Speaker 1: Col Zo Media. It was a Sunday afternoon in January
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty four when the doorbell rang at a
Speaker 1: journalists home in North Carolina. Jordan Green, a reporter who's
Speaker 1: coverage of far right extremism at Raw Story I greatly admire,
Speaker 1: had been working on a story about a neo Nazi
Speaker 1: group called two to one nineteen, and they knew it.
Speaker 1: This wasn't the first time the subjects of his work
Speaker 1: had tried to threaten and intimidate him, and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be the last. But on that particular day, it was
Speaker 1: just a pizza. It's sort of a juvenile thing to do,
Speaker 1: and in any other context it's a harmless prank that
Speaker 1: mostly just hurts the pizza delivery driver. It's happened to
Speaker 1: me a couple of times, this mysterious pizza you didn't order.
Speaker 1: You're just standing there with your front door open, confused
Speaker 1: at first, before the realization washes over you. The delivery
Speaker 1: driver or isn't at the wrong house. This isn't your pizza,
Speaker 1: you know that, but it isn't your neighbor's pizza either.
Speaker 1: It's a warning. Someone wants you to know. We see you,
Speaker 1: we know where you are, We know where you think
Speaker 1: you're safe, and we're thinking about you today. It's just
Speaker 1: a pizza you didn't want, but we want you to
Speaker 1: know the next time you hear something on your front porch,
Speaker 1: it could be something different. The next day, a photo
Speaker 1: of Green standing on his front door appeared online, posted
Speaker 1: by an extremist group. Someone had been outside, sitting in
Speaker 1: their car snapping pictures with the telephoto lens when we
Speaker 1: opened the door. But what the watcher didn't know is
Speaker 1: that he was being watched too. Anti fascist researchers were
Speaker 1: able to identify the owner of that vehicle as twenty
Speaker 1: year old kai Liam Nicks, a soldier stationed at Fort
Speaker 1: Liberty digging through mountains of leaked materials from the white
Speaker 1: supremacist group Patriot Front. Researchers and journalists were able to
Speaker 1: match Nicks to the pseudonymous posts made by a Patriot
Speaker 1: Front recruiter using the name Patrick. When Nis was asked
Speaker 1: by New Yorker reporter David Kirkpatrick if he had any
Speaker 1: involvement with Patriot Front or with the group that had
Speaker 1: been harassing Jordan Green, he denied it, saying that is
Speaker 1: a hate group and you can't be in the military
Speaker 1: and a hate group at the same time. And that's true, Well,
Speaker 1: it's half true. The other half will have to wait
Speaker 1: for a verdict because Nis was right that as a
Speaker 1: specialist in the United States Army, he was not allowed
Speaker 1: to be a member of Patriot Front. When he backed
Speaker 1: out of a meeting with Kirkpatrick after that phone call,
Speaker 1: the reporter called the Army. Nicks wouldn't be answering any
Speaker 1: more of the reporter's phone calls. He'd been arrested, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't arrested for pizza pranks. Who's arrested for lying?
Speaker 1: I'm Molly Conger and this is weird. Little guy kay
Speaker 1: Nix was arrested in August of twenty twenty four and
Speaker 1: charged with dealing firearms without a license, possession of stolen firearms,
Speaker 1: and one more thing, which is the thing we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about today. It's something I think is
Speaker 1: a little more interesting than a guy who can't be
Speaker 1: bothered to buy his guns at the store like a
Speaker 1: normal person. Guys like this getting arrested for having a
Speaker 1: gun they shouldn't have are a dime a dozen. But
Speaker 1: the other charge on the indictment is something a little
Speaker 1: more unique. He was charged with making a materially false
Speaker 1: statement to the United States Government. According to the indictment,
Speaker 1: he falsely claimed, quote he had never been a member
Speaker 1: of a group dedicated to the use of violence or
Speaker 1: forced to overthrow the United States government, and which engaged
Speaker 1: and activities to that end, And the statements and representations
Speaker 1: were false because, as the defendant then and they're new,
Speaker 1: he had been a member of a group dedicated to
Speaker 1: the use of violence or forced to over the United
Speaker 1: States government, and which engaged in activities to that end.
Speaker 1: Which is kind of a mouthful, but what that boils
Speaker 1: down to is actually a single checkbox on a one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty six page form that hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of Americans fill out every year, the Standard Form eighty
Speaker 1: six or SF eighty six for short. It's the basic
Speaker 1: questionnaire you fill out as the starting point for a
Speaker 1: background investigation for a security clearance. It's required when enlisting
Speaker 1: in the military, and for many jobs with the federal
Speaker 1: government or with private companies that work on government contracts.
