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Before Fabricating Assaults to Justify the MN-15 Investigation, DHS Focused on a Protest of Trump’s 2017 Inauguration
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As I laid out in this post, DOJ and DHS used assault charges fabricated against 16 people whom Pam Bondi used as trophies to retroactively justify spying on the Minnesota protest community for months. On January 28 — the same day Bondi paraded her trophies on Xitter, DOJ opened the investigation that would result in charges against 15 activists it misleadingly billed as Antifa: the next day, DOJ indicted the first round of people in the Cities Church protest relying at least in part on fabricated claims.Then, after the fact, DOJ reconstructed spying that DHS undercover officers — most notably one referred to as 9843 — had already done in the weeks leading up to that. On February 28, HSI documented a bunch of spying that several undercover officers had done. Then, still months later, on April 7, HSI collected a bunch of screen caps of Signal chats 9843 took.
The indictment itself starts on January 11, with an Emergency Response Meeting to — effectively — respond to the Renee Good killing. But the narrative of this retroactive reconstruction shows it started before Good’s killing, on January 5, when 9843 went to a meeting (but did not record it) where the potential of illegal actions was allegedly discussed but no specific illegal actions were planned.
From that unrecorded meeting, 9843 invented the conspiracy he spent five more months looking for. That unrecorded meeting is where all this started.
Somehow, from there, 9843 got into one after another Signal chat; the genesis of that, too, is sketchy.
Almost immediately after that, 9843 started focusing on Sant, who months later would become the lead defendant in this case (and the defendant who released all these exhibits), starting with the meeting that does serve as the first overt act in the indictment.
Sometime before January 13, 9843 saved a selfie from Sant.
That selfie was possibly this photo (January 12 was a Monday) showing what appears to be damage from a rubber bullet.
Just over a week later, DHS had gotten back a Clearview dossier on Sant, using that photo as seed, including pictures of some other dude with a pregnant wife. The Clearview dossier also included pictures of what appear to be Sant’s past activism. One of those was this picture, sourced to an article from 2018, describing that the last remaining charges against hundreds of protestors against Trump’s first inauguration had been dropped.
The fourth person from left in that picture is Chelsea Manning.
Clearview also identified what it claimed to be Sant in another J20 story, from the day of the protest itself; ironically, the person in question was not wearing black.
By the time HSI got this Clearview dossier (which also showed what they purported to be Sant at an Occupy event), 9843 had already started focusing on Sant’s role in that J20 protest, capturing a chat where Sant described being a part of it.
Again, all of this spying took place before DOJ retroactively justified this investigation by framing a bunch of people with assault: 9843 had decided Sant would be a close focus, then had begun to focus on Sant’s exoneration in the J20 protest.
9843 returned to that protest at least once more. On March 15, 9843’s description of another meeting focused on Sant’s description of what — based on timing — appears to be the J20 protest.
Now’s a good time to remind what happened with the J20 protest, the time Sant described (though I’m still looking for his record in the docket) being arrested for “wearing black.”
After a limited number of people at a protest of Trump’s first inauguration damaged a limo, the cops kettled everyone at the protest. DC USAO charged hundreds of them. But then — as Ryan Reilly covered for years — the cases fell apart, partly because (as may happen with this prosecution) prosecutors had no individualized evidence against many of the defendants.
[M]ore than 230 cases that arose out of the mass arrests of protesters near Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. Protesters were arrested after police trapped them in a “kettle” after some people smashed windows, destroyed a limousine and threw objects at officers during a demonstration against the incoming president.
The government adopted the extraordinary tactic of charging hundreds of people arrested on a public street with felony crimes based on the theory that their choice of black clothing meant they were part of a felony rioting conspiracy. But the #J20 prosecutions, as activists dubbed them, were largely a bust for the government. Jurors acquitted the first six defendants to go to trial in late 2017, a judge ordered charges against 10 other defendants dropped because prosecutors withheld evidence, and charges against all remaining defendants were dropped in mid-2018.
In 2024, the main prosecutor on the case, Jennifer Kerkhoff Muyskens, faced an ethics complaint because, while she relied heavily on one Project Veritas video in her attempt to prosecute the defendants, she withheld an exculpatory PV video from them.
