Why Kristi Noem’s Kidnapping of Brad Lander Failed … Thus Far
In my opinion, three things thwarted Kristi Noem’s attempt to interfere in Brad Lander’s campaign to be NYC’s Mayor by detaining him yesterday:
- Independent media
- Solidarity
- The law
Independent media
I’m increasingly perplexed that when people make lists of prominent Democrats that Noem’s goons have targeted, they leave off David Huerta, the CA SEIU President arrested on a public sidewalk in front of a garment factory where ICE was conducting a search.
I increasingly think the omission may stem from the dearth of video coverage of his arrest — which basically consisted of two ICE guys picking him up and then pushing him down, leading to him knocking his head on the curb (for which he got hospital treatment).
Brad Lander’s detention, by contrast, was quickly covered by independent media present or close by.
I first learned about the detention when The City’s Gwynne Hogan reported it (and posted a shorter version of the above video) in real time. Here’s their story on the detention.
Hell Gate provided updates, including about the protest outside and Lander’s past visits to the courthouse to accompany migrants to court hearings.
AMNY’s Dean Moses posted this picture, which contrasted the fully masked man conducting the arrest with the violence the ICE goons were using in their detention of Lander.
Mainstream media (with exceptions like Wired) may not save us. But the diligence of independent outlets could.
NYT has the ability to sustain all that independent journalism. But if you can — especially if you live in New York — you might consider supporting them (recall that The City did a lot of the reporting on Eric Adams’ corruption before bigger outlets picked up the story).
Solidarity
That reporting allowed a group (including Zohran Mamdani and four other Mayoral candidates) to peacefully assemble in front of the courthouse. Eventually, even Kathy Hochul came to the courthouse and accompanied Lander as he was released, calling his arrest “bullshit.”
Hochul announced she’ll provide some state funding for the migrants who’re being targeted as they attend court hearings, the problem that Lander was trying to address.
Lander, after he was released, emphasized that he gets to go home but the man he attempted to accompany today, a man named Edgardo, was in ICE detention.
One important point of all this is the underlying solidarity. This was not Lander’s first visit accompanying people; among the folks respond to his detention were one who had been inspired by his actions to engage as well, and another who had provided an Arabic translator some weeks ago. Contrary to what silly pundits have started to argue, the point is not to get arrested. The point is to create friction for Stephen Miller’s dragnet. The point is to bring visibility and opposition to inhumane treatment.
American Prospect’s story on the arrest focused on that.
It’s not only the courtroom treatment of defendants that’s egregious. So are the living conditions at 26 Federal Plaza. In an interview with the Prospect, Daniel Coates, director of public affairs at Make the Road New York, said that ICE is using the building to hold people for multiple days before transferring them elsewhere, packing them in so tightly that some have no room to sleep except for on the bathroom floor. The rooms are hot because the air-conditioning is inadequate, detainees have “no opportunities to get a change of clothes or clean themselves,” have no access to medical treatment, and cannot maintain their dietary restrictions, said Coates, who spoke at the press conference held after Lander’s detention.
“The space is exploding,” Coates said, “and it’s sort of a black hole there because ICE is refusing entry to members of Congress,” who are supposed to be allowed to oversee such buildings. It’s an open question of “what actually 26 Federal Plaza is being used for,” he said.
The point is not the arrest. The point is to expand solidarity.
The law
I think there were a number of reasons SDNY couldn’t charge Lander, at least not yet:
- According to one of the journalists there, one of the ICE goons said to another before Lander did anything “do you want to arrest the Comptroller?” Like the Ras Baraka arrest, it was premeditated and had little to do with his own actions.
- Because media was there, because Moses took that really damning photo, it ensured that there was plenty of footage that would make it viable to rebut a prosecutor’s hypothetical claim that Lander was resisting or (even more outlandish) assaulting them. It’s true that cops can convict on 18 USC 111 charges where someone wrestles with the cop, but here Lander would have a viable argument that this was all about assaulting him.
- At one point, Lander asked for one of the ICE officers’ badge number but didn’t get it, and both the goons who arrested him were in plain clothes and one was entirely masked. He repeatedly asked to see a judicial warrant (only an administrative warrant is required); but the ICE officer merely waved a paper at him. To sustain an 18 USC 111 case, the government would have to show that these were officers conducting their duty, both they refused to prove that to Lander before they detained him.
- While Lander did get the law wrong on at least one count (that ICE couldn’t arrest US citizens at all), the law does say that they can only arrest without a warrant in case of a flight risk. There is not a chance in hell that NYC’s current Comptroller and aspiring Mayor would flee, so he could make a good case that the arrest itself was illegal.
- The problem I laid out yesterday; Emil Bove already told an SDNY judge that Eric Adams merely being prosecuted was election interference. Lander was going to have a very good case that DHS was attempting to help Adams and hurt Lander.
But for both the last two reasons, this may not be over. The NYT quoted a SDNY spox suggesting the government could still charge this, perhaps after the Mayoral race.
A spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement that the office was investigating Mr. Lander’s actions, but said nothing about criminal charges. The spokesman, Nicholas Biase, noted that federal law prohibited assaults on law enforcement and other public officials and obstruction of official proceedings.
That doesn’t mean those charges would succeed. It means they might try to avoid the obvious hypocrisy of dismissing charges against one NYC mayoral candidate by waiting to charge another.