Speaker 1: It's pretty thorough, but most of the questions aren't really
Speaker 1: surprising stuff. You know your name, your date of birth,
Speaker 1: everywhere you've lived for the last ten years, along with
Speaker 1: contact information for a landlord or a neighbor who would
Speaker 1: remember you, everywhere you've worked for the last ten years,
Speaker 1: and someone who would remember you from that job. The
Speaker 1: form also requires you to provide information about all of
Speaker 1: your immediate family members, where they live, where they work,
Speaker 1: and how often you have contact with them. You have
Speaker 1: to provide detailed information about any contacts you have with
Speaker 1: foreign nationals, any business and property interests that you have,
Speaker 1: particularly those outside of the United States, and any international
Speaker 1: trips you've taken. I remember, years ago and another lifetime,
Speaker 1: practically getting contacted out of the blue by some dour
Speaker 1: federal agent who needed to speak with me about a
Speaker 1: girl I barely remembered. We'd had a couple of classes
Speaker 1: together in college. We weren't close or anything, but one
Speaker 1: summer when I was still in college, we were both
Speaker 1: in Germany at the same time, and we spent an
Speaker 1: afternoon together. I was visiting family friends. I think she
Speaker 1: was doing some kind of summer program and internship or something. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but this was the era of putting
Speaker 1: your whole life on Facebook, and she saw that I
Speaker 1: was in Germany and reached out about getting together and
Speaker 1: catching up. And a few years after that fairly unmemorable afternoon,
Speaker 1: she was getting a security clearance for some kind of
Speaker 1: government job, and there I was sitting at a coffee
Speaker 1: shop being asked if we'd ever had any conversations about
Speaker 1: overthrowing the government of the United States. I was so
Speaker 1: innocent then, I remember thinking, is that even a kind
Speaker 1: of conversation people have? I think we went to a
Speaker 1: beer hall. That was, of course, years before I found
Speaker 1: out I had a gluten intolerance, and well before I
Speaker 1: had a hard drive full of neo Nazi manifestos. It
Speaker 1: was a different time. Come to think of it, maybe
Speaker 1: they don't always talk to everyone you ever got a
Speaker 1: beer with in Germany, and it maybe had something to
Speaker 1: do with the afternoon. I spent in a holding cell
Speaker 1: at the Munich airport later that summer after a slight
Speaker 1: miscommunication with the German federal police. But that's neither here
Speaker 1: nor there. I got that sorted out. What I'm saying
Speaker 1: is the form is very long, and it asks you
Speaker 1: about everyone you've ever met and everywhere you've ever been,
Speaker 1: and you can't lie, You really really can't lie. It's
Speaker 1: not like lying on a job application or patting your
Speaker 1: resume a little bit, where if you get found out,
Speaker 1: maybe you get fired. This is not a matter of
Speaker 1: professional ethics. We're not talking about you not getting the job.
Speaker 1: We're talking about up to five years in federal prison,
Speaker 1: because it is a federal crime to lie, even by
Speaker 1: omission on that form or in any of the subsequent
Speaker 1: interviews during the background investigation process. You don't have free
Speaker 1: speech in these conversations. You have to tell the truth,
Speaker 1: and very deep in that form. After pages and pages
Speaker 1: of tedious stuff like trying to find a phone number
Speaker 1: for the landlord at your college apartment, you have to
Speaker 1: check yes or no to question twenty nine point four,
Speaker 1: have you ever been a member of an organization dedicated
Speaker 1: to the use of violence or forced over the United
Speaker 1: States cover and which engaged in activities to that end
Speaker 1: with an awareness of the organization's indication to that end,
Speaker 1: or with the specific intent to further such activities, And
Speaker 1: then on the next page you check yes or no
Speaker 1: again for question twenty nine point five, have you ever
Speaker 1: been a member of an organization that advocates or practices
Speaker 1: commission of acts of force or violence? To discourage others
Speaker 1: from exercising their rights under the US Constitution or any
Speaker 1: state of the United States with a specific intent to
Speaker 1: further such action. Again, kind of a mouthful. And if
Speaker 1: you check yes to either of those questions, you have
Speaker 1: to provide the contact information for the hate group you
Speaker 1: are in. But I'm not sure anyone ever checks yes.
Speaker 1: If you've checked yes to either of those questions and
Speaker 1: then successfully gotten a security clearance, I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you, reach out. But think about the wording of
Speaker 1: that question. Have you ever been a member of a
Speaker 1: group that advocates for the use of force to discourage
Speaker 1: others from exercising their rights? That's pretty broad White's miss
Speaker 1: groups routinely engage in rhetoric about forcing the collapse of
Speaker 1: the government, about making journalists afraid to write, making activists
Speaker 1: afraid to protest, about making black people and Jewish people
Speaker 1: and queer people afraid to walk down a public street
Speaker 1: or enter a house of worship. And it's not just talk.
Speaker 1: Plenty of these groups regularly engage in direct action to
Speaker 1: actually achieve these goals. Patriot Fronts specifically, is currently being
Speaker 1: sued in federal court in North Dakota Virginia and Massachusetts
Speaker 1: for engaging in conspiracy to violate people's civil rights. So
Speaker 1: this is not a hypothetical. This is already happening. But
Speaker 1: Kai Nix checked the no box. The government contends that
Speaker 1: he should not have. His attorney told The New York
Speaker 1: Times that we should avoid rushing to judgment in this case,
Speaker 1: and mister Nicks looks forward to making his presentation in court.
Speaker 1: So we won't talk about Kai Nicks not today. He is,
Speaker 1: as we all are when an ind comes down, innocent
Speaker 1: until proven guilty. But the story got me thinking about
Speaker 1: that charge about lying on your s f eighty six.
Speaker 1: It's a concept I'm familiar with, but in the course
Speaker 1: of my work, I've actually only seen it a few times.
Speaker 1: So we can't talk about Kai. He'll have his day
Speaker 1: in court. But we can look at the cases of
Speaker 1: the handful of guys whose names I've jotted down over
Speaker 1: the years, who caught checking no when they should have
Speaker 1: checked yes when they were asked about their involvement in
Speaker 1: trying to overthrow the government or systematically bilate civil rights.
Speaker 1: Because for as many Nazi marines as I could rattle
Speaker 1: off to you off the top of my head, I
Speaker 1: can only think of four other cases where someone involved
Speaker 1: in extremist activity was actually charged and convicted specifically for
Speaker 1: lying on an s F eighty six, And I think
Speaker 1: there's as much to be learned by exploring the possible
Speaker 1: reasons why we don't see this charge more often as
Speaker 1: there is from looking at the cases where we do.
Speaker 1: To be clear, I'm not saying it's vanishingly rare for
Speaker 1: someone to get charged for lying on an s F
Speaker 1: eighty six. It does happen, just not usually in the
Speaker 1: kinds of cases I'm looking at in my work, So
Speaker 1: if you ever find yourself filling one out, you should
Speaker 1: probably tell the truth. Just a quick skim for charges
Speaker 1: under this statute returned some fun hits. A guy in
Speaker 1: Ohio failed to mention his checking account in a tie
Speaker 1: bank when he was applying for a job at NASA.
