Trump Team Is Already Lying About Detention of NYC Mayoral Candidate

Masked ICE agents detained New York City Comptroller Brad Lander Tuesday. But rather than focus on the fact that federal agents are targeting American citizens, government accounts worked to add their own spin to the situation, trying to make Lander appear guilty of a crime that didn’t seem to occur.

Lander was dragged from Federal Plaza by immigration officers after he tried to escort a defendant out of immigration court, according to his wife, Meg Barnette. The tense situation was thoroughly documented as Lander was strong-armed down a hallway, calmly asking agents if they could display their warrant as he was manhandled.

“You don’t have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens,” Lander said. “I’m not obstructing, I’m standing right here in the hallway. I asked to see the judicial warrant.”

Yet within hours, the official X account for the Department of Homeland Security claimed that Lander had assaulted law enforcement officers.

“New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer,” the account wrote. “Our heroic ICE law enforcement officers face a 413 percent increase in assaults against them—it is wrong that politicians seeking higher office undermine law enforcement safety to get a viral moment.”

Videos leading up to Lander’s arrest depict him gripping the individual ICE was trying to detain but did not show the comptroller assaulting anyone.

Yet DHS claimed, “No one is above the law, and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences.”

Lander’s arrest summoned immediate local backlash, with a wave of politicians and protesters descending on 26 Federal Plaza in the aftermath of the comptroller’s seemingly groundless detention. Included in the mix was mayoral front-runner Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, who recently joined arms with Lander in their ranked-choice race to Gracie Mansion.

As the protest continued, Barnette posted an update on her 55-year-old husband: “Brad is still in ICE custody.”

It is not clear if Lander will face charges.

“This is profoundly unacceptable. Arresting Comptroller Lander for the simple act of standing up for immigrants and their civil rights is a shocking abuse of power,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, calling the affair a “grotesque escalation of tensions.”

Good news: Bullying works.

Senator Mike Lee has deleted his three horrific social media posts mocking the assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and the attempted assassination of another Democratic state lawmaker and his wife.

The Huffington Post’s Jennifer Bendery confirmed Tuesday that Lee had deleted three posts on his X account addressing a gunman’s violent spree Saturday that claimed the life of state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark.

Lee told journalist Matt Laslo that he’d decided to remove his posts after speaking with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar. “It was important to her that I take it down,” Lee reportedly told Laslo. “We’re good friends. I took it down.”

The Utah Republican had suggested that’s just what happens when “Marxists don’t get their way.” The alleged shooter, Vance Boelter, has since been confirmed as a staunch Trump supporter.

“Nightmare on Waltz [sic] Street,” Lee posted again, referring to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

The disgusting tweets have summoned a tidal wave of criticism against Lee, who was seen fleeing from reporters attempting to ask him about them.

Minnesota Senator Tina Smith’s deputy chief of staff eviscerated Lee in an email to his office Monday, questioning whether his posts about Minnesota felt like a “successful day of work on Team Lee?” The senator herself cornered Lee on Capitol Hill that evening, telling him he had been “brutal and cruel.”

This story has been updated.

New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was dragged from the hallways of a Lower Manhattan immigration court and detained by masked ICE agents on Tuesday. It is still unclear if Lander will be charged with anything.

In videos circulating on social media, Lander can be seen with his arms linked to an immigration court defendant as ICE agents attempt to remove him from the building. Lander and his staff can be heard repeatedly asking for a judicial warrant, saying he’d let go of the defendant once he saw one. ICE did not oblige, and instead detained him, pressing him against a wall and cuffing his hands behind his back. It’s clear from the video that ICE agents determined that the mayoral candidate was obstructing their work. If Lander is charged, it would suggest that any attempt to protest or even document ICE actions could be construed as an arrestable offense. It’s clearly already one worthy of detainment.

“You do not have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens,” Lander said multiple times while ICE tightened the handcuffs.

Lander’s detainment has been met with shock and condemnation. Multiple city leaders, including Lander’s wife, Megan Barnette, and fellow mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, held a press conference immediately following the incident.