Update: I asked SDNY if they had opened an election interference investigation into the people who arrested Lander. Spox Nicholas Biase declined to comment.
“Because media was there, because Moses took that really damning photo, it ensured that there was plenty of footage that would make it viable to rebut •a prosecutor’s hypothetical claim that Lander was resisting or (even more outlandish) assaulting them• It’s true that cops can convict on 18 USC 111 charges”
This is essential.
And it’s worth noting that prosecutors potential claims in respect of the arrests of prominent Democrats are usually foreshadowed by hair- triggered weaponised releases of factually and legal false press releases or statements to the press by Tricia McLaughlin.
The unlawful seizure and detention of Lander is no different. Gwynne Horgan published on bsky a screenshot of this text alert from McLaughlin which was distributed by McLaughlin 2 hours in to the detention
https://bsky.app/profile/gwynnefitz.bsky.social/post/3lrt4w35jac2o
Which reads:
“Tricia McLaughlin
To: Gwynne, Marie, ICEMedia >
2:17 PM
RE: Arrest of Brad Lander City
Comptroller Today at 26 Federal
Plaza
“New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer. Our heroic ICE law enforcement officers face a 413% increase in assaults against them— it is wrong that politicians seeking higher office undermine law enforcement safety to get a viral moment. No one is above the law, and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences.””
This was released at a time when McLaughlin was in a position to know that there were multiple videos of the arrest and that Gwynne Horgan, whom she had as a press contact, had publicly posted a 1min 30 sec video exactly 2 hours before the propaganda text McLaughlin chose to distribute was sent.
To put the timing of that propaganda text to media in a fuller context here is a timeline gleaned from Horgan’s posts to bsky which I think might reasonably be considered contemporaneous with the events reported.
The confrontation involving Lander was first reported by Horgan at 12:13 pm , posting a short video of Lander taken into lift at 12:14, having previously first noted Lander observing an ICE arrest at 11:53.
The 1min 30 sec video of the confrontation, demonstrating Lander’s innocence, is posted by her at 12:17.
At 13:14 she reports on impromptu press conference demanding Lander release
And at 14:03 notes 30 ICE agents on the 12th floor.
Then at 1534 notes Gov Horchul inside the building demanding of ICE information about Lander’s arrest and demanding his release.
Finally at 16:19 Horgan reports Lander being released now, with a photo of him waiting at a lift with Horchul.
There is a growing pile of evidence of the cynical lying of Tricia McLaughlin. She should be attacked for this more frequently and more robustly IMHO.
Right: And her lies are cited in Baraka’s lawsuit.
There are no negative consequences for lying, so why would they stop?
Step One: Lie
Step Two: Lie about lying.
Step 3: Lie about and attack those who call out your lies.
Repeat.
As a decaying relic of legacy media, I read your first point with pained interest.
With something like 250,000 legacy positions gone, there are just no bodies to stake out possible news events; but that happened only in the biggest cities anyway.
There was some of what you call independent media even back in the ’60s but their scope was limited by clunky technology. I guess I am glad something has arisen to replace the professional journalists, although I have veracity and verification worries, and those are getting worse every day.
The situation is oddly similar to what happened in brewing. In the ’60s and early ’70s, big brewers bought up and closed the thousands of local breweries — gone are Dixie, National Bohemian, Pearl, Augusteiner etc. — and business reporters were united in predicting that soon there would be only 3, or perhaps 4 brewers, and these would be Anheuser-Busch, Schlitz, Pabst and maybe Coors.
Schlitz did not survive but today we have more local breweries than ever, of very varying quality.
Nobody’s going to die or lose their democracy because of hyper-consolidation of beer production, though; brewing has also been subject to antitrust review.
We have failed to push Congress to revisit media consolidation which the emergence of the internet and social media has encouraged. Brewing doesn’t have a digital analog the way media does, nor does brewing create new privacy and security risks by collecting and selling consumers’ data as part of its business model — another critically important reason why media consolidation should be revisited for regulation.
Did ICE just elect the next mayor of NYC? Picking and choosing which Democratic candidates to arrest is a political choice and can also be seen as election interference. The Steisand Effect as politics.
Tricia McLaughlin is working from a script either prepared or heavily influenced by Stephen Miller. Miller is most adept at tailoring his rhetoric to both propagandize on-trend and (crucially) pave the way for future arguments/disinformation campaigns based on the use of very specific language chosen for targeted purposes. See, for example, his referring to protestors in LA as “insurrectionists”–no mere casual slur but instead a potential pretext for invocation of the Insurrection Act.
McLaughlin’s (and DHS generally) repeated accusation that Democrats are “obstructing” (impeding, interfering with) “official proceedings” plays like a jackhammer in our ears. Trump’s “official” immunity bleeds out to cover his henchmen, every invocation of their “official” status intended to cloak thugs with invincibility while intimidating the rest of us “dissidents” into silent acquiescence.
“federal law prohibited assaults on law enforcement and other public officials”
Brad Lander is a “public official.” The photographic and video evidence shows plainly that he was assaulted by a masked individual and other individuals, none of whom displayed any indicia of their alleged status as law enforcement agents.
Not holding my breath until SDNY indicts the ICE goons.