Speaker 1: He got a year of probation and a ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars fine. A congressional staffer got into some hot water
Speaker 1: for leaving out his history of tax troubles. A former
Speaker 1: Fox News guest commentator thought his long running lie about
Speaker 1: having been in the CIA would be just as effective
Speaker 1: when he applied for a security clearance as it was
Speaker 1: when he was lying to your parents on TV. A
Speaker 1: couple of DEA agents were convicted for leaving out their
Speaker 1: side hustle, which happened to be running a strip club
Speaker 1: in New Jersey where a lot of people were buying
Speaker 1: and selling drugs. So it does happen. People are getting
Speaker 1: charged with this, but it mostly happens to government employees
Speaker 1: who were not completely transparent about their foreign bank accounts
Speaker 1: or trips to China. But if every person enlisting in
Speaker 1: the military is filling out this form, if every guy
Speaker 1: who makes it through the process and shows up at
Speaker 1: basic training is checking no to both of those questions,
Speaker 1: how are there so many white supremacists in the military
Speaker 1: actually enforcing this one little paperwork technicality really coming down
Speaker 1: hard on guys who said no when they should have
Speaker 1: said yes, I violate people's civil rights. Every weekend when
Speaker 1: I get together with the boys, would go a long
Speaker 1: way towards rooting out extremists in the military. If they
Speaker 1: had good reason to believe they might catch a federal
Speaker 1: felony for it, they might be less likely to take
Speaker 1: that risk when enlisting. Because whether or not I personally
Speaker 1: believe that justice system really has justice in mind all
Speaker 1: the time, if you take them at their word. One
Speaker 1: of the stated reasons for punishing individuals for crime is
Speaker 1: the idea that seeing someone else get punished for a
Speaker 1: particular crime, knowing that that possibilities on the table, will
Speaker 1: deter others from committing the same crime. So if every
Speaker 1: guy in a white supremacist street gang or an underground
Speaker 1: Nazi terror cell had good reason to believe he would
Speaker 1: get caught for this, if he knew he would get
Speaker 1: caught trying to enlist to get free training on how
Speaker 1: to become a better killer, it might make it a
Speaker 1: less attractive option. But the government doesn't really use this
Speaker 1: particular tool very often. Some of the hesitation to bring
Speaker 1: the charge is almost certainly just the simple fact that
Speaker 1: no federal prosecutor will take a case he isn't one
Speaker 1: hundred and ten percent sure he's going to win. Almost
Speaker 1: every federal criminal case ends in a guilty plea. They
Speaker 1: just don't file charges that they think you'll fight. And
Speaker 1: there is a lot of gray area built in from
Speaker 1: the start with this right. So what is an organization?
Speaker 1: What is membership? It sounds silly, but like the interpretation
Speaker 1: of the language here really matters in court, because they
Speaker 1: can't prosecute you for an ideology. It's not illegal for
Speaker 1: you to be racist. The problem is acting on those
Speaker 1: feelings in an organized way to intentionally violate the rights
Speaker 1: of others, and then lying about the language here is clear.
Speaker 1: It's not about what you believe. The question is asking
Speaker 1: if you're a member of an organization that does or
Speaker 1: believes these things right. They're not asking what's in your heart.
Speaker 1: It's asking you very specifically about your associations and the
Speaker 1: activities and stated goals of an organization you belong to.
Speaker 1: So to satisfy the basic elements of this charge, they
Speaker 1: have to be able to prove that the organization exists,
Speaker 1: that it advocates for overthrowing the government or interfering with
Speaker 1: people's civil rights, and that a particular guy really was
Speaker 1: a member. And that's actually a lot harder than it
Speaker 1: might sound. Some white supremacist organizations really do exist on paper,
Speaker 1: So groups like the now defunct Identity Europa are actual
Speaker 1: corporate entities. Identity Europa even had tax exempt status with
Speaker 1: the IRS. There were written applications for membership, a multi
Speaker 1: step interview process to approve an application they collected member dues,
Speaker 1: they put those dues in a bank account, and they
Speaker 1: filed annual paperwork with the IRS and the State of California.
Speaker 1: So that's very clearly a membership organization, and you can
Speaker 1: theoretically prove on paper that someone applied or paid dues.
Speaker 1: The Traditionalist Worker Party, the also now defunct neo Nazi
Speaker 1: organization that was once by Matthew Heinbach, not only incorporated
Speaker 1: as a nonprofit, but they registered as a political party
Speaker 1: with the Federal Election Commission. When the group came to
Speaker 1: Charlottesville in twenty seventeen to beat my neighbors in the streets,
Speaker 1: they expensed their lodging to the party. The helmets they
Speaker 1: were wearing with their matching black uniforms were purchased from
Speaker 1: a company that makes workplace safety supplies and expensed to
Speaker 1: the party as rally materials. It's all right there on
Speaker 1: their quarterly finance reports filed with the federal government. Vanguard America,
Speaker 1: the group that Patriot Front grew out of, did have
Speaker 1: corporate filings that you can look to and say, yes,
Speaker 1: this is an organization that exists. But when they were
Speaker 1: sued for their involvement in the United the right rally,
Speaker 1: they claimed they were unable to produce any membership records,
Speaker 1: and these days a lot of groups aren't very formal
Speaker 1: at all, in large part because they feel like creating
Speaker 1: these kinds of records only means those records will exist
Speaker 1: when a subpoena shows up. So organizations like Patriot Front,
Speaker 1: for example, don't really exist on paper. There's no LLC,
Speaker 1: there's no registered agent you can serve papers on, there's
Speaker 1: no business checking account where member dues are deposited. But
Speaker 1: they do have a clear leader and organizational structure, and
Speaker 1: multiple courts have ruled that Patriot Front exist as an
Speaker 1: entity and a sufficient enough fashion to be sued as one,
Speaker 1: as evidenced by their mountain of lawsuits. A prosecutor could
Speaker 1: relatively confidently point to things like purchases made of patches
Speaker 1: and stickers and shirts and other Patriot Front branded materials,
Speaker 1: or produce messages in group chats about membership vetting and
Speaker 1: group activities, or dig up concrete evidence of things like
Speaker 1: the purchase of airline tickets or vehicle rentals for attending
Speaker 1: group events, or look at footage of a particular person
Speaker 1: marching in formation and uniform with the group and say
Speaker 1: this is clearly someone who is a member of a group.