“NYC Comptroller Brad Lander was just arrested by Trump’s ICE agents because he asked to see a judicial warrant,” Mamdani wrote on X. “This is fascism, and all New Yorkers must speak in one voice. Release him now.”

“ICE just arrested Brad Lander, the NYC Comptroller and one of the leading candidates for Mayor, without grounds. He was conducting routine immigration court work, escorting individuals from hearings,” New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Bluesky. “He asked ICE for their warrant—well within his legal rights. This is political intimidation.”

“I feel really rattled and scared, and my husband is a candidate for mayor, is an elected citywide official, is U.S. citizen,” Barnette said. He “has a U.S. passport, and I know in all likelihood he is OK. And all of the other folks in that building are risking having their families torn apart with inadequate explanation. And it’s an abomination.”

ICE maintains that Comptroller Lander was obstructing an arrest by linking arms with the defendant and asking to see a warrant.

Dissent against Donald Trump is bubbling within his administration—but people are too scared to act on it.

Some White House staffers no longer believe that Trump is fit to be president, according to Miles Taylor, who served as Department of Homeland Security chief of staff during Trump’s first term. They believe that the president is “still the same man, but worse and emboldened,” Taylor said on the Court of History podcast. He noted that staffers described Trump as “deeply impulsive, but impulsive without checks and balances around him.”

“If I was sitting with Donald Trump right now, I would say, ‘I have friends in your White House, and some of them are … [lying] very, very low, but share some of the same concerns that I had during the first Trump administration,’” Taylor said.

Taylor drew national attention in 2018 when he anonymously penned an op-ed for The New York Times claiming to be part of the internal “resistance” against Trump’s agenda, lumping himself in with a group of senior officials who did not believe Trump was fit for the nation’s highest office. He has since written several books assessing Trump’s behavior in the White House that revealed intimate insider accounts.

“The people around [Trump] aren’t trying to talk him out of doing bad things—if anything, they are demonstrating fealty at every turn to the leader, and that’s resulting in a lot of bad decisions getting made,” Taylor said.

This has proven true since the inauguration: The president has developed a real soft spot for public deference, whether it’s receiving ultra-lavish gifts from Qatar to warm trade negotiations, a $45 million military parade to jointly celebrate his birthday and the Army’s 250th anniversary, or Cabinet meeting round-robins focused on gushing about Trump’s performance.

The president’s second-term quest to nix Washington’s so-called “deep state” and replace it with an army of MAGA yes-men has so far been successful, and the result is a Trumpian loyalty more akin to a religion than a political ideology. It all became particularly evident in April, when Trump wheeled out his “Liberation Day” tariff plan using figures that nobody in his vicinity had dared to notify him were founded on bad math.

And the problem may only get worse as time goes on.

“Now, most of the folks I know are on, of course, the national security side of the [White] House, and some of them still think that they can keep their hand on the wheel. And I would prefer some of those people in the posts I’m thinking about than others who might replace them,” Taylor noted. “But I think people of conscience in this administration know that they are an endangered species.”

Donald Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” Tuesday in a series of escalating threats on Iran.

“We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment, and plenty of it, but it doesn’t compare to American made, conceived, and manufactured ‘stuff.’ Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA.”

The Israeli military had previously announced Monday that its strikes had crippled Iran’s air defenses, allowing Israel to drop bombs directly over Tehran instead of using long-range missiles. Trump’s ominous post—which worryingly conflates Israeli forces with American—comes as a reminder that to the United States, war is first and foremost a business enterprise, which could explain his decision to completely ignore intelligence from his own government that determined Iran was not close to obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Trump then decided to up the ante by threatening Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei directly.

“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” Trump wrote in another post on Truth Social. “He is an easy target, but is safe there—We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Three U.S. officials told CBS News Sunday that Trump opposed taking out Khamenei. Recent reports from Israeli sources, however, have said that Trump has only been pretending to oppose Israel’s military operation in Iran and helped to coordinate Israeli movements behind closed doors.

So while the president’s hemming and hawing is certainly a power trip, it’s possible he is also attempting to obscure his support for Israel’s military action, which is unpopular with voters.

“UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” Trump counseled in a third post.