A couple of weeks ago, during a routine congressional hearing, Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a straightforward question: “What is habeas corpus?” The South Dakota Republican responded with an answer that was both wrong and ridiculous, generating national coverage that should’ve left Noem humiliated.
A week later, the Cabinet secretary tried to get back on track with a story she seemed quite excited about. According to allegations Noem raised by way of social media, the Department of Homeland Security successfully apprehended a Mexican man who, according to her, had threatened to kill Donald Trump. She even promoted an image of the man’s handwritten threat and urged the public to “take notice,” as the White House amplified Noem’s claims.
In hindsight, that was unwise. As The Associated Press reported, the underlying story “has begun to unravel.”
[I]nvestigators actually believe the man may have been framed so that he would get arrested and be deported from the U.S. before he got a chance to testify in a trial as a victim of assault, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. … Law enforcement officials believe the man, Ramon Morales Reyes, never wrote a letter that Noem and her department shared with a message written in light blue ink expressing anger over Trump’s deportations and threatening to shoot him in the head with a rifle at a rally.
The AP’s report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added that officials contacted Morales Reyes and asked for a handwriting sample. They “concluded his handwriting and the threatening letter didn’t match and that the threat was not credible.”
What’s more, his defense attorney noted that Morales Reyes couldn’t have written the letter, because doesn’t speak English.
The ABC affiliate in Milwaukee went on to report that local prosecutors have identified a different man as the person who wrote the threatening letter, as part of a plot “to get Morales-Reyes deported and eliminate the chance of him testifying” in a violent armed robbery case. And yet, as of this writing, Noem hasn’t walked back her claim, and her social media post targeting Morales Reyes hasn’t been taken down. The beleaguered homeland security secretary didn’t exactly have a lot of credibility to spare. This incident won’t help her unfortunate reputation.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
