Criminal Justice

The Trump Campaign Won't Stop Lying About a Minnesota Man Acquitted of Shooting at Police

Jaleel Stallings became an attack ad for Republicans. What they don't mention is that he was acquitted, and a police officer pleaded guilty to assaulting him.

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jaleel stallings | Illustration: Lex Villena; Rorem, Defense Visual Information Distribution Service
(Illustration: Lex Villena; Rorem, Defense Visual Information Distribution Service)

It wasn't long after Joe Biden announced he wouldn't seek reelection that the Donald Trump campaign turned its attention to Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive new Democratic nominee.

The official account of the Trump "War Room" (the cool-sounding name for the campaign's opposition research nerds) immediately began posting its greatest hits on Harris on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. But one of those attacks was quite curious:

"Kamala Harris helped raise money for a far-left organization that bailed a rioter who shot at police out of jail," the Trump War Room wrote on X yesterday.

The Trump War Room appears to be referring to Jaleel Stallings, a Minnesota man who was indeed charged with rioting, attempted murder, and deadly force against police officers during the George Floyd protests of 2020.

It's not the first time the Trump campaign has tried to use Stallings' case as a political cudgel. Back in 2020, the Trump War Room posted multiple times about Stallings, calling him a "would-be cop killer who was in jail for firing at police during 'peaceful protests.'

"Now he's free thanks in part to Biden campaign officials who donated to pay bail fees," the account wrote. "Will Joe Biden apologize for helping put cops in danger?"

What the Trump War Room neglected to mention yesterday is that a jury acquitted Stallings of all charges, and he later won a $1.5 million lawsuit settlement as a result of his violent arrest. In fact, one of the police officers pleaded guilty last year to assaulting him.

Stallings, an Army veteran who had a concealed carry permit, was in a parking lot at night in May of 2020, five days after the death of George Floyd, when Minneapolis SWAT team officers in an unmarked van began firing rubber bullets at him. 

The officers had been cruising the streets firing less-than-lethal rounds from their 40 mm projectile launchers at groups of people who were out past curfew. "The first fuckers we see, we're just hammering 'em with 40s," the team's sergeant ordered, according to body camera footage shown at Stallings' trial. Before they reached Stallings they had also taken potshots at a family trying to protect their gas station from looters and pepper sprayed a Vice News reporter who was supposed to be exempt from the curfew.

Stallings claimed he saw the unmarked white cargo van pull up with its lights off and the door slide open. He heard a pop and then felt the sharp pain of a rubber bullet hitting him in the chest. He said he assumed it was a drive-by and thought he'd been grazed by a bullet. Stallings returned fire at the van, shooting three rounds that did not hit anyone. When he realized he was shooting at police, he tossed his gun and surrendered. Body camera footage shown at Stallings' trial showed officers kicking and punching Stallings as he tried to surrender, including after he was handcuffed.

The Trump campaign and conservative media latched onto the case after Stallings' $75,000 bail was paid by the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a bail fund that Harris had tweeted support for.

"Meet the Rioting Criminals Kamala Harris Helped Bail out of Jail," a Federalist headline declared in an article that mentioned Stallings' case.

It was a weak attack that completely fell apart once the facts of the case were known.

The ostensible function of bail is to act as a surety that the defendant, who is presumed innocent, will appear at trial. In practice, it has turned into a monetary lever to keep arrestees in jail, regardless of their danger to the public. Bail funds are a workaround to this problem. (Several red states have introduced or passed laws to ban them in response.) In Stallings' case, the bail fund and the mechanism of cash bail worked exactly as they were supposed to: They kept him out of jail pending his trial, where he successfully claimed self-defense, and preserved his presumption of innocence, despite the best efforts of conservative media and the Trump campaign to publicly smear him.

The Trump War Room's repeated invocation of the case of a man who ultimately was proven to be an innocent victim of police brutality is a reminder that the Republican Party's obsequious and omnipresent "blue lives" rhetoric doesn't reflect a sincere concern for officers' safety. Rather, it's just a bit of sloppy demagoguery to keep a favored class of public employees beyond criticism and above the law.