Federal agents with the Department of Homeland Security sent undercover agents to observe a climate group and into churches, and obtained financial records for labor unions, as they sought to crack down on mass protests in Minneapolis following the Trump administration’s surge of federal officers into the city, attorneys alleged in a new filing.
The effort began in earnest four days after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti. On Jan. 28, Homeland Security Investigations, ICE’s investigative arm, started what it called “Operation Puppet Master,” the filing says. That investigation was targeted at “an organized network of conspirators operating through online and in person who are providing material support to violent opportunists and agitators involved in impeding federal law enforcement, rioting, destruction of Federal property and assaults on Federal agents and Officers.”
The filing was filed by the defense in the broad conspiracy prosecution that the DOJ’s Joint Task Force Vanguard brought against fifteen Minnesota activists in June. Federal prosecutors channeled Trump administration messaging to dub the group “Antifa.” Locals have started to call the group the “Minneapolis 15.”
Defense attorney Kevin Riach wrote in the filing that federal agents had charged the group as part of a broad campaign of “abuses” that targeted ordinary citizens and left-leaning civil society organizations.” The filing cited extensive government materials obtained by the defendants through discovery.
“HSI secretly obtained financial records for several national labor unions, including SEIU and the Communications Workers of America, and social justice non-profits including the Sunrise Movement and Voices for Racial Justice, all with zero criminal predicate to do so,” Riach wrote.
Per the filing, Joint Task Force Vanguard co-chief Brian W. Lynch presented the case to the grand jury. TPM first reported that Lynch was co-running the initiative; TPM later broke the news that he had marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The DOJ has described Vanguard as its effort to operationalize National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, a White House directive to federal law enforcement to treat opposing the Trump administration as indicia of domestic terrorism.
‘Protest Domestic Terrorist Financing’
Per the filing, HSI cited NSPM-7 as its authority to open two investigations: Puppet Master, which involved extensive use of undercover informants across the Twin Cities, and Whipple Shield, opened in February.
HSI gave a vivid illustration of what it believed it was investigating in an image that Riach included in the exhibits. Titled “The Conspiracy,” it shows 18 groups — ranging from the AFL-CIO to “Socialist Alternative” to several public employees’ unions — with “Direct Action Minnesota” at the center. Direct Action Minnesota, also known as DAMN, is the focus of the June indictment.
Exhibits filed in the case suggest that Whipple Shield involved a sweeping campaign to obtain financial records from people and groups organizing against the Trump administration’s surge into the city. Much of this investigation took place weeks and months after the administration withdrew from the Twin Cities in late January.
HSI agents issued an administrative subpoena in early March to the Federal Reserve for records regarding local chapters of SEIU, a large labor union focused on service workers. Authorities used a statute that allows Customs officials to inspect books and records as part of customs investigations to issue the subpoena.
Later, agents summarized the results in a report as showing “debits and credits to include annuity payments, strike payments, strike supplies, investments, union member dues, retiree dues, medical expenses, and pension fund expenses.” The same report notes that “this financial investigation involving protest domestic terrorist financing continues.”
In another report, agents say that they issued subpoenas to PayPal and Venmo for records regarding a group called Voices for Racial Justice in early March. Other groups whose financial records HSI obtained include the Communications Workers of America and the Sunrise Movement.
Undercover informants
The Minneapolis 15 indictment included long passages that related information from closed-door meetings at which activists gathered to discuss strategy. One gathering, held in late January, took place at the headquarters for the Democratic Socialists of America Twin Cities Chapter.
Prosecutors included verbatim quotes from that meeting and other closed-door gatherings included in the indictment, prompting activists to wonder whether the government had been using confidential informants to investigate them.
Exhibits attached to the filing document extensive use of informants to probe gatherings at churches, a meeting at Hunter College in New York City, and protests that appear to have had little to do with the anti-ICE protests that HSI said prompted its investigations. In one report, agents describe following people to a No Kings Rally in Minneapolis on March 28; at another, they document the activities of two undercover informants sent to monitor an anti-Iran War protest.
The records say that one undercover informant in particular, identified only by number as UCA 9843, attended several meetings from December 2025 through February. In several instances, the exhibits show, HSI sent informants into meetings held at churches.
UCA 9843 attended a February meeting at a Lutheran Church called Prince of Peace for an event titled “Art Club,” one report says. After the meeting, agents showed the person a list of photos. The report describes it as referring to the license plates of cars in the church’s parking lot.
Some of the reports are almost comical. In one May training put on by a group called “Left Jab,” an informant found herself sparring with various people in a gym located in University Baptist Church. After leaving, the informant realized something was missing: her “concealed body-worn audio recorder,” which had “erroneously” fallen to the gym’s floor.
The informant returned to the gym to pick up the wire.
At another point, another undercover informant designated “9833” attended a Jan. 31 meeting at the Minneapolis Public Library, held by the Sunrise Movement, a climate activism group.
There, a report says, the informant offered to help in a conversation with a person whose identity is redacted. The informant told the unnamed person that he “works construction” and could build items helpful in “more ‘direct-action’ protests,” adding that “going to jail did not bother him.”
The Minnesota indictments accuse the 15 defendants of engaging in a broad conspiracy, including the construction and placement of homemade obstacles as key acts taken to block government operations.
NSPM-7 directed federal law enforcement to pursue aggressive cases against perceived opponents of the Trump administration. Critics say the memo has resulted in prosecutors investigating speech, not crimes.
In one grand jury transcript, Lynch, the prosecutor who attended Jan. 6, discussed the free speech implications of these cases with an HSI agent on the stand.
“No one is ever investigated or looked at or even researched on for First Amendment-protected activities,” the agent, Desmond Garcia, said. “Every single individual that we have investigated, there is a criminal predicate to why we’re investigating them.”
Read the filing below:
