SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — A nonprofit organization advocating for Haitian migrants has filed criminal charges against former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance, for "baseless fearmongering" that legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating their neighbor’s pets.
According to a release from The Chandra Law Firm, based in Cleveland, the nonprofit Haitian Bridge Alliance is seeking that Trump and Vance be arrested and charged with disrupting public service, making false claims, committing telecommunications harassment, committing aggravated menacing and violating the prohibition against complicity.
Under Ohio Revised Codes 2935.09 and 2935.01(A), the law grants private citizens the ability to "file an affidavit charging the offense committed." It also requires the court to either issue arrest warrants or refer the case to the prosecuting attorney for investigation.
“The Haitian community is suffering in fear because of Trump and Vance’s relentless, irresponsible, false alarms, and public services have been disrupted. Trump and Vance must be held accountable to the rule of law. Anyone else who wreaked havoc the way they did would have been arrested by now," lead counsel Subodh Chandra said in a statement.
Haitian Bridge Alliance is asking the Clark County Municipal Court to determine where there is probable cause for the allegations and that an arrest warrant be issued for Trump and Vance.
The city of Springfield has been in the national spotlight since the false claims were amplified by Trump and Vance.
Springfield city officials acknowledged growing pains from the influx of some 15,000 Haitian immigrants, but say there’s no evidence to support the claim they are consuming anyone’s pets. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine also debunked the claims and said the rhetoric is hurtful to residents in Springfield.
More than 30 bomb threats have been made against schools, government buildings and city officials’ homes since last week, forcing evacuations and closures. Springfield also canceled its annual celebration of diversity, arts and culture in response to the threats. State police were even deployed to city schools.
"There’s nothing special about Trump and Vance that entitles them to get away with what they’ve done and are doing," Chandra added. "They think they're above the law. They're not."
3News received the below statement from Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung:
"President Trump is rightfully highlighting the failed immigration system that Kamala Harris has overseen."
Cleveland State University Law Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich provided analysis on the use of the Ohio statute allowing private citizens to file criminal charges.
“It's pretty obscure," he explained. "It's not used very often. It does allow a person to file an affidavit and then it kind of prompts a magistrate to make a determination whether there's probable cause that the person charged committed the crime or not. Even if you got a magistrate to say, yes, it would then go into the hands of the local prosecutor who could dismiss the charges or decide to proceed with them if they wanted to."
Witmer-Rich doesn't foresee the charges sticking.
"Any judge, I think, is going to be very concerned," he said. "They're going to have serious First Amendment concerns to broadly construe criminal charges in a way that criminalized political speech by political candidates during a campaign. That raises really serious First Amendment concerns. I think it's very unlikely that a court would try to stretch the law to cover that.”
3News spoke with Clark County Prosecutor Dan Driscoll on the phone Tuesday. Driscoll told us he couldn't comment on pending cases, but that his office is looking at the charges by filed Chandra and The Haitian Bridge Alliance.