Kerkhoff Muyskens and Washington Police Detective Greggory Pemberton were “primarily responsible for the government’s investigation” into the events of Jan. 20, 2017, according to the ethics complaint, which alleges Kerkhoff Muyskens violated six of the D.C. Bar’s rules of professional conduct. The Office of the Disciplinary Counsel in Washington, which serves as the chief prosecutor for attorney disciplinary matters, wants the D.C. Board of Professional Responsibility, which is the disciplinary arm of the D.C. Court of Appeals, to consider imposing sanctions on her.
Pemberton, who now heads the Washington police union, faced questioning during trials from defense attorneys about his “anti-liberal biases,” the complaint noted. When defense counsel raised “troubling” edits to video evidence that they believed Pemberton made, Kerkhoff Muyskens “falsely told the court that only she — not Pemberton — was responsible for the edits,” according to the complaint.
At issue is video from Project Veritas, a conservative group that recorded undercover videos, which was essential to prosecutors’ case.
Both Kerkhoff Muyskens and Pemberton understood that Project Veritas “had a reputation for editing videos in a misleading way,” the complaint says. Kerkhoff Muyskens and Pemberton also “omitted and cut footage from the original videos, in part, to remove footage of the operative that could reveal his identity or reveal the identity of Project Veritas as the source of the video,” it says.
Even though Project Veritas provided videos of another training session that occurred at American University on Jan. 14-15, Kerkhoff Muyskens didn’t turn them over to defense lawyers, the complaint alleges. The complaint says the undisclosed videos “consistently showed that protesters were trained and instructed to expect a non-violent protest; to remain non-violent; to use non-violence and de-escalation techniques with police and counter-protesters; to be wary of counter-protester infiltrators, including Project Veritas; to rely on [Washington police] to handle any violence from either protesters or counter-protesters; to stay close with their protest group for safety and security; and to comply with police instructions and ‘police lines.'”
As a reminder, far right trolls play a (hidden) role in this prosecution too, with the focus on Kyle Wagner arising out of his conflicts with Jake Lang and Jayden Scott, both of whom themselves engaged in criminal activity but were not charged for conspiring with each other.
As for the conspiracy that 9843 dreamt up on January 5, before ICE shot Renee Good, before ICE shot a Venezuelan and missed his kid and lied to cover that up, before CBP shot Alex Pretti, Sant shows up all through this indictment, in part because he advocated using shields at protests.
On February 6, DHS unlawfully stopped him and told him he couldn’t follow them.
On or about February 6, 2026, federal immigration officers were engaged in an arrest operation on or around Cedar Avenue South in Minneapolis. SANT drove a red Subaru and followed vehicles that were driven by federal immigration officers. Federal immigration officers stopped the Subaru and warned SANT that they were engaged in official duties and that any interference would constitute a violation of federal law. Despite the warning. SANT continued to followed the immigration officers’ vehicle and impeded the transport of the detained individual.
Two months later, it happened again.
On or about May 4, 2026, al approximately 2:08 p.m., SANT sent a message in the “Whipple Watch (Refiesh)” Signal group chat, stating. “494 E approaching concord st s…Just getting to woodbury…Nb on 494…00 we have any rr (rapid response) calls in hudson? We’re looking to handoff if possible… We’re in WI. we’re going to keep following. We won’t get back to Whipple for another one…Carmichacl rd nb…” At 2:29 p.m.. SANT messaged, “Cop pulling us over…stopped by police in Hudson WI… They let us go with a warning. Threatened us with criminal charges.”
That act — following an ICE car across state lines on May 4 — is the single charge against Sant, in addition to that conspiracy 9843 dreamt up before all this started.
The day after Sant was indicted for his activities in Minnesota (including describing his past arrest in J20), on June 12, the DC Bar slapped Kerkhoff Muyskens with a six month bar sanction for her ethical failures in pursuing that case.
The post Before Fabricating Assaults to Justify the MN-15 Investigation, DHS Focused on a Protest of Trump’s 2017 Inauguration appeared first on emptywheel.