The DHS affidavit supporting the criminal complaints sought against the Cities Church mob has been posted online (embedded below via Scribd). The affidavit is intensely interesting in a number of respects. The redactions in paragraph 3 suggest that the magistrate judge did not sign off on complaints against five other participants, one of whom we know was Don Lemon. However, I don’t think the magistrate judge holds the last word on this matter. As Andrew McCarthy explained at NR:
Magistrate judges are not full-fledged Article III judges. They are lawyers who work for the court….In that capacity, they are routinely asked to issue arrest or search warrants based on probable-cause affidavits. (Such an affidavit is called a “complaint” when filed in support of an arrest.) If the magistrate judge makes a determination to which the government objects, prosecutors can bring the dispute to a district judge, who can overrule the magistrate judge.
More here and more to come.
