Here’s video of Trump bragging about US Marshals killing American citizen
Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos Staff
(October 15, 2020) — There is more and more evidence that the shooting death of Michael Reinoehl of Portland, Oregon, by federal law enforcement officials was not the result of an arrest turned deadly. In fact, recently published investigations point to a much darker conclusion, suggesting the 48-year-old Reinoehl, wanted in connection with the shooting death of right-wing protester Aaron Danielson, was an extrajudicial execution carried out by our government.
Today, Donald Trump is out in Greenville, North Carolina, speaking at a campaign rally. The rally has been filled with all of the violent rhetoric that has marked the entire Trump experience, harkening back to the days of segregation and Europe in the 1930s.
But one remark Trump made while attacking Biden for not believing in “law and order” was quite stunning, though, sadly, not surprising. Trump bragged about the extrajudicial killing of Reinoehl, an American citizen.
After lamenting about how the law won’t allow him to just send his Gestapo forces into localities to squash peaceful protesters, he turned to the case of Michael Reinoehl, bragging that while local authorities had taken days to go about arresting the fugitive Reinoehl, Trump and his squad were able to do it like that.
“We sent in the US Marshals, took 15 minutes [sic] it was over. 15 minutes it was over. We got him.” The crowd cheered because murder tastes delicious to people living in the general malaise of a death cult, and Trump made sure they knew that Donald Trump knows how to deliver murder.
They didn’t want to arrest him, and so in less than the time it takes Donald Trump to undo his tie, they killed an American citizen without a trial. Is he talking about the US Marshals or the Portland authorities? Probably the latter? Does it even matter with Trump at this point? The entire thrust of his brag is that you don’t need to have a trial when you can have Trump’s federal agents act as judge jury and executioner in 15 minutes of arriving in small neighborhood USA.
Then, because either Trump’s medication is off, his dentures are loose, or he’s just always something of a catastrophe, Trump transitioned by saying “Anywhile,” and then saying, “and they call themselves peaceful protesters.”
Trump also pushed for people to be put in jail for one year for burning the American flag. So there’s what passes for a new idea in the Republican Party these days.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
Report on Killing of Portland Antifa Shooter by Federal Officers Suggests It Was Never an Arrest
David Neiwert / Daily Kos Staff
(October 15, 2020) — Unanswered questions have hovered over the September 3 shooting death of Michael Reinoehl of Portland, Oregon, at the hands of federal law enforcement officers — four days after Reinoehl had himself shot a right-wing protester named Aaron Danielson to death on the streets of Portland — like a dark cloud, in large part because the police themselves have been opaque about the event. There were no body cameras used, no surveillance video available, and constantly changing official stories about the shooting from authorities.
Now, after an investigation by ProPublica and Oregon Public Broadcasting into the case, those clouds now loom dark and ominous. The portrait that emerges of how the shooting transpired, including witnesses saying the police gave no warning, and that Reinoehl did not display a gun, suggest that the 48-year-old fugitive was not arrested so much as he was simply executed. UPDATE: Donald Trump confirmed today at a rally that this was the case, telling a rally audience that “they didn’t want to arrest him.” (See below.)
The shooting happened in the early evening. Reinoehl had been on the lam ever since the shooting of Danielson, and apparently was hiding out that day in a neighborhood near Lacey, Washington, some 119 miles north of Portland. He had given an interview to Vice magazine earlier in the day, telling the reporter that he had acted in self-defense. He was leaving the apartment where he had been in hiding, and had just gotten into his car, when a cluster of SUVs containing US Marshals Service contractors descended and surrounded him.
Police and witness reports have varied widely, and some conflict with other witnesses and the evidence at the scene. A deputy US Marshal claims that Reinoehl pointed a gun at him. One witness claimed he saw Rienoehl firing two guns. However, Reinoehl’s only gun was found in his front pants pocket after he was shot. What we know for certain is that the marshals hit him with a barrage of gunfire, and he was killed by bullets to the head and torso. And the majority of witnesses said he displayed no weapon at all.
One witness said the bullets from the fusillade the marshals unleashed — without any kind of warning or order to surrender, he said — were flying around the apartment complex where the arrest happened. Children were present, and one father described running his two young children inside his home for safety. “There was no ‘drop your weapon’ or ‘freeze’ or ‘police’ — no warning at all,” the man recalled.
According to the report, most of the men firing the weapons were local law enforcement officers who had been deputized by the Marshals Service.
The shots were fired by two Pierce County sheriff’s deputies, a Lakeview police officer and a Washington State Department of Corrections employee — all deputized by the US Marshals Service and serving on a Tacoma-based fugitive task force, a common and standard procedure among local-federal partnerships. A US marshal was also part of the team but did not fire.
Donald Trump may have played a role in the officers’ apparent eagerness to kill Reinoehl. One hour before the fugitive was killed, Trump had tweeted:
Why aren’t the Portland Police ARRESTING the cold blooded killer of Aaron “Jay” Danielson. Do your job, and do it fast. Everybody knows who this thug is. No wonder Portland is going to hell!
Afterward, Attorney General William Barr issued a statement on the Justice Department letterhead that was equally bloodthirsty:
The tracking down of Reinoehl — a dangerous fugitive, admitted Antifa member, and suspected murderer — is a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order to Portland and other cities. I applaud the outstanding cooperation among federal, state, and local law enforcement, particularly the fugitive task force team that located Reinoehl and prevented him from escaping justice. The streets of our cities are safer with this violent agitator removed, and the actions that led to his location are an unmistakable demonstration that the United States will be governed by law, not violent mobs.
Trump subsequently told Maria Bartiromo of Fox News: “This guy was a violent criminal, and the US Marshals killed him. And I’ll tell you something — that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution.”
This all stood in stark contrast to how the Trump administration led a right-wing parade of support for Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teenager who killed two Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August.
Trump himself had openly sympathized with Rittenhouse. “That was an interesting situation,” he told a rally in Kenosha. “You saw the same tape as I saw. And he was trying to get away from them. I guess it looks like he fell and then they very violently attacked him. And it was something that we’re looking at right now, and it’s under investigation. But I guess he was in very big trouble. He would have been — probably would have been killed, but it’s under investigation.”
The Department of Homeland Security also promoted this narrative by directing public comments by its officials to follow this storyline with prearranged talking points. An internal DHS document suggested that department officials note that Rittenhouse “took his rifle to the scene of the rioting to help defend small business owners.”
If officials are asked about Rittenhouse, it recommended they first decline comment on an ongoing investigation, with the addendum that “what I will say is that Rittenhouse, just like everyone else in America, is innocent until proven guilty and deserves a fair trial based on all the facts, not just the ones that support a certain narrative. This is why we try the accused in the court of law, not the star chamber of public opinion.”
The official storyline, in both cases, promotes the larger right-wing narrative creating a bogeyman of a supposed “violent left” comprised of Black Lives Matter and antifa, while erasing the reality of a growing army of violent right-wing thugs directing their heavily armed ire at these concocted enemies. And as the facts in Michael Reinoehl’s killing emerge, it appears to have created a mentality within law enforcement creating permission (if not outright encouragement) not only to join them, but to perform extrajudicial executions on behalf of the same authoritarian cause.
UPDATE: Donald Trump again commented approvingly on Reinoehl’s killing again today in Greenville, North Carolina, at a campaign rally. He told the crowd, in fact, that there was no intention of arresting Reinoehl:
We sent in the US Marshals, it took 15 minutes and it was over, 15 minutes and it was over … They knew who he was, they didn’t want to arrest him, and 15 minutes that ended. And they call themselves peaceful protesters.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
