Donald “They’re eating the dogs” Trump and JD “Pet abduction” Vance were hit with criminal charges this week over their repeated insistence that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are stealing and eating people’s pets—a claim for which there is zero evidence, as they’ve been told over and over.
The charges were filed by the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a nonprofit group representing the Haitian community in the area. “Over the last two weeks, both Trump and Vance led an effort to vilify and threaten the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio,” Guerline Jozef, the executive director of the organization, wrote. “Together, they spread and amplified the debunked claim that Haitians immigrants in Springfield are eating cats, dogs, and wildlife.” As NBC News notes, “Ohio law allows private citizens to file affidavits charging people with crimes,” though the law requires that hearings take place in order for the affidavits to proceed. It does not appear that any have been scheduled yet. (Vanity Fair has reached out to the office of Clark County prosecutor Daniel Driscoll for comment.)
The ex-president and his running mate have been charged with making false alarms, disrupting public services, complicity, telecommunications harassment, and aggravated menacing. The filing asks the Clark County Municipal Court to find probable cause to issue warrants for their arrests. “If anyone else had disrupted public service, made false alarms, and engaged in telecommunications harassment in the manner Trump and Vance did with their relentless and persistent lies—even after the governor and mayor said what they were saying was false—they would’ve been arrested by now,” Subodh Chandra, the group’s lawyer, said in a statement Tuesday. “They must be held accountable to the rule of law in the same way any of the rest of us would be.” In response, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign said in a statement that the former president “is rightfully highlighting the failed immigration system that Kamala Harris has overseen, bringing thousands of illegal immigrants pouring into communities like Springfield and many others across the country.”
Trump and Vance have spent the better part of the month baselessly demonizing the Haitian community in Springfield, despite everyone from the city’s mayor to the governor of Ohio publicly stating that none of their claims have any basis in fact. At the presidential debate, Trump absurdly declared, “They’re eating the dogs…they’re eating the cats,” which could have been chalked up to his being a confused old man who was simply shouting things that came into his head were he not running for the most powerful job in the world. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Vance’s campaign had been told point-blank that there was no truth to the rumors the candidate was spreading, which he has chosen to continue spreading anyway. The debunked claims have led to dozens of bomb threats that have caused Springfield schools, medical facilities, and even grocery stores to be evacuated.
Asked at a rally last week if he and Trump intended to deport Haitians living in Springfield, despite the fact that the vast majority of them are living in the US legally, Vance disturbingly said he would continue to describe the people in question as “illegal alien[s]” and declared, falsely, that the Biden administration “[waved] a wand…to say we’re not gonna deport those people here.”
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