I don’t know why this isn’t getting more attention. Yes, there are headlines saying that Trump is getting involved in the possible prosecution of the McCloskeys, the famously  toxic couple who pointed guns at BLM protesters walking past their house. But this is the part that set off alarm bells for me: Missouri Governor Parsons spoke to Trump on the phone yesterday, and after that Parsons said,

The governor lamented that it is “very difficult” to remove an elected official from office, apparently meaning Gardner, but said that was something state lawmakers should address in a future legislative session. He added that he explained to Trump that his powers as governor were limited in forcing out officials.

“We got to explain to him why it’s very difficult for an elected official in the state, for a governor … how you can remove someone from office — what powers you have as a governor,” Parson said. “I don’t want to make it sound like he’s going to come in here and remove somebody from office, but I guarantee you the president is focused on what’s happening here.”

Here is the prosecutor Trump and Parsons want removed to protect the McCloskeys:

St. Louis Prosecutor Kim Gardner

Kim Gardner is the Circuit Attorney, or chief prosecutor, for the city of St. Louis. She was elected by the people of St. Louis in 2016 and assumed her duties in January 2017. She is the first African American to hold that position.

Trump and Parsons want to remove her from office because they don’t want her to prosecute the McCloskeys.  Parsons wants to change Missouri law to give the power to remove her to the state government, somehow. Of course Trump has no authority to mess with elected officials of a state, never mind a city,. But it strikes me that for a state government to remove the elected official of a city flies in the face of the principles of republican (small R) government.

There have been some notorious cases of state Repubican governors — it seems it’s always Republican governors — dismissing elected city officials and putting emergency managers in their place. You might recall that emergency managers appointed to run Detroit by then Michigan governor Rick Snyder brought about the Detroit water fiasco.

In this case, I’ve heard nothing about Gardner being corrupt. However, she’s been in the crosshairs of righties because she was instrumental in removing the previous governor, Eric Greitens, for campaign finance violations. She has also been butting heads with the St. Louis Police Department over systemic racism, and given the behavior of the StLPD during the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting in 2014 — in brief, a police riot — my sympathies are with Kim Gardner on this point. Criminal justice reform was an issue she ran on, after all. And the people of St. Louis elected her.

Yet hardly a week goes by in these parts without some conservative group or rightie politician going on the teevee to complain about Kim Gardner. See Rashad Robinson, The People Who Undermine Progressive Prosecutors, in the New York Times, June 11:

The chief prosecutor in St. Louis, Kimberly Gardner, has made a host of changes — expanding diversion programs, dropping low-level drug cases and refusing cases that rely on untrustworthy police officers, among others.

But after what The Times described as pushback “in a manner that is virtually unheard-of for an elected prosecutor,” now Ms. Gardner is suing her own city, citing “a racially motivated conspiracy to deny the civil rights of racial minorities” by making it harder for her to make the reforms she was elected to make. Her lawsuit is supported by an organization that represents police officers, a majority of whom are black, along with civil rights law firms and many other progressive prosecutors.

If a progressive prosecutor is a black woman like Ms. Gardner, the ploys used by conservatives are shamelessly vicious. Still, no matter how loudly or often police union leaders, and their political allies stoke fear about an impending crime apocalypse if prosecutors carry out reforms, it never comes to pass.

I believe you see the picture here.

As of yet no charges have been filed against the McCloskeys, and perhaps no charges will be filed. According to the local teevee news, St. Louis police have brought a charge of unlawful use of weapons to the prosecutor, but no action has been taken. Missouri gun laws allow white people with guns to pretty much do whatever they want.

Today, Parsons made an announcement that Trump would definitely be getting involved in some punishment of Gardner; but I didn’t catch it all and it’s not online yet. Here is a report from last night’s news:

Here is background on what really happened with the McCloskeys and the protesters. See also this in-depth piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the McCloskeys and their long history of being perpetually at war with everybody. These two are a walking toxic waste dump.

I haven’t written here about Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the gun-totin’ St. Louis couple of wackadoos who became living memes a few days ago. You must have heard about them.

No, I don’t know who the person is in the foreground. And why are the McCloskeys both barefoot? Oh, never mind. There are some new developments to discuss, in particular about whether the McCloskeys might face charges.

The basic facts of what happened on June 28 are much disputed, of course, but what can be verified is that a number of Black Lives Matter protesters entered the gated neighborhood in which the McCloskeys live in ostentatious splendor and walked through the streets of that neighborhood on their way to the home of Mayor Lyda Krewson — a Democrat — for reasons explained here.

About the gate: There have been claims that the protesters tore down a gate to get into the community, but that’s been disputed in St. Louis media. Here is a report from KSDK News, the NBC television affiliate in St. Louis, broadcast on June 29, the day after the incident. It goes into details over the disputed stories about the gate. As you can see in the report, the gate was still there. It was damaged, but it’s disputed whether the damage already existed before the protesters went through the gate. It is an old gate, and the protesters said someone had opened the gate for them.

