Trump administration has taken a 'belligerent, aggressive tone' with Oregon officials: Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff
"As Portland's Mayor Faces Calls To Resign, He Finds An Unlikely Ally"
Administration officials have defended their use of federal agents in Portland.
By Luke Barr 23 July 2020, 05:38
VIDEO - Federal agents face off with protesters in Portland 1:50 President Trump has sent federal officers from Customs and Border Protection and other federal agencies to combat violent protests in Oregon.
"You can protect federal property, but that doesn't mean it's an unlimited license to roam around the streets and pick up people based on some suspicion that maybe they’re involved or gonna be involved in something," Chertoff told ABC News' "Powerhouse Politics" podcast.
"But, the reports that I read about roving around on the street and stopping people and taking them down, strike me as going beyond that authority," Chertoff told ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl and Political Director Rick Klein.
Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan said at a press conference on Tuesday that federal agents were properly trained and well within their authority.
"We are not patrolling the streets of Portland, as has been falsely reported," Morgan said.
Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, at that same press conference, said he's urged state and local officials to call him to work on a solution.
"I talked to the mayor and the governor, I gave them my number, told them to certainly reach out to me if they needed anything from the federal government, again to bring this to a close," Wolf said. "My phone is operating and working."
Wolf said that 43 people have been arrested since the Fourth of July.
Michael Chertoff, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of The Chertoff Group, speaks onstage during the 2019 Concordia Annual Summit, Sept. 23, 2019, in New York City. Riccardo Savi/Getty Images, FILE
Now chairman of the Chertoff Group -- a security and cybersecurity risk management firm -- Chertoff raised questions about what exactly the probable cause statue is to arrest an individual on the street.
"Whatever the statutory authority is, we still have a Constitution and that requires reasonable suspicion to stop somebody -- probable cause to arrest them," he explained. "And it's not clear to me that that is being applied in this case."
Chertoff said that one of the problems of the operation is who DHS sent to patrol the streets.
"The problem is you've got agents here who are, for the most part, Customs and Border Protection tactical property," he explained. "They operate normally in a border environment, which is where you're dealing with an almost quasi-military situation. That does not translate well into an urban environment with First Amendment protected demonstrators. And so the execution of this, I think has been a real problem."
The former DHS secretary under President George W. Bush also raised the alarm about securing the nation’s upcoming election. Earlier this week, Chertoff and 33 other former national security officials urged Congress to fund election security measures in the next round of COVID-19 funding.
“We don't have a lot of time left,” Chertoff explained. “And so getting the money to state and locals to do this properly, to my mind, is the most urgent task the federal government has right now. Because if we can't defend the right to vote, then we're not defending American values.
He also urged local cities and towns, who are primarily responsible for carrying out elections, to prepare for voting during a pandemic.
Chertoff also dispelled the notion that mail-in-voting is susceptible to widespread voter fraud, as the President and Attorney General suggested.
“There is zero evidence that mail in voting creates widespread problems in an election,” he said. “It's not of the scale that could possibly impact on a national election. So there is zero evidence for this.”
Powerhouse Politics podcast is a weekly program that posts every Wednesday, and includes headliner interviews and in-depth looks at the people and events shaping U.S. politics. Powerhouse Politics podcast is hosted by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl and ABC News Political Director Rick Klein.
In September 1986, together with United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudolph Giuliani, Chertoff was instrumental in the crackdown on organized crime in the Mafia Commission Trial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Chertoff#Public_service
See also:
Investigation Just What Were Donald Trump's Ties to the Mob? I've spent years investigating, and here's what's known. By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON May 22, 2016 [...] There was something a little peculiar about the construction of Trump Tower, and subsequent Trump projects in New York. Most skyscrapers are steel girder construction, and that was especially true in the 1980s, says John Cross of the American Iron & Steel Institute. Some use pre-cast concrete. Trump chose a costlier and in many ways riskier method: ready-mix concrete. Ready-mix has some advantages: it can speed up construction, and doesn’t require costly fireproofing. But it must be poured quickly or it will harden in the delivery truck drums, ruining them as well as creating costly problems with the building itself. That leaves developers vulnerable to the unions: the worksite gate is union controlled, so even a brief labor slowdown can turn into an expensive disaster. P - Salerno, Castellano and other organized crime figures controlled the ready-mix business in New York, and everyone in construction at the time knew it. So did government investigators trying to break up the mob, urged on by major developers such as the LeFrak and Resnick families. Trump ended up not only using ready-mix concrete, but also paying what a federal indictment of Salerno later concluded were inflated prices for it – repeatedly – to S & A Concrete, a firm Salerno and Castellano owned through fronts, and possibly to other mob-controlled firms. As Barrett noted, by choosing to build with ready-mix concrete rather than other materials, Trump put himself “at the mercy of a legion of concrete racketeers.” P - Salerno and Castellano and other mob families controlled both the concrete business and the unions involved in delivering and pouring it. The risks this created became clear from testimony later by Irving Fischer, the general contractor who built Trump Tower. Fischer said concrete union “goons” once stormed his offices, holding a knife to throat of his switchboard operator to drive home the seriousness of their demands, which included no-show jobs during construction of Trump Tower. P - But with Cohn as his lawyer, Trump apparently had no reason to personally fear Salerno or Castellano—at least, not once he agreed to pay inflated concrete prices. What Trump appeared to receive in return was union peace. That meant the project would never face costly construction or delivery delays. P - The indictment on which Salerno was convicted in 1988 and sent to prison, where he died, listed the nearly $8 million contract for concrete at Trump Plaza, an East Side high-rise apartment building, as one of the acts establishing that S &A was part of a racketeering enterprise. (While the concrete business was central to the case, the trial also proved extortion, narcotics, rigged union elections and murders by the Genovese and Gambino crime families in what Michael Chertoff, the chief prosecutor, called “the largest and most vicious criminal business in the history of the United States.'') P - FBI agents subpoenaed Trump in 1980 to ask about his dealing with John Cody, a Teamsters official described by law enforcement as a very close associate of the Gambino crime family. The FBI believed that Cody previously had obtained free apartments from other developers. FBI agents suspected that Cody, who controlled the flow of concrete trucks, might get a free Trump Tower apartment. Trump denied it. But a female friend of Cody’s, a woman with no job who attributed her lavish lifestyle to the kindness of friends, bought three Trump Tower apartments right beneath the triplex where Donald lived with his wife Ivana. Cody stayed there on occasion and invested $500,000 in the units. Trump, Barrett reported, helped the woman get a $3 million mortgage without filling out a loan application or showing financials. P - In the summer of 1982 Cody, then under indictment, ordered a citywide strike—but the concrete work continued at Trump Tower. After Cody was convicted of racketeering, imprisoned and lost control of the union, Trump sued the woman for $250,000 for alteration work. She countersued for $20 million and in court papers accused Trump of taking kickbacks from contractors, asserting this could “be the basis of a criminal proceeding requiring an attorney general’s investigation” into Trump. Trump then quickly settled, paying the woman a half-million dollars. Trump said at the time and since then that he hardly knew those involved and there was nothing improper his dealings with Cody or the woman. *** There were other irregularities in Trump’s first big construction project. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=146601848
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