Trump has identified the "leader of Antifa." It's a 29-year-old who helps injured protestors.

President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has identified 29-year-old Portland, Oregon resident Chandler Patey as “the leader of Antifa,” according to internal DHS documents leaked to journalist Kenneth Klippenstein. Klippenstein notes that Patey and other “Antifa protestors” identified in the federal documents demonstrate the shoddy reasoning the federal government will use to just to label any protestor as a domestic terrorist.

The DHS decided that Patey leads Antifa, which Trump has designated as a “domestic terrorist organization,” because Patey has been “seen in many videos advocating the principles of [anti-fascism]” and because he allows protestors to use his bathroom and medical supplies to rinse off tear gas inflicted by federal agents at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainment facility near his downtown Portland apartment.

While Patey also provides medical equipment and gas mask filters that protestors might need after federal agents attack them for expressing their First Amendment rights, Fox News host Laura Ingraham and other right-wing media commentators have used these as a basis to claim that Patey is running an ominous-sounding “Antifa safehouse.”

In reality, Antifa is a decentralized political ideology with autonomous, local groups but no formal leaders. Antifa activists primarily oppose institutional fascism and racism in government.

Anonymous senior DHS officials told Klippenstein that they feel pressured to find legal ways to implement the “outrageous directives” of President Trump’s anti-Antifa crusade, despite there being little evidence of actual crimes or the “well-financed” group backing that Trump officials regularly accuse Antifa of benefiting from.

Accordingly, the DHS also has internal documents proclaiming to be actively investigating other Antifa protestors, including Dustin Ragsdale. The DHS has a photo of him carrying a Pride flag and wearing sweatpants with a Batman logo. Ragsdale’s “terrorist activities” include using a megaphone and being “aggressive to counter protesters.” Also listed is a Washington woman who goes by Mossy Matriarch; her offense: collecting and distributing supplies to protestors.

The DHS’ files on these and other “terrorists” credit right-wing commentators with helping provide information as “open source intelligence” (OSINT). That is, if anti-LGBTQ+ MAGA influencers decide that anyone is an Antifa supporter, that information may go in a federal investigatory file as “intelligence.”

Legal observers worry that Trump has used his Antifa terrorist designation as a pretense to direct federal agencies to harass left-wing activists, donor networks, and Democratic groups, as his administration officials have already claimed that Democratic politicians are “covering up” Antifa crimes. His administration has already tried to violate First Amendment rights by attacking media outlets that criticize him as well as kidnapping and deporting pro-Palestinian activists and journalists.

The Trump administration proclaimed that both queer mother of three Renee Good and Department of Veterans Affairs’ ICU nurse Alex Pretti were domestic terrorists immediately after federal immigration agents repeatedly shot and killed both. Administration officials have since backed off from those characterizations, but only after widespread outrage and nationwide protest from people across the political spectrum.

Federal agents at the Portland, Oregon ICE facility spent the weekend teargassing protestors, senior citizens, and their children.

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Originally published here.