On the other hand, Mark McCloskey produced a photo showing much more serious damage to the gate than is seen in the television news video shot the next day, and don’t ask me how he managed that. Even now people are arguing on social media about the gate, and some people are claiming the gate was replaced, but there’s been nothing about that in St. Louis media. It’s an antique gate, and I doubt you could just run down to Home Depot for an identical replacement.

About the “private” neighorhood: The McCloskeys are not the sole owners of the property behind the gate. The street and sidewalks belong to a homeowners association, so while the streets are not “public,” they aren’t the McCloskeys’s property. And as we’ll see, this could be a critical distinction if the McCloskeys find themselves facing criminal charges.

Indeed, the McCloskeys and the homeowners association have been engaged in a drawn-out legal dispute about who owns what:

The McCloskeys and the trustees of Portland Place are involved in a three-year legal dispute over a small piece of property. The McCloskeys claim they own it, but the trustees say it belongs to the neighborhood.

A judge on Monday ruled against motions from both sides to end the case without a trial. Details about the legal case were first reported Thursday by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Mark McCloskey said in the affidavit that he and his wife purchased the home in 1988 and have taken several measures to improve the disputed piece of land.

The affidavit states they have “regularly prohibited all persons, including Portland Place residents, from crossing the Parcel including at least at one point, challenging a resident at gunpoint who refused to heed the McCloskeys’ warnings to stay off such property.”

Watkins said in an interview that the McCloskeys have “touched their weapons” just twice in their 32 years on Portland Place — during the incident in 1988 or 1989 cited in the affidavit, and on Sunday.

In other words, they pulled a gun on one of their own neighbors for being on a piece of land that they don’t clearly have title to, but claim anyway.

In the earlier incident, Watkins said, Patricia McCloskey heard a noise at night and saw someone.

“She looked down, had a gun and screamed for the person to stay off her property,” Watkins said. It turned out to be a neighbor cutting through on the way home from a nearby business district. Watkins said the neighbor was then, and is now, a friend of the couple.

One suspects the McCloskeys have boundary issues, and I’m not talking about real estate. But there are other people living in that community who didn’t see the protesters as a threat, and they produced an open letter criticizing the McCloskeys a few days ago:

Later in the op ed, public defender Wurst wrote, “Patricia McCloskey generated controversy in the 1990s over reported efforts to stop unmarried or gay couples from moving to Portland Place.” Charming lady.

There’s an article at Business Insider by Patrick Blanchfield, an Associate Faculty Member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, providing some more background on the issue.

Parsing what happened in terms of the law gets murky fast. As US states go, Missouri is quite liberal in terms of gun rights. The open carry of firearms is legal. Missouri is also a Castle Doctrine state, allowing home owners to make armed self-defense of their residences against invaders. The state does not impose a “Duty to Retreat,” meaning gun owners can shoot and aren’t required to flee from their home or elsewhere if they feel their lives are under imminent threat (sometimes known as Stand Your Ground).

But brandishing a weapon at someone in a threatening manner can be a felony, and the Castle Doctrine does not straightforwardly extend to “private streets.” Indeed, St. Louis city laws regarding brandishing at people in shared public spaces (in the more common language sense) may well trump the prerogatives of private citizens in private or semi-public ones. And it is certainly the case that someone’s performing an act of civil disobedience — including trespassing — does not itself grant bystanders the right to threaten lethal force against them.  …

… Likewise, it is striking how, in the many defenses of the McCloskeys, the question of what, exactly, “private property” means is slippery. Is it their private property? Is it the private property of Portland Place Homeowner’s Association, of which they are members? Or is it the idea of a particular order of private property, which first and foremost depended on the prerogative of armed white people, civilians and otherwise, to claim territory and dominate people, above all unruly nonwhite people, within it?

As far as I know, the Portland Place Homeowner’s Association has not officially taken a position on this matter, although given the number of signatures on the open letter, if it went to a vote of the members about whether the protesters were a threat, the McCloskeys might lose.

Anyway, it’s not impossible that the McCloskeys will face charges eventually. Whether they would be convicted by a St. Louis jury is another matter entirely.

While we’re on the subject of the McCloskeys — I’ve seen claims in social media that they are registered Democrats. There is no registration by party in Missouri. I verified that by looking at my own voter registration card. There are also claims that the McCloskeys donate money to Democrats. Snopes says that records going back a few years show that they’ve donated money to politicians of both parties, but in recent years most of their donations have gone to Republicans.

There are also some stories in the news that protesters either returned to the McCloskey property or were very near there Friday evening, July 3. Nothing happened, fortunately. If the St. Louis prosecutor is going to bring charges — and I believe she will if there’s any case at all — it would probably be better for protesters to stay away from the McCloskeys rather than potentially muddy the water if somebody did something stupid. And the McCloskeys are dangerous. They haven’t shot anybody yet, but give ’em time.