The sketchy probes and the reality of antisemitism

A bombshell report by a Justice Department whistleblower alleges that Trump administration financial settlements with Ivy League universities over claims of tolerating antisemitism were “predetermined” by Trump political appointees and were not supported with evidence obtained by career investigators.

Lawyers for a longtime Justice Department civil rights division attorney, identified as Haley Van Erem, have filed reports with three federal inspectors general stating that the investigations of Brown, Harvard, and Columbia launched by the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force were flawed. The lawyers allege the investigations failed to establish legal violations of antidiscrimination law by the schools and that they were rushed and incomplete. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said that the whistleblower report supports the view that these institutions were deliberately targeted to strip them of hundreds of millions of dollars of federal grants that they already had been awarded, not to protect the safety of Jewish students.

Rep. Raskin, who succeeded the retiring Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in his position as ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, is demanding that the assistant attorney general in charge appear before his committee so that it can begin to determine the extent of misconduct by DOJ officials. “From the start of the Trump administration’s ferocious attack on universities, it has been apparent that its investigations have been structured deliberately to harass and intimidate rather than protect anyone from discrimination,” Raskin charged.

The report came one week after a Boston federal court judge dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit against Harvard that claimed ongoing violations of federal civil rights law over treatment of Jewish students. A separate finding by another judge a year ago required that the administration reverse its cuts of more than $2.6 billion of Harvard’s research funding. “A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that [the government] used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country’s premier universities,” Judge Allison Burroughs wrote last September. “The country must fight antisemitism, but it also must protect the right to free speech.” The judge didn’t say, but I will, that Jewish students in these schools are sadly being used as pawns in a broad administration culture war against its chosen political enemies.

An even fishier and plainly antisemitic Trump administration activity has also just been revealed, thanks to a court filing related to the administration’s war on immigrants.

We know now that last January, the Trump Department of Homeland Security opened a secret investigation that sent undercover agents into churches, libraries, and union halls to spy on anti-ICE protestors in Minnesota. As the Nexus Project notes, the DHS has named its campaign “Operation Puppet Master,” an allusion to one of the oldest antisemitic narratives there is, “about wealthy Jews pulling strings behind popular movements.”

The new, aggressive DHS move takes its direction from a chilling Trump pronouncement last fall he designated as a National Security Presidential Memorandum to “disband and disrupt” organizations it accuses of supporting “domestic terrorism.” Domestic terrorism isn’t an offense that is defined in any federal law, but the entities that are expected to be classified this way, as described in the memo, largely overlap with Trump’s real or imagined political adversaries.

The use of the name “Operation Puppet Master” is hardly coincidental. On the same day last September as the Trump memo, the new Attorney General Todd Blanche, then still in the post of deputy AG, gave a directive to six Justice Department offices to begin specific investigations into the Open Society Foundations, the legal, non-violent organizations established by the 94-year-old Jewish philanthropist George Soros. Soros, like the Rothschild family in times past, has come to occupy a special place in the fever dreams of assorted antisemites, and Trump has called for Soros to be “put in jail.” Meanwhile, the Minnesota actions of the DHS flowing from the effort to criminalize protest have included obtaining three years of wire transfers from the Service Employees International Union, as well as records of the AFL-CIO, the Communication Workers of America, and environmental groups.

Speaking of investigations, we should not forget that Trump’s Homeland Security Department and FBI are still stonewalling the efforts by the law enforcement agencies in Minnesota to gain access to their information about their agents’ gunning down of the immigrant-supporters Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

August also marked the ninth anniversary of the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, that opened a new chapter in the history of antisemitism in our country. Who can forget that the torch-burning far-right marchers chanted “Jews will not replace us!” and then one of them used his car to mow down counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 35 others.

On August 12, 2017, President Donald Trump, then only seven months into his first term, told the country that in the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” violence, there were “good people on both sides.” All of us who were paying attention were outraged by such a remark from the president of the United States, and some of us wondered how things could get any worse.

Unfortunately, we now know they can.

Mark Lurinsky of Montclair recently retired from a career in public accounting. He is an activist in local politics and a member of the steering committee of J Street’s New Jersey chapter.

Opinion