn’t lead to charges, it did pressure prosecutors and provide a small dose of accountability.

So far from a stunt, the affidavit filed in Clark County, Ohio, against Trump and Vance this week could have some real bite.

Let’s dig into how.

Donald Trump at a campaign event last month.

Chaos and fear

The affidavit was filed by San Diego-based Haitian Bridge Alliance, a grassroots nonprofit that helps Haitians in Springfield.

Guerline Jozef, its executive director, is a Haitian immigrant herself. When Trump and Vance first started talking about Haitians, her first thought was, “Here we go again.”

But then Trump and Vance kept going, and going. And going. If somehow you’ve missed it, Vance and Trump have repeatedly claimed that legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield are stealing and eating people’s cats and dogs, and maybe even some waterfowl from public lakes.

The Springfield police have said there is no evidence of it. The mayor has said it’s a false claim. The city manager has said it’s a false claim. The governor of Ohio has said it’s a false claim. Even two social media posters, who fanned the flames of the rumor, have since recanted and apologized.

But the calls started coming in from Springfield for Jozef and her team — the people she knows there were scared, she said. Scared to go to work, to school, to walk at night. It’s a vulnerable community that immigrated to the U.S. because of political violence, and didn’t expect the trauma of finding themselves surrounded by that anxiety again in the quiet town they have adopted as home.

Even neighbors and co-workers are suddenly sources of unease. One immigrant told her that the day after the presidential debate, when Trump repeated the lie to millions, the man’s co-workers asked him, “Does he love to eat cats?” she said.

This particular man is alone in America — except for his kitty.

“You can only imagine how terrible this made him feel when his only companion in America is his beloved cat,” she said.

Domino effect

That may seem like a tiny example, but it’s normalizing racism — for those who experience it and those who dish it out.

Springfield has seen at least 33 bomb threats since Vance and Trump began their fear mongering, closing schools, government offices and medical facilities. Highway patrol officers are now stationed in schools. The mayor of Springfield has received threats against his family. The city has declared a state of emergency.

“We have to highlight the fact that yes, [Trump and Vance] created this vile false narrative to scare the Haitian community,” Jozef said. “But this has gone way beyond the Haitian community and really caused chaos in the administration of Springfield itself.”

And the political “free speech” is no longer contained to Trump and Vance. On Wednesday, Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins posted on the social media platform X, then deleted: “Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere. ... All these thugs better get their mind right and their ass out of our country before January 20.”

Jan. 20, 2025, is when a new president will be sworn in, which sounds like a threat.

It’s also no longer contained to Springfield. Haitian Bridge Alliance is receiving calls from places including Brooklyn about threats to immigrants. It received so many threats against its own organization and staff that it had to close its offices in California, and Jozef’s email is inundated with warnings containing the N-word.

“We clearly understand that this rhetoric is rooted in anti-Black racism, white supremacy and xenophobia, and we cannot allow this ... to continue to be the course that America is moving towards,” she said.

Once is ugly. Dozens is illegal

Subodh Chandra is the Ohio lawyer who is handling the affidavit for Haitian Bridge. He’s an ex-Angeleno who has been both a federal prosecutor and the attorney for the city of Cleveland. And he’s the child of Indian immigrants, just like Vance’s wife.

Chandra said it’s not simply that Vance and Trump said something untrue — it’s that they keep saying it over and over again, even after seeing the harm it is causing, and even after being told by authorities it is false.

That’s the kind of ongoing, knowingly false rhetoric he says could be illegal.

“You have this kind of relentless and willful and persistent conduct of disseminating false information, where both Trump and Vance know that they have enormous megaphones and that they have a cult following that will pretty much take the hint from them.”

Chandra argues in his filing that Trump and Vance have committed six crimes, alleging that they:

caused widespread bomb and other threats that resulted in massive disruptions to public services.
knowingly caused alarm in Springfield by continuing to repeat lies that state and local officials have said were false.
committed telecommunications harassment by spreading claims they know to be false during the presidential debate, campaign rallies, nationally televised interviews and social media.
committed aggravated menacing by knowingly making intimidating statements with the intent to abuse, threaten or harass the recipients.
committed another count of aggravated menacing by knowingly causing others to falsely believe that members of the Springfield Haitian community would cause serious physical harm to the person or property of others in Springfield.
violated the complicity statute by conspiring with one another and spreading vicious lies that caused innocent parties to be parties to their various crimes.

What next?

As of Wednesday, the court hadn’t acted, Chandra said.

But he argues there are only two choices: “Either issue arrest warrants or refer the matter to the prosecutor for further investigation.”

He prefers arrest warrants, but that is probably unlikely.

Still, Chandra said that even if the court wants to quash the affidavit, it first has to hold a hearing.

It’s that public airing that could have the impact Haitian Bridge Alliance wants — an open legal proceeding where the harm caused by Trump and Vance’s lies is laid out for all to see, and where the duo might have to justify spreading a dangerous falsehood that Chandra argues they knew was a lie, and that has caused real harm.

“We want that public transparency,” Chandra said.

So do I, and so should we all.