It was really just a pep rally. But those Trump thugs weaponized the happy little event and arrested the pep leader! The poor guy was targeted! That was essentially how CNN depicted yesterday's arrest of David Huerta, the head of the California branch of the SEIU union.

On CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish described Huerta as "rallying" protesters. And Alyse Adamson, a former federal prosecutor from the Obama era, accused the Justice Department under AG Pam Bondi of "weaponization" of the law in having "targeted" Huerta.

The felony complaint paints a very different picture.

Huerta wasn't targeted: he was the ringleader, trying to block ICE agents from entering an establishment suspected of hiring illegal aliens. And he wasn't "rallying" protesters. He yelled at them, "stop the vehicles. It's a public sidewalk, they can't stop us."

Charging Huerta isn't "weaponization," it's the reasonable exercise of prosecutorial discretion in focusing on the prime mover of the illegal blockade. Adamson admitted that obstructing law enforcement officers was a crime. It's just odd CNN & Co. can't see that when the Biden Justice Department charged more than 1,500 people who protested at the Capitol on January 6, it looks like "weaponization." Many of those defendants weren't violent at all.

You want "targeting" and "weaponization?" Take the situation in New York, where AG Letitia James and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg ran for office vowing to go after Donald Trump! And Bragg concocted the flimsiest of legal theories by which he transformed misdemeanor bookkeeping charges into those infamous "34 felonies."

Cornish tried to paint a pattern of improper behavior by the Trump administration, saying Huerta's arrest "comes after the arrest of a judge in Wisconsin." 

Cornish offered no explication of her accusation, but she was surely referring to the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, who has been charged with helping a defendant in her courtroom evade arrest by "personally escort[ing]" the suspect and his attorney through a private exit.

Huerta, for his part, has played the martyr, telling a group of cheering supporters that while he doesn't know what prosecutors "have in store for me," he is prepared "to take that journey." Oh, the humanity!

Unless Huerta has a significant rap sheet, it's unlikely that his "journey" will pass through prison gates for any extended length of time, if at all.

Here's the transcript.

CNN This Morning
6/10/25
6:40 am EDT

AUDIE CORNISH: I want to give an example of a protest from the lower level. David Huerta, the union leader, I believe SEIU, his arrest gained national attention. He's now out on bond after he was arrested Friday for rallying protesters. But here's what he said after his release. 

DAVID HUERTA: I don't know what they have in store for me. I imagine at this point in time I am their project and they're going to put me as their example of what happens. 

But I'm prepared to take on that journey, and I'm prepared to face that. [crowd cheers]

CORNISH: He's charged with conspiring to impede an officer. This comes after the arrest of a judge Wisconsin. What he is saying is he's being prepared to be targeted. Can you talk about that in light of the changes that Pam Bondi has made at the Justice Department? 

ALYSE ADAMSON: I mean, this is a tough situation, Audie, and I'm going to I'm going to talk to the audience from the perspective of a prosecutor. Which is, if an individual, truly, and this is the important part, right, truly has impeded a law enforcement officer, that being resisting, pushing, maybe throwing things at a law enforcement officer, that is a crime. And I think that is where myself and the Attorney General agree. We saw it in Jan 6. You cannot assault police officers. 

That being said, When we talk about targeting, I think what Mr. Huerta was saying was that he is going to be used as a poster child. He's going to be used as an example. 

What we are seeing from this department, we are seeing weaponization. The very thing that they came in and said that they want to ferret out, they are making examples of people. We have the congresswoman from New Jersey who was arrested at the ICE facility. Again, the allegations are that she physically put her hands on an ICE agent. That is why we have due process. She is going to go to court and she will be able to mount a defense to that if she did not do it. 

But I think the overarching message here is that people are being used as an example for the government to show their strength and to kind of tamp down these protests by saying, we will prosecute you to the full extent of the law. 

And so we just need to make sure that those prosecutions are righteous and they are not indeed weaponization, as it appears some of them might be.

CORNISH: Right, as they fall on many leaders in these various communities.