President Donald Trump on Tuesday encouraged federal prosecution of CNN after the network published a report on a new app people can use to share information about the presence of ICE agents conducting immigration raids.
‘It’s okay with me,’ Trump said when asked about the idea while touring the new ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ facility on a two-hour visit to the facility in Florida’s everglades.
Homeland Security Department Secretary Kristi Noem, who was traveling with Trump, was even more emphatic about going after the network.
‘We’re working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them for that, because what they’re doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities operations,’ Noem said.
‘We’re going to actually go after them and prosecute them with the partnership of Pam, if we can, because what they’re doing, we believe, is illegal,’ she said.
She was referencing Attorney General Pam Bondi, a longtime Trump loyalist who previously served as Florida’s attorney general. Main Justice and its teams of prosecutors are tasked with making final independent decisions on who to charge.
CNN reported Monday on the new app, called ICEBlock. The article quoted the app designer as saying he created it because ‘I wanted to do something to fight back.’
It further quotes him comparing ICE raids of illegal immigrants as part of Trump’s mass deportation campaign to Nazi Germany.
The app allows users to share and receive information about ICE agents who are in the area – potentially allowing people to evade arrest, although ICEBlock tells users not to incite violence that it is intended ‘for information and notification purposes only.’
ICE has called it a threat to its agents, saying it ‘paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs.’
ICE raids have been drawing increased scrutiny in Los Angeles and so-called ‘sanctuary cities,’ with some civil liberties groups blasting the practice of armed, masked agents surrounding and detaining people on the street and in other public spaces.
Trump campaigned heavily on rounding up and deporting illegal aliens, although he also spoke as recently as Tuesday about potentially finding a way for longtime migrant farm workers and hospitality industry workers without documentation to remain in the country – so long as an owner has ‘responsibility’ for them.
In Florida he called it ‘farmer responsibility’ or ‘other responsibility’ when asked about the idea.
‘We’re going to have a system of signing them up so they don’t have to go. They can be here legally … They’re not going to be citizens, but they get other things,’ he said.
CNN has responded by saying that the app ‘is publicly available to any iPhone user who wants to download it. There is nothing illegal about reporting the existence of this or any other app, nor does such reporting constitute promotion or other endorsement of the app by CNN’.
Trump, after expressing approval for possible prosecution of the network, then brought another area where he said CNN should face prosecution. The network is a regular Trump foil, and he often brands it ‘fake news.’
‘They may be prosecuted also for having given false reports on the attack on Iran,’ Trump said.
He ripped a report by CNN last month that a preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency report assessed that the attack he ordered on Iranian nuclear facilities may have pushed back its weapons program by just a few months. Other outlets also reported similar findings, although the White House said it was just a piece of early information, without disputing its authenticity.
The Washington Post subsequently reported on intercepted Iranian officials describing damage as less than anticipated. Trump continues to say the key facilities were ‘totally obliterated.’
‘And our people have to be celebrated, not come home and say, What do you mean? We didn’t hit the target,’ Trump said of US pilots who flew from Missouri to Iran to drop bunker buster bombs on the nuclear sites.
‘So they may be very well prosecuted for them. What they did there, we think is totally illegal,’ he said.
Trump border tsar Tom Homan unloaded on the network and the app during an appearance on conservative influencer Benny Johnson’s podcast.
‘It’s disgusting,’ he said. I cannot believe we’re in a world where the men and women who enforce the law are the bad guys and the one who broke the law are the victims?’ Johnson accused the network of ‘pushing’ the app. He said it could lead to someone trying to ‘take out’ an ICE agent, adding that ‘DOJ needs to look at this.’
Even if Trump would seem unlikely to prevail against the network in court due to available First Amendment defenses, he may be encouraged by a series of out-of-court settlements.
His lawyers are reportedly nearly a possible settlement with CBS parent company Paramount in his $20 billion lawsuit after a mediator for both sides proposed a $20 million settlement.