Haitian Group Files Charges Against Trump, Vance

The leader of a nonprofit representing the Haitian community invoked a private-citizen right to file charges Tuesday against Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, over the chaos and threats experienced by Springfield, Ohio, since Trump first spread false claims about legal immigrants there during a presidential debate. The Haitian Bridge Alliance made the move after inaction by the local prosecutor, said their attorney, Subodh Chandra of the Cleveland-based Chandra Law Firm.

• Charges brought by private citizens are rare, but not unheard of, in Ohio, the AP reports. Examples might be a grocery store charging a customer for a bounced check. State law requires a hearing to take place before the affidavit can move forward. As of Tuesday afternoon, none had been scheduled.

• Trump and Vance, a US senator from Ohio, are charged with disrupting public services, making false alarms, telecommunications harassment, aggravated menacing, and complicity. The filing asks the Clark County Municipal Court to affirm that there is probable cause and issue arrest warrants against Trump and Vance.
• "Their persistence and relentlessness, even in the face of the governor and the mayor saying this is false, that shows intent," Chandra says. "It's knowing, willful flouting of criminal law."
• More than 30 bomb threats were directed at state and local government buildings and schools, prompting closures, the assignment of additional law enforcement protection and security cameras. Some of the city's Haitian residents have also said they feared for their safety as public vitriol grew, and Mayor Rob Rue has received death threats.

• "If it were anyone else other than Trump and Vance who had done what they've done—wreak havoc on Springfield, resulting in bomb threats, evacuated and closed government buildings and schools, threats to the mayor and his family—they would have been arrested by now," Chandra says. "They are not above the law."
• The 15,000 to 20,000 Haitian immigrants who have arrived in Springfield over the past several years, in many cases after being recruited to local jobs, have been granted Temporary Protected Status to be in the US legally.

(More Springfield stories.)