Speaker 1: But groups like Adam Waffen are even more gray. They
Speaker 1: don't sell branded merch. They aren't getting together in huge
Speaker 1: groups wearing matching outfits. They operate quietly in the dark
Speaker 1: in small cells. The line between group member and just
Speaker 1: a guy sharing an ideology with another equally shitty guy
Speaker 1: quickly blurs and disappears. And then there's the problem of timing.
Speaker 1: In order for a charge like this to stick, you
Speaker 1: have to be able to pinpoint the moment a man
Speaker 1: joined a clandestine organization, and that moment had to be
Speaker 1: before he signed his name at the bottom of that form.
Speaker 1: There are military regulations prohibiting membership and extremist organizations, But
Speaker 1: if he joined that organization after enlisting, that's some military
Speaker 1: discipline issue, not a federal crime. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: a mixed bag. Plenty of guys joined the military already radicalized.
Speaker 1: They know they want to start a race war, and
Speaker 1: they feel like the military is a great place to
Speaker 1: get the skills they'll need. But white supremacist groups also
Speaker 1: see young military men as ideal candidates for recruitment and
Speaker 1: target them specifically. So maybe they were telling the truth
Speaker 1: when they enlisted, but they joined a hate group after
Speaker 1: they got there. If you listened to the episode a
Speaker 1: few weeks back about the gun trafficking ring out of
Speaker 1: Camp La June, you probably remember that only one of
Speaker 1: those Marines had terrorism in mind when he enlisted, but
Speaker 1: he recruited a bunch of his fellow Marines into the
Speaker 1: cell once he got there. And back to the issue
Speaker 1: of these organizations being so informal. You can't subpoena a
Speaker 1: membership list that doesn't exist. But to bring this kind
Speaker 1: of charge, you need to be able to prove that
Speaker 1: he was an active member of the organization on the
Speaker 1: date the form was signed. Sometimes that's obvious. Brandon Russell
Speaker 1: from a few episodes ago, the founder of Adam Woffen,
Speaker 1: who's back in prison awaiting trial for conspiracy to destroy
Speaker 1: critical infrastructure, He had absolutely already founded Adam Woffin before
Speaker 1: he signed up for the Florida National Guard, or, in
Speaker 1: the case of Ethan Melzer, a soldier convicted for leaking
Speaker 1: classified troop movement information to a foreign terrorist organization with
Speaker 1: the intent of having his own unit ambushed and killed,
Speaker 1: he was already involved with the Order of Nine Angles
Speaker 1: when he enlisted in the army as a member of
Speaker 1: that neo Nazi Satanist cult. He joined the military as
Speaker 1: part of what the group calls an insight role members
Speaker 1: infiltrate organizations of all types, although frequently it's the military,
Speaker 1: with the intent to gain training and experience in order
Speaker 1: to provide cover for committing acts of violence, to identify
Speaker 1: like minded individuals for recruitment, and ultimately to subvert the
Speaker 1: group from within. We'll have to talk about that case
Speaker 1: in particular another time, because it deserves more than a
Speaker 1: passing mention, but it really highlights what I think is
Speaker 1: the third reason you don't see this particular charge brought
Speaker 1: against white supremacists in the military very often. By the
Speaker 1: time it's obvious that he lied about being in a
Speaker 1: violent white supremacist organization, we are, unfortunately talking about a
Speaker 1: more serious situation than his paperwork. When it was time
Speaker 1: to indict Ethan Melzer, prosecutors were looking at a potential
Speaker 1: international incident in Turkey and the attempted murder of an
Speaker 1: entire unit of US Army paratroopers, not paperwork. Liam Collins,
Speaker 1: the ringleader of that gun trafficking Neo Nazi paramilitary group
Speaker 1: was explicit about the fact that he joined the Marines
Speaker 1: in order to learn the skills he thought he'd need
Speaker 1: for the coming civil conflict that he hoped to provoke,
Speaker 1: and there was clear evidence that he'd already started forming
Speaker 1: the group prior to enlisting. The core members even met
Speaker 1: up once in person the summer before he went off
Speaker 1: to Paris Island. But legally speaking, at what point did
Speaker 1: that group of guys become an organization? Right? So when
Speaker 1: they went camp that summer, was that loose collection of
Speaker 1: guys already a formal enough membership organization hard to say.
Speaker 1: Later in the case, there was some acknowledgment that one
Speaker 1: of the co conspirators definitely did lie on his s
Speaker 1: F eighty six. Jordan Duncan, one of the five men
Speaker 1: convicted for their involvement in that gun trafficking scheme, had
Speaker 1: left the Marines and gone to work for a military contractor,
Speaker 1: so he'd actively been involved in this group for two
Speaker 1: years when he filled out an s F eighty six
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty to renew his top secret clearance, which
Speaker 1: he successfully did. Transcripts of hearings in Duncan's case show
Speaker 1: a handful of mentions of the fact that if he'd
Speaker 1: been honest during that renewal process, his clearance would not
Speaker 1: have been renewed. Another way of saying that he wasn't
Speaker 1: honest would be to say that he lied, but he
Speaker 1: was never charged with that, because what would it really
Speaker 1: add to that case to tack on this particular charge
Speaker 1: when the prou secutor already had this mountain of evidence
Speaker 1: about much more concrete criminal acts. Right Talking about lying
Speaker 1: means you have to prove state of mind. You have
Speaker 1: to prove you what did he know and when did
Speaker 1: he know. It's it's a little bit more nebulous than
Speaker 1: being able to say this is a gun that he
Speaker 1: put in the mail. That's very concrete. So they just
Speaker 1: didn't need this. More often you'll see an extremist in
Speaker 1: the military just get discharged quietly if they can help it,
Speaker 1: or coinciding with a more serious set of criminal charges.
