The factual bullshit from Trump-administration officials about Minnesota is, at least, easily detected: Hear claim, watch video, reject claim.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem declares that Alex Pretti “brandished” a firearm. (He did not.) White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller tells us Pretti was “an assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.” (Pretti never drew his weapon, got pepper-sprayed, and wound up at the bottom of an ICE dogpile.) Donald Trump proclaims that Renee Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer.” (Glancing contact, yes; “ran over,” no.)

But these flagrant fabrications about what happened on the streets rest on a latticework of subtler but similarly insidious falsehoods about the law. The administration’s serial legal misstatements support the garbage it’s spewing about the facts. So let’s address and correct some of the most egregious examples.

1) “Domestic terrorist” (used by Miller, Noem, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to describe, at various points, Good, Pretti, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey).

Beyond the pure barbarity of publicly branding any recently deceased person a “domestic terrorist,” the administration’s habitual knee-jerk invocation of this term makes zero legal sense. For starters, there is no crime called “domestic terrorism.” Rather, federal law defines the term and then (curiously) does nothing with it, leaving the concept floating out there as an academic curiosity.

Even if the term had real meaning, applying it to Good or Pretti underscores the ridiculousness of the administration’s name-calling. Under the........

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