DOJ Prosecutors Somehow Manage To Secure Terrorism Convictions Against Anti-ICE Protesters

Legal Issues

from the every-conviction-an-admission dept

The DOJ is filled with grossly incompetent prosecutors these days. It’s a bunch of subservients acting in obeisance to the zenith of gross incompetence: the current President of the United States.

When not being sidelined by judges for not being legally appointed, the handpicked losers of Trump’s DOJ Revenge Squad are being shut out by the grandest of juries: grand juries. Asked only to hear the government’s side and nod obediently, grand juries have been rejecting a record number of presentations, leaving prosecutors scrambling to find something anything! to charge Trump’s enemies with.

More of the same is happening here. On two non-consecutive occasions, the Trump administration has attempted to equate unaffiliated people with a shared worldview to domestic terrorist organizations. It didn’t work with Black Lives Matter. And, for the most part, it hasn’t worked with Antifa, which is a semi-acronym that means nothing more than “anti-fascist.”

Not to go all Jeff Foxworthy years past his sell-by date, but you might be a fascist if you think people opposed to fascism are terrorists. So, of course, this administration firmly believes people opposed to fascism are terrorists.

In Texas, following a protest that ultimately resulted in the shooting of a law enforcement officer, the DOJ has somehow made terrorism charges stick against a bunch of protesters, despite its reliance on things that should never have been considered evidence.

Let’s go live to this reporting from The Guardian, which contains an absolutely hilarious phrase in its opening paragraph:

A group of protesters in Texas was found guilty of providing support for terrorism and other charges on Friday in a closely watched case in which prosecutors alleged anti-ICE activists were actually part of an antifa cell.

Imagine how much credulity you’d have to hope for if you trotted out the phrase “antifa cell” in open court. It’s a lot. Lots of actual terrorist groups may have “cells,” but antifa is pretty much anything but organized or centralized. It’s just people cohering around a central concept: an opposition to fascism.

The government charged and tried nine defendants following a protest that involved the setting off of fireworks and culminated in Benjamin Song (now convicted on attempted murder charges) shooting an officer in the shoulder. The government claimed the fireworks were part of distraction attempt in hopes of setting up an ambush. But it failed to connect enough dots to get any of the other protesters nailed on murder charges.

However, it did manage to convince a jury that some of the nine arrested were providing material support for terrorism. The rationale? Antifa is a terrorist group and people that represent as antifa (mainly through the wearing of black clothing) or act in support of its goals (opposing fascism) are engaged in material support of the kind of terrorism that… opposes fascism?

It’s all deeply stupid. And yet it has real consequences. While the jury wasn’t sold on most of the government’s wilder claims, it still sided with enough of them to net five protesters with terrorism-related charges that mean they’ll likely spend at least 10 years in prison if their convictions aren’t overturned.

For instance, there’s this nonsense, which managed to rope in someone who wasn’t even there when this all went down:

Sanchez-Estrada was the only defendant not at the protest, and was only charged with corruptly concealing a document or record, after prosecutors say he moved leftwing zines following the arrest of his wife…

That is fucking wild. Someone moved stuff written by someone else and the government claims its concealment.

That’s not even the worst/stupidest part of the government’s evidence presentations. This is:

During the trial, the government offered a slew of circumstantial evidence aimed at convincing the jury that the defendants were part of an antifa terror cell. They showed the jury zines and reading lists with incendiary titles that were seized from the defendants. One zine seized was titled The satanic death cult is real. The zine is an essay analyzing the films Hereditary and Midsommar. They also displayed anti-Trump stickers seized from one of the defendants that said “Make America not Exist Again” and a pamphlet from the Socialist Rifle Association that showed someone putting a swastika into a garbage can.

A magazine discussing films is evidence. Anti-Trump stickers are evidence. Someone putting a swastika into a trash can is evidence. This is shit even Lionel Hutz might consider too unreasonable to present to a judge, much less a jury.

Even if the zine dealt with an alleged, real-life US satanic death cult, how is that evidence of anything… unless the government is tacitly admitting it’s possibly the satanic death cult these antifas are informing each other about?

Everything here is easily covered by the First Amendment and is evidence of nothing but the administration’s desire to illegally punish people for not supporting Trump. And the government should know better than to claim a picture of someone literally trashing a swastika is evidence of criminal intent, because when it does make that claim, it’s admitting that it views speech against Nazis as something that must be met with criminal charges.

Then there’s the Second Amendment. Prosecutors insisted that the mere possession of legally obtained weapons by some of the arrestees was evidence of their malicious intent. But this DOJ in particular has never made that accusation against Trump supporters who wear/brandish weapons. They only pretend it’s unlawful when it involves people opposed to this administration.

With any luck, these convictions will be overturned. While it’s unlikely a review of the convictions will erase the charges facing the person who actually shot an officer, everything else included here is so far beyond the pale (no pun intended?) that it can’t possibly survive judicial review. Even the judge handling this prosecution made it clear he felt the government was seeking to punish protesters merely because they opposed the same administration that appointed him.

Mark Pittman, a US district judge nominated to the federal bench by Donald Trump in 2019, appeared to gesture at the irrelevance of antifa in the closing moments of the trial, asking prosecutors why he should mention it in his instructions to the jury, underlining the gap between the emphasis on antifa and the technicality of the criminal charges they faced.

“Whether it’s antifa or the Methodist Women’s Auxiliary of Weatherford, why does it matter?” Pittman said.

The courts are doing what they can to hold back the daily onslaught of rights violations and vindictive prosecutions engaged in by this administration. But Trump (or, at least, his enablers) knows how limited that resistance is when the administration dares it daily to try to hold it accountable. For now, these ineptly-obtained convictions stand. And they will serve the purpose the administration intends them to: a latent threat that deters future opposition to it and its goals.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, antifa, cbp, dhs, doj, ice, mass deportations, texas, trump admininstration