Speaker 1: There was no press release when Tyler Diykes was discharged
Speaker 1: from the Marine Corps under other than honorable conditions in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. His discharge only came into public knowledge
Speaker 1: when I wrote it down in my little notebook at
Speaker 1: a bond hearing a few months later after he was
Speaker 1: arrested for his participation in the twenty seventeen Unite the
Speaker 1: Right rally. He had enlisted in the Marines after attending
Speaker 1: that Nazi rally, and was an active duty Marine when
Speaker 1: he entered the kap on January sixth, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: He is currently serving a fifty seven month sentence for
Speaker 1: assaulting police officers during the January six riots. Matthew Bellinger
Speaker 1: was discharged from the Marines in twenty twenty one, specifically
Speaker 1: for his involvement in extremist activity, but that didn't become
Speaker 1: public knowledge until he was arrested a year later for
Speaker 1: a scheme involving paying a New York City police officer
Speaker 1: to make straw purchases of guns Bellinger couldn't himself legally buy.
Speaker 1: Documents filed in that case show that Bellinger was already
Speaker 1: deeply involved in an Adam Waffen adjacent neo Nazi group
Speaker 1: when he joined the Marines. The group was called rape Krieg,
Speaker 1: named for its core belief that sexual violence is a
Speaker 1: powerful tool to control and terrify your enemies, but also
Speaker 1: a useful tool to increase the production of white babies.
Speaker 1: To populate the coming Ethno state. Prior to his enlistment,
Speaker 1: Bellinger and other Rape Creek members had conducted surveillance of
Speaker 1: a synagogue they hoped to shoot up or burned down.
Speaker 1: Though he was never charged with lying on his security
Speaker 1: clearance application, I can't imagine he was transparent about his
Speaker 1: weakened hobby of plotting synagogue shootings with his cadre of
Speaker 1: Nazi pals who thought they could rape their way into
Speaker 1: a white utopia. Vasilio's Pistols, another now former Marine, was
Speaker 1: convicted at his court martial for making false statements. He
Speaker 1: got twenty eight days in the brig and was discharged
Speaker 1: from the Corps upon his release, but never faced any
Speaker 1: charges in the civilian justice system, though he presumably did
Speaker 1: not disclose to the Marine Corps recruiter that he was
Speaker 1: affiliated with Adam Woffen. So if there's no interest at
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice to charge any of those men
Speaker 1: with failing to disclose their hate group affiliations on their
Speaker 1: s F eighty six, who does get charged with it
Speaker 1: and why? Well, the short answer is, there's not actually
Speaker 1: any way for me to answer that question. I don't
Speaker 1: have any secret insight into the charging decisions made by
Speaker 1: federal prosps comuters. But I can at least walk you
Speaker 1: through the reasoning behind the wild guessis I'm about to
Speaker 1: make about the four cases I do have where a
Speaker 1: guy in Haye group taught this charge. Two former members
Speaker 1: of the group Vanguard America have been convicted for failing
Speaker 1: to disclose that information when applying for security clearances to
Speaker 1: work civilian jobs. Again, you have to fill out the
Speaker 1: s F eighty six for any security clearance, and clearance
Speaker 1: is sometimes required for civilian jobs. Decca Ramsey had been
Speaker 1: a member of both Vanguard America and a group called
Speaker 1: Aryan Underground, but failed to mention either group when he
Speaker 1: successfully applied for a security clearance needed for an engineering
Speaker 1: job at a defense contracting company. He resigned the position
Speaker 1: before the charge was even filed. The investigation seems to
Speaker 1: have tipped him off that it was coming and he
Speaker 1: planned to plead guilty. This one, to be honest, is
Speaker 1: a bit of a mystery to me. Even after more
Speaker 1: time than I should have spent digging, I found a
Speaker 1: handful of photos of Ramsay at anti emigration rallies in
Speaker 1: Huntington Beach in the summer of twenty seventeen, but the
Speaker 1: extent of his involvement with Vanguard America remains elusive to me.
Speaker 1: The case was resolved so quickly that the government never
Speaker 1: had to put any evidence on the record. It's possible
Speaker 1: the government came across Decor Ramsay in the course of
Speaker 1: another investigation into some other member of Vanguard America, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't charged with anything else, and he appears to
Speaker 1: have been telling the truth when he said he was
Speaker 1: done with that kind of stuff. His quick cooperation and
Speaker 1: voluntary discontinued involvement with the groups closed the case pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: He walked away with a felony record but no jail time.
Speaker 1: Fred Arena, on the other hand, has a very visible
Speaker 1: record of involvement in the movement, and it is abundantly
Speaker 1: clear why he was charged for lying about it repeatedly.
Speaker 1: He too, lied about being a member of Van Gardemer
Speaker 1: when applying for a security clearance for his civilian job.
Speaker 1: He was working at the Navy yard in Philadelphia. And look,
Speaker 1: maybe it's unfair for me to say this, but this
Speaker 1: is a very stupid man. That's unkind. I don't know Fred,
Speaker 1: but looking at the timeline of this case, you can
Speaker 1: only conclude that he only ended up doing prison time
Speaker 1: because he actively chose to make the worst possible choice
Speaker 1: at every turn. After the abysmal failure of the Unite
Speaker 1: the Right rally in Charlottesville in twenty seventeen, its primary organizer,
Speaker 1: Jason Kessler, was determined to redeem himself by organizing a
Speaker 1: Unite the Right two in twenty eighteen. You probably remember
Speaker 1: that the twenty seventeen rally ended in the declaration of
Speaker 1: a state of emergency, causing the rally goers to be
Speaker 1: cleared from the park before it even really started. A
Speaker 1: few hours later, one of those attendees drove his car
Speaker 1: through a crowd, killing Heather Hire. Kessler and the other
Speaker 1: organizers of the rally were sued by survivors of that attack,
Speaker 1: and by the time Kessler was trying to organize the
Speaker 1: sequel didn't have many friends anymore. He got a permit
Speaker 1: from the National Park Service to hold the twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: event in Lafayette Park, just outside the White House. But
Speaker 1: he's not really a logistics guy, and unlike the year before,
Speaker 1: where the rally had been planned by a broad coalition
Speaker 1: of white nationalist groups and hundreds of eager attendees joined
Speaker 1: a discord server to help coordinate transportation and lodging and supplies.
