SPRINGFIELD, OH (October 18, 2024)—Attorneys with Free Speech For Individuals and Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym issued a joint letter right this moment to Daniel Driscoll, the Clark County prosecutor, in assist of the Haitian Bridge Alliance’s recently-filed criticism searching for legal prices in opposition to Donald Trump and JD Vance for harmful, inflammatory, and repeated lies concerning the Haitian neighborhood in Springfield, Ohio.
On September 24, the Haitian Bridge Alliance filed a legal criticism in municipal courtroom in opposition to Trump and Vance for inducing panic, making false alarms, and disrupting public providers primarily based on their repeated false statements about legal acts allegedly dedicated by Springfield, Ohio’s Haitian neighborhood. They allege that, because of these false and harmful claims, Springfield has skilled at the least 33 bomb threats; evacuation and closures of faculties, schools, and public buildings; deployment of state troopers to Springfield; and threats to people, enterprise house owners, and elected officers.
The Clark County Municipal Courtroom directed Discoll to analyze and decide whether or not or to not prosecute Trump and Vance. The letter demonstrates that the First Modification doesn’t defend Trump and Vance from legal legal responsibility for knowingly repeating false and harmful claims concerning the Haitian neighborhood and that the statements predictably threatened their security and jeopardized public safety.
The letter reads: “Trump and Vance’s steady use of their nationwide platform to unfold harmful falsehoods that foreseeably trigger widespread civic disruption in opposition to already marginalized communities falls squarely throughout the legal prices your workplace has been requested to judge. The Haitian Bridge Alliance asks solely that this workplace apply the pertinent legal statutes to Trump and Vance as they’ve been utilized to different defendants, and that each be held to the identical requirements as the opposite people who’ve been appropriately and efficiently prosecuted beneath the legal prices sought right here. We hope that this workplace agrees that the legislation needs to be utilized equally to all individuals. Trump and Vance’s positions of authority don’t immunize them from the results that will fall—and have fallen—upon anybody else. We strongly assist the Haitian Bridge Alliance and Jozef’s petition, consider that the requested legal prices are supported by possible trigger, and are justified by Trump and Vance’s extreme legal misconduct.”
Learn the total letter right here.
Free Speech For Individuals is a nationwide non-partisan non-profit group devoted to defending our democracy and our Structure. The group serves as a number one power within the nation in litigation to guard the suitable to vote and our elections and to confront corruption on the highest ranges of presidency.
Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym is a Chicago-based legislation agency with a nationwide observe devoted to advanced public curiosity litigation, together with civil rights litigation. The agency has a protracted historical past of bringing circumstances in Illinois and throughout the nation to safeguard basic constitutional and statutory rights.
