Trump Cheered His Killing As ‘Retribution,’ Now His Family Is Suing in Court
When far-left activist Michael Reinoehl was shot dead by law enforcement in a hail of bullets in September 2020, then-president Donald Trump infamously cheered his death as “retribution,” and Attorney General Bill Barr touted the killing as the “takedown” of an “admitted Antifa member.”
Reinoehl’s estate is now suing in federal court, alleging that the 48-year-old father of two was killed in a “sudden and unprovoked attack” and that the law enforcement officers responsible for Reinoehl’s death “either had no plan to arrest [him] without injury… or planned to use deadly force from the start.”
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, contends that law enforcement “did not afford Reinoehl an opportunity to surrender”; failed to observe a “standard of care for high-risk law enforcement operations”; and neglected to provide any “warning or announcement that they were police.”
At the time of his death, Reinoehl had been labeled a fugitive and charged with murder in the second degree. When his body was searched he had a pistol in his pants pocket and a disassembled rifle in his backpack. The sheriff deputies who opened fire claimed they saw him reaching for his waist.
Reinoehl, a white man, was a left-wing activist in the Portland area and identified as “100% ANTIFA all the way.” He assumed a security role during many of the racial justice protests that roiled downtown Portland during the summer and fall of 2020 — and frequently attracted right-wing agitators.
On the night of August 29, 2020, Reinoehl shot and killed a man named Aaron ”Jay” Danielson during a street confrontation, in which Danielson (a supporter of the local far-right group Patriot Prayer) also deployed bear spray. In a video interview Reinoehl later claimed that the killing had been self-defense.
That claim was never adjudicated because Reinoehl was killed in a barrage of more than 40 bullets fired by law enforcement in Washington state, acting under the auspices of a federal fugitive task force directed by the U.S. Marshals service.
Reinoehl’s violent death has long been a matter of public controversy. A local prosecutor declined to bring criminal charges against the officers in the chaotic killing, which began with a sheriff deputy firing shots at Reinoehl through the deputy’s own windshield. The prosecutor, however, pointedly called on the the Justice Department to investigate whether “use of force was in violation of federal law or policy.”
According to the federal lawsuit filed by Reinoehl’s estate (embedded below), the Antifa activist had gone into hiding for his own safety after his deadly encounter with Danielson, because it had provoked a drive-by shooting of his home with his children inside. After the alleged drive-by shooting, law enforcement soon located Reinoehl in Lacey Washington, a two-hour drive from Portland.
The lawsuit is filed against the U.S. government, Pierce County Washington, and four named members of law enforcement from Washington state — including two sheriff deputies, a local cop, and a state corrections officer — who are described as “operating under the vanishingly thin pretense of a United States Marshals Service task force.”
The lawsuit alleges that a bare-bones scheme to “take” Reinoehl “did not include any plan for officers to attempt to announce or identify themselves as law enforcement” or “to give any warning before using deadly force.” The suit also contends officers were briefed on “inaccurate” intel — including “the claim that Reinoehl considered himself to be at ‘war’ with police.”
The suit also claims that as soon as Reinoehl was spotted exiting a residence in the Olympia suburb and walking toward his VW Jetta, “the chain of command… if there ever was any, broke down.” According to the filing, sheriff deputies without supervisory roles initiated the confrontation, driving aggressively up on Reinoehl, without lights or sirens, with one deputy then shooting at the Jetta from inside his Ford Escape.
The lawsuit describes how the sudden onslaught likely appeared to the suspect: “From the perspective of a reasonable person in Reinoehl’s shoes, the aggressive driving, sudden and unprovoked shooting, and physical appearance of the individual Defendants was indistinguishable from the armed and violent far-right extremists who Reinoehl feared had recently shot up his home.”
The suit cites civilian witnesses who said they heard no identification or instructions from the officers over the gunfire as Rienohel attempted to flee. He was shot dead in a spray of more than 40 rounds, one of which lodged in a bystander’s apartment and shrapnel from which hurt a young child playing nearby. Riehnoehl was ultimately hit five times.
The suit alleges that — though Reinoehl was armed — there was no bullet in the chamber and the weapon “was still in his pocket when he was laid out dead on the street.” Several of the officers, it alleges, learned of his weapon after the killing and had time to coordinate accounts of their shooting before speaking to investigators — a practice the suit calls “inconsistent with law enforcement standards, for obtaining reliable information.” The suit also decries that the federal Marshal on the scene, and in charge of the task force, “still has not given a statement to investigators to this day.”
The lawsuit seeks “compensatory damages” for “pre-death pain and suffering”; “compensation for Reinoehl’s loss of his civil right to be free from the use of excessive force by law enforcement,” as well as “punitive and exemplary damages.”
Reinoehl’s death played out against a backdrop of rancid 2020 presidential politics. The Trump administration attempted to paint the city of Portland into a false avatar of lawlessness and violence that only Donald Trump could tame. This included his deployment of federal agents to the city to confront protesters at a federal courthouse.
For his part, Trump relished the death of Reinoehl and spoke frequently of the law enforcement killing as though it were an execution. In a Fox News interview, the former president insisted: “This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I will tell you something, that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this.”
Later, during a rally in North Carolina, Trump declared that the U.S. Marshals “didn’t want to arrest him” and crowed of Reinoehl’s violent death: “We got him.”
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