Speaker 1: This time, Kessler was trying to organize the rally in
Speaker 1: a Facebook group chat with just nineteen supporters, and at
Speaker 1: least one of those people was an infiltrator who leaked
Speaker 1: the entire chat to Unicorn Ray. When that leaked chatlog
Speaker 1: was published on June twenty eighth, twenty eighteen, just six
Speaker 1: weeks before the rally was scheduled to happen, Fred Arena
Speaker 1: was identified as the participant in the chat, using the
Speaker 1: name McCormick Foley. And while Kessler was desperate to prove
Speaker 1: he could thread the needle holding a rally attended by
Speaker 1: the kind of people who agreed with him politically, but
Speaker 1: one that would not devolve into the kind of violence
Speaker 1: that that politics inevitably leads to, Fred Arena was the
Speaker 1: guy in the chat proving that that's just not possible.
Speaker 1: From the very beginning, he was upset that Kessler was
Speaker 1: considering inviting speakers like Hotep, Jesus and Jovi Val speakers
Speaker 1: who are not white. Arena wrote that he understood why
Speaker 1: such a decision might be made by his fellow white nationalists,
Speaker 1: acknowledging Kessler's assurance that even these non white speakers would
Speaker 1: be speaking for a pro white cause, but Arena said
Speaker 1: that it was quote a little bit different for me,
Speaker 1: being a neo Nazi, to accept. He even threatened to
Speaker 1: back out of the rally altogether because all this talk
Speaker 1: of recruiting non white speakers for the sake of optics
Speaker 1: felt like Jewish influence to him, and on the subject
Speaker 1: of whether or not they're planning chats could possibly be
Speaker 1: infiltrated or monitored by anti fascists or law enforcement, Arena
Speaker 1: repeatedly and energetically offered to fight either kind of opponent
Speaker 1: to the death, even offering to pay their travel costs
Speaker 1: to come to him for the speed down. His membership
Speaker 1: in Vanguard America and his eagerness to engage in physical
Speaker 1: violence got him invited to a private chat organized by
Speaker 1: David Rother to discuss how they could handle physical security
Speaker 1: at the rally. Arena told Rother he'd be able to
Speaker 1: bring some of his own guys, describing them as paramilitary
Speaker 1: and neo Nazi, but the two quickly fell into bickering
Speaker 1: about Arena's inability to stop posting things that would get
Speaker 1: them all in trouble. For what it's worth, Dave Rother
Speaker 1: didn't really need anyone's help getting into trouble. He's currently
Speaker 1: in jail awaiting trial on charges of driving while intoxicated,
Speaker 1: leaving the scene of an accident, and assaulting a police officer,
Speaker 1: and he was probably a little antsy about Arena's talk
Speaker 1: of paramilitary activity, given that he was on probation at
Speaker 1: the time for one of these several felonies he already
Speaker 1: had under his belt. All that to say, when federal
Speaker 1: agents showed up at the Navy Yard to speak with
Speaker 1: Fred Aerina on August first, twenty eighteen, less than two
Speaker 1: weeks before that rally was set to take place, they'd
Speaker 1: already read all of that. They had already read Arena's
Speaker 1: posts about being a member of Vanguard America, about self
Speaker 1: identifying as a neo Nazi, about his connections to groups
Speaker 1: like the Hammer Skins. They had already looked at the
Speaker 1: photos that he'd been posting of himself with his many guns,
Speaker 1: one of which was captioned coming soon to a synagogue
Speaker 1: near you. And they'd already seen the posts he was
Speaker 1: making about hanging white women who sleep with black men
Speaker 1: and his selfies where he's brandishing a knife and threatening Muslims.
Speaker 1: But on August verse twenty eighteen, Fred Arena hadn't really
Speaker 1: broken the law yet. He was saying some really troubling stuff.
Speaker 1: He was giving off heavy signals that he was very
Speaker 1: interested in breaking the law, but he hadn't. With this
Speaker 1: rally coming up, some FBI agents just wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to him. Nobody wanted to repeat of the rally the
Speaker 1: year before, and if this was the guy who had
Speaker 1: appointed himself to head of security for an event that
Speaker 1: would be taking place across the street from the White House,
Speaker 1: they just wanted to talk. And here's the thing. So
Speaker 1: this episode is about lying on an s F eighty
Speaker 1: sixth form and he is going to end up doing that.
