Harmeet Dhillon Dialed Up Threats against Douglas Micko

Among the people who participated in an online mob targeting Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko after he refused arrest warrants for Don Lemon and Georgia Fort in January were Jack Posobiec, whose past incitement led a guy from North Carolina to drive to DC and shoot up a pizza joint filled with children. It included Brandon Straka, who played a role in ginning up confrontation at the Michigan vote count in 2020. Straka who was prosecuted, then pardoned, for his role in January 6; at one point current makebelieve Los Angeles US Attorney Bill Essayli — a close ally of Harmeet’s — represented him. Straka posted Don Lemon’s video with Micko’s image superimposed on it. Others who targeted Micko included Libs of Tik Tok, who has a long history of ginning up violence against those whose political views she dislikes. Libs cited Fox News; Fox News’ deportation propagandist, Bill Melugin, was among the first to target Micko. Reminder: Harmeet picked a hilarious fight with Ed Whelan over his correction of Melugin’s attempt to target the Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz. It’s one tidy mob, this far right fever swamp. And according to a NYT story on the struggles Minnesota’s judges have faced to uphold rule of law in January, this mob had the expected result: in the wake of Harmeet’s attack on Micko on Megyn Kelly’s show, he and his family had to be moved for their own safety. Justice Department officials were blasting Judge Micko, noting that his wife works in the office of Minnesota’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, a Democrat. “I don’t even want to say ‘judge,’” Harmeet K. Dhillon, a senior department official, said in an interview that day with the journalist Megyn Kelly. Judge Micko, she said, “exhibited bias.” The condemnation of Judge Micko by Trump-aligned media outlets was followed by a series of violent threats, which have not been previously reported. In the interview, Judge Schiltz revealed that Judge Micko and his family had to be moved to a secure location, where they remained for several days. Judge Schiltz said that the administration’s statements were part of what had put Judge Micko in danger. [snip] Behind the scenes, the district’s judges were dealing with a deluge of violent threats. After major rulings, the phones in judges’ chambers would sometimes ring nonstop, with clerks logging hundreds of incoming communications each day. Judge Jerry W. Blackwell shared one anonymous email vowing to “kill u soon.” The volume of hostile communications led the bench to create its own internal system for tracking people responsible for multiple threats, supplementing the U.S. Marshals Service, which normally handles judicial security. The response to the NYT article describing the threats against Micko and at least one other Minnesota judge is — predictably — more attacks, including from senior Trump officials. I think in every case I’ve covered in the last five years, at least one of the case participants faced serious threats (including, to be sure, Aileen Cannon). But the Don Lemon case is the one where I’ve most worried about how this currency of threats might affect defendants’ ability to get a fair trial. And that’s because the other behavior of DOJ and DHS is so outrageous. Not just Harmeet’s platforming of bets on the outcome and her comments that appear to have led to the threats against Micko, but the way DHS fabricated their entire case against Georgia Fort in the wake of Harmeet’s failure to get arrest warrants. It should be an easy thing to throw out the case against Fort, at least, for misconduct. Harmeet’s people literally responded to that denial of an arrest warrant, first, by riling up a violent mob, then lying about what the Eighth Circuit said, then by making shit up, and during it all, by illegally spying on journalists. This should be an easy decision. But thus far, it has not been. Virtually every case I’ve covered over the last 20 years has been politically charged. But none has been tainted with this much abuse. So it should be an easy decision, at least with respect to Georgia Fort. And yet what do you do about it with Harmeet’s mob, lurking in the background? “This should be an easy decision. But thus far, it has not been.” makes me want to scream “I’m mad has hell and I won’t take it any more”. The judiciary isn’t equipped to handle this type of insurrection. “Your institutions will not save you” Masha Gessen perhaps some of the people who threaten the lives of Judges, Politicians, Reporters ought to be taken to a country where those threats are carried out on a regular basis for a tour for a couple of weeks and left to see how things turn out when you threaten the lives of people doing the jobs the Constitution requires, leave them in the morgue to view the bodies, take them to places and stories the impact of these actions are left for all to see. A kids parents being murdered is an ugly thing. Why people want these things in the U.S.A. is beyond me. Announcing where some one’s spouse works and endangering their lives just blows me a way. What if they shoot at them and kill some one else or a child or the spouse. eIt is truly crazy.