Sant Defense Files Exhibits Placing HSI Agents From Tucson, Portland and Los Angeles on the Minnesota Protest Investigations

In the Sant prosecution, the defense response to the government’s supplemental brief on CUC Keyhole is dated September 25, 2026. The government’s brief had described Keyhole as a certified undercover operation “administered exclusively by the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) St. Paul.” The response: “Nearly all the HSI agents who worked on Operation Puppet Master and Project Whipple Shield were detailed here from other jurisdictions.”

Exhibit E is a declaration by an HSI Assistant Special Agent in Charge whose duties cover “the Tucson, Arizona field” office. He was on “temporary duty to the HSI office in St. Paul, Minnesota from January 2026 until June 2026”. The response identifies the agent who ran the case’s Clearview AI searches as one “from Portland, Oregon, performed the Clearview AI searches”, and a second agent as one “from Los Angeles, investigated twenty-nine different individuals and/or organizations”.

Exhibit I is a California complaint affidavit by an HSI agent “assigned to Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) group 4” and “investigating organizations involved in illegal activities during protests”. It charges members of a Ventura County volunteer organization under “18 U.S.C. § 372, Conspiracy to Impede or Injure a Federal Officer”, the conspiracy statute in the Minnesota case.

The response asks for Keyhole records on Puppet Master and Whipple Shield and for records “from other jurisdictions in which HSI surveilled those individuals and organizations protesting or opposing ICE and DHS”.

See 2026-09-10–government-describes-cuc-keyhole-on-record-funding-vehicle-2008, 2026-08-27–minnesota-15-discovery-hearing-vindictive-prosecution-presumption-of-regularity, 2026-10-07–democracy-forward-releases-ice-hsi-voter-fraud-weekly-reports-foia.