A Haitian nonprofit group has filed charges against GOP nominees Donald Trump and JD Vance for their peddling of a pet-eating hoax that has turned Springfield, Ohio, upside over the last month.
The Haitian Bridge Alliance, based in California, announced Tuesday that it has taken advantage of a Ohio law that allows private citizens to file charges without first going through police or prosecutors.
The charges filed against the Republican candidates included disrupting public services, making false alarms, telecommunications harassment, complicity, and aggravated menacing.
Lawyers for the group filed motions asking the Clark County Municipal Court to affirm probable cause and to issue arrest warrants for Vance and Trump, just over a month before Election Day. That request will force the court to have a hearing before it can reject the affidavits, reported News 5 Cleveland.
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Subodh Chandra, the Haitian Bridge Alliance’s lead attorney, told NBC 4 that the group hoped to hold Trump and Vance accountable as anyone would be if they spread conspiracies that lead to bomb threats, school closures, and disrupted city services.
“If anyone other than Trump and Vance had relentlessly disseminated false information,” he said. “They would have been arrested by now. So the only question is whether Trump and Vance will be held accountable to the rule of the law like the rest of us.”
Baseless claims about Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets in Springfield first spread in August. The hoax was initially limited to niche Republican circles but went mainstream after Trump repeated it during his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.
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Another missing pet claim—the mysterious disappearance of Miss Sassy from a home with Haitian immigrants for neighbors—was debunked after the “missing” kitty was found in the owner’s basement.
Vance has now also admitted that he’s just been making stuff up to get attention. In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, he conceded that he kept spreading the harmful pet-eating conspiracy despite it having no legs.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” he told Bash.
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