Speaker 1: But that same statute also makes it a crime to
Speaker 1: lie to an FBI agent. So when they showed up
Speaker 1: in August of twenty eighteen and said, hey, Fred, are
Speaker 1: you a member of Vanguard America and he said no,
Speaker 1: he was already committing one of the five counts of
Speaker 1: lying that he would be eventually convicted of. But I
Speaker 1: guess since nothing came of it at the time, he
Speaker 1: figured it was fine. He couldn't keep lying that twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen rally was an embarrassing failure for everyone involved. But
Speaker 1: nobody died at Unite the Right too, so we can
Speaker 1: skip over the silly little antics of a couple of
Speaker 1: washed up white nationalists trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: ride the Metro. A few months later, in January of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, Fred Arena had to fill out an application
Speaker 1: for a security clearance. He'd been working at the Navy
Speaker 1: Yard for two years already, but he hadn't needed a
Speaker 1: clearance before, and now he did. And when he filled
Speaker 1: out that form, he checked the no box for that
Speaker 1: question we were talking about earlier. Are you a member
Speaker 1: of a group that has used or advocated the use
Speaker 1: of force or violence to prevent others from exercising their
Speaker 1: constitutional rights, etc. He said no, and he should have
Speaker 1: said yes. And a few months later, when FBI agents
Speaker 1: came back to talk to him again in May of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, they asked him the same question and he
Speaker 1: gave the same answer. No, he'd never been a member
Speaker 1: of Vanguard America. But they knew that wasn't true, and
Speaker 1: he knew that wasn't true, and they reminded him very
Speaker 1: explicitly in that interview that it would be illegal for
Speaker 1: him to not tell the truth. So a few months later,
Speaker 1: he was indicted on five counts of giving false statements,
Speaker 1: one for lying to the agents the first time they
Speaker 1: came to talk to him, two for lying on the
Speaker 1: clearance application, and two for telling the same lies again
Speaker 1: when they came back to ask him about his answers
Speaker 1: on the form in person. He was sentenced to six
Speaker 1: months with two years of supervised release. As always, we
Speaker 1: can really only guess exactly why they sent an agent
Speaker 1: back out to talk to fred Arena the second time,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to guess that's my prerogative, and I
Speaker 1: think it's possible he could have avoided that second visit
Speaker 1: and the subsequent indictment and federal prison time if he
Speaker 1: had just chilled out a little. It seems like Frederina
Speaker 1: believed that Jason Kessler was responsible for him being on
Speaker 1: the FBI's radar at all. The names are redacted, but
Speaker 1: when the government moved to keep Arena in custody after
Speaker 1: his arrest, they produced chat logs showing that in early
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, fred Arena was furious with someone, someone who
Speaker 1: lived in Charlottesville, someone who wanted to invite non white
Speaker 1: speakers to that rally in August of twenty eighteen, someone
Speaker 1: who was working on a book about organizing the Unite
Speaker 1: the Right rally, someone who could really only be Jason Kessler.
Speaker 1: Redactions are not And in January of twenty nineteen, Arena
Speaker 1: wrote in that Facebook chat quote, that's what got the
Speaker 1: FED so scared because they thought we were going to
Speaker 1: kill him. Arena claimed that he had gone as far
Speaker 1: as to drive down here to Charlottesville and ask around
Speaker 1: at local stores, trying to figure out how to catch
Speaker 1: his target out in public, trying to figure out where
Speaker 1: he bought his groceries, where he went every day, and
Speaker 1: he boasted that after sending his subject photos that showed
Speaker 1: he was in the area, the man quote went completely
Speaker 1: bananas and spent two days hiding under his bed, and
Speaker 1: in at least some of these online conversations where he's
Speaker 1: bragging about his Nazi extracurriculars, he was talking to an
Speaker 1: undercover FBI agent. The motion for detention also mentions a
Speaker 1: woman whose initials are k S, who voluntarily spoke with
Speaker 1: the FBI about threats she'd received from Arena. He used
Speaker 1: a burner phone to text her that he was going
Speaker 1: to cut her fucking throat. She told agents she thought
Speaker 1: he was threatening her because he believed she'd been co
Speaker 1: operating with the FBI. Similar threats were sent to a
Speaker 1: man whose initials are d Are. Both sets of initials
Speaker 1: are potential matches for two members of that planning chat
Speaker 1: that he'd been having disagreements with in the lead up
Speaker 1: to that first conversation with the FBI. So maybe Fred
Speaker 1: Arena could have gotten away with fudging some paperwork if
Speaker 1: the FBI hadn't been forced to look into whether a
Speaker 1: couple of Nazis were going to kill each other over
Speaker 1: an online beef. Hard to say. The other two cases
Speaker 1: I have in mind when I think about lying on
Speaker 1: your background check do actually have to do with military service.
Speaker 1: But unlike Decca Ramsey and Fred Aerina, whose charges were
Speaker 1: explicitly related to their hate group membership, these two guys
Speaker 1: actually got caught lying about something kind of unrelated. These
Speaker 1: cases are from my folder of guys where to my eye,
Speaker 1: at least it looks like they ended up charged with
Speaker 1: whatever a prosecutor could come up with because they just
Speaker 1: needed to charge him with something because he looked like
Speaker 1: he was going to be a part prob and if
Speaker 1: they waited for that problem to develop, someone could already
Speaker 1: be dead. Killian Ryan was discharged from the army on
Speaker 1: August twenty sixth, twenty twenty two, the same day he
Speaker 1: was arrested on federal charges for lying on his s
Speaker 1: F eighty six. He'd been on active duty for a
Speaker 1: little over two years and was stationed at Fort Liberty
Speaker 1: back when it was still called Fort Bragg. He'd gotten
Speaker 1: a DUI on base a month earlier, but that's not
Speaker 1: what federal agents were there to talk to him about.
Speaker 1: They wanted to talk to him about his father. When
Speaker 1: Ryan filled out the s F eighty sixth form in
Speaker 1: May of twenty twenty, he wrote that he had not
Speaker 1: been in contact with his biological father for the last
Speaker 1: ten years. The form did require him to list who
Speaker 1: his father was, but he chose to use the optional
Speaker 1: comment block to explicitly state that he'd had no contact
Speaker 1: at all with his father, they hadn't spoken in at
Speaker 1: least a decade, and that his father wasn't even listed
Speaker 1: on his birth certificate. A lot of this was completely
Speaker 1: optional information. He did not need to write this. He
Speaker 1: chose to, and his father, Richard Dillard, does have a
Speaker 1: criminal history, But there's no reason to believe Ryan would
Speaker 1: have been denied his security clearance because his father was
Speaker 1: a former drug user and had once stolen a car.
