A Michigan sheriff who hosted Donald Trump last week reportedly is facing an investigation over complaints that the event violated the state’s campaign finance law.
Trump’s choice of Howell, Michigan, was controversial in and of itself, given that he was visiting shortly after white supremacists gathered there and celebrated him and Adolf Hitler. But the props at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office event — including law enforcement officers and sheriff’s vehicles carefully staged in the background — were just as disturbing as the location. And they gave the impression that the sheriff’s office was endorsing the GOP presidential nominee, despite Sheriff Mike Murphy’s insistence beforehand that it would be a news conference and not a political event.
Trump’s choice of Howell, Michigan, was controversial in and of itself, given that he was visiting shortly after white supremacists gathered there and celebrated him and Adolf Hitler.
On Thursday, the Detroit Metro Times reported that two complaints filed over the event have prompted the state’s Bureau of Elections to investigate whether Murphy violated the Michigan Campaign Finance Act.
An attorney told local outlet MLive that the sheriff could potentially skirt legal trouble by allowing Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to speak in the same setting. And Murphy — who denied having committed any violation — told the outlet he would “extend her the same courtesy for sure.”
Indeed, inviting Harris (no matter her response) may help the sheriff elude legal consequences, but it doesn’t address the ethical — and I’d argue moral — dilemma that his office has created. Nor does it address the legitimacy crisis that Murphy has unleashed.
At last week’s event, Murphy’s officers stood behind Trump as he rambled and falsely accused Harris and the Democratic Party of letting crime run rampant, claims that don’t align with reality. So the essence of Trump’s speech wasn’t just a lie — it was a lie told by a criminal in his own right, one who has fomented an insurrection in which police officers were beaten, and who also has backed policing practices — such as stop and frisk — that have been used to prey upon Black and Latino people disproportionately.
Can a law enforcement officer legitimately claim to uphold the Constitution after appearing alongside a man who has proposed “termination” of some of it?
And yet members of the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office lent Trump their gravitas by literally backing him up as he told this lie. It begs the question: Why should the local residents trust these officers to protect their rights, if the department was so willing to let them be aligned with one of the most notorious lawbreakers in American history? Can a law enforcement officer legitimately claim to uphold the Constitution after appearing alongside a man who has proposed “termination” of some of it?
To be sure, these aren’t merely questions for the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office; many other officers across the nation also have posed with Trump since his election loss in 2020. All of them seemingly without a care in the world for the grim message it sends to the residents they encounter daily — that they care about power and control more than law and order.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.