Speaker 1: Having a few skeletons in your closet doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: can't get a security clearance. You just have to be honest,
Speaker 1: and maybe they'll want to conduct a follow up interview
Speaker 1: about something like that, sort of talk through the specifics
Speaker 1: of the situation. But plenty of people whose dads have
Speaker 1: stolen a car are in the military. This really shouldn't
Speaker 1: have mattered at all. It's not the kind of thing
Speaker 1: you get criminally charged over. But it's where they found
Speaker 1: the proof that the problem arises, because the proof that
Speaker 1: he had lied about being in contact with his father
Speaker 1: was on his father's Instagram, the Instagram account where his
Speaker 1: father had posted a photo of them together at Ryan's
Speaker 1: high school graduation, also that his father was involved in
Speaker 1: racially motivated extremism. That Instagram account isn't visible anymore, but
Speaker 1: from other accounts I've been able to review, his dad
Speaker 1: really loves posting racist stuff. Some Mussolini memes, some pro
Speaker 1: Rhodesian content, a lot of sort of runic Viking type stuff,
Speaker 1: anti Semitic conspiracy theories, the stuff that I would expect
Speaker 1: to see from a gen X tattoo artist with an
Speaker 1: interest in esoteric Nazism. You know, nothing super special, that's
Speaker 1: at least not that's publicly visible to me today, the
Speaker 1: criminal complaint says. Further investigation into the father's social media
Speaker 1: revealed that Ryan himself had several Instagram accounts that he
Speaker 1: was not only using to communicate with his father, which
Speaker 1: again he lied about, but was also espousing some pretty
Speaker 1: alarming ideological views of his own. On one of those accounts,
Speaker 1: which he created using the Gmail address Nazi Ace fourteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight. Not a great idea, Ryan posted quote, I
Speaker 1: serve for combat experience, so I'm more proficient in killing
Speaker 1: en words. When the case was first filed, national security
Speaker 1: lawyer Mark Zaide told Adam Ronsley for Rolling Stone that
Speaker 1: this was a very unusual case. It's very rare to
Speaker 1: see a case where the only criminal charge on the
Speaker 1: indictment is giving a false statement on an s F
Speaker 1: eighty six. Zaide told Ronsley, I get cases all the
Speaker 1: time where people are accused of lying on the form,
Speaker 1: they lose their security clearance or get fired, but they
Speaker 1: don't get prosecuted. One of two things happened. Either the
Speaker 1: government is taking a much stronger position on racist, white
Speaker 1: nationalist extremists if they find them within the US government,
Speaker 1: or something else happened where this individual really aggravated somebody personally.
Speaker 1: I think that's an interesting quote, right. This attorney is
Speaker 1: acknowledging that, you know, maybe he was just a personal
Speaker 1: problem for someone. And I'm not an attorney or an
Speaker 1: expert on security clearances, but I think he's onto something there.
Speaker 1: I don't know that this truly signaled a policy shift
Speaker 1: from the DoD, but something triggered an investigation here. Lloyd
Speaker 1: Austin had taken office as Secretary of Defense just the
Speaker 1: year prior to this, and he'd vowed to make rooting
Speaker 1: out extremists in the military a higher priority, particularly after
Speaker 1: so many service members were arrested for participating in the
Speaker 1: January sixth riot. Just a few months before Killing Ryan's arrest,
Speaker 1: the Pentagon had issued new guidance about tackling this problem.
Speaker 1: Official said under the new guidance, the military won't actively
Speaker 1: screen service members social media accounts, But if there is
Speaker 1: an investigation into an extremist incident, social media posts may
Speaker 1: become part of that investigation. So it's possible that what
Speaker 1: happened here is that there was some kind of underlying
Speaker 1: incident that led to Ryan's social media coming under scrutiny,
Speaker 1: which led officials to seeing his posts about wanting to
Speaker 1: kill black people, which led them to need a reason
Speaker 1: to take some kind of action because we have this
Speaker 1: problem here again, was he a member of an organization?
Speaker 1: Hard to say were any of those concerning posts actively illegal?
Speaker 1: I assume not, since that's not what he was charged with.
Speaker 1: There is a single, tantalizing, mysterious little line in the indictment.
Speaker 1: While the criminal complaint focuses exclusively on his communications with
Speaker 1: his father, which he lied about when the actual indictment
Speaker 1: came down, it includes a single mention of a second
Speaker 1: lie that he failed to disclose significant contact over social
Speaker 1: media with a foreign national. There's nothing more about it.
Speaker 1: I wish they'd put on the record who or what
Speaker 1: that was. But ultimately, what this case looks like to
Speaker 1: me is that somehow Killian Ryan's extremist ideologies came to
Speaker 1: the Army's attention, and they used an unusual tool to
Speaker 1: achieve the desired result, which was a felony conviction and
Speaker 1: his discharge from the service. Killy and Ryan entered a
Speaker 1: guilty plea and was sentenced to three months in prison
Speaker 1: and three years of supervised release. The government never offered
Speaker 1: any more information about this mysterious foreign national, and I
Speaker 1: feel better about only having four cases at hand to
Speaker 1: offer as examples now that we've read that quote from
Speaker 1: Mark's aid. If an attorney who handles security clearance related
Speaker 1: matters says that it's highly unusual to see a case
Speaker 1: where this is the sole criminal charge, I'm less worried
Speaker 1: now that I've overlooked some huge cash of similar cases.
Speaker 1: I absolutely can see that there are others out there,
Speaker 1: but probably not very many. And this fourth case is,
Speaker 1: to my eye at least a clear case of the
Speaker 1: government looking at a guy and saying, we will invent
Speaker 1: a reason to detain this man if we have to,
Speaker 1: and stumbling onto an old s F eighty six with
Speaker 1: a LYE on it out of pure luck. In the
Speaker 1: summer of twenty nineteen, Ross Farka was arrested by local
Speaker 1: police in Contra Costa County, California. After making some pretty
Speaker 1: alarming threats online under the username Adolph Hitler, he posted
Speaker 1: a series of statements in a chat room on Steam,
Speaker 1: a gaming website, about carrying out mass shootings at synagogues,
Speaker 1: specifically referencing the po Way synagogue shooting that had just
Speaker 1: happened a few months earlier. He was charged in California
Speaker 1: with making criminal threats and unlawful possession of an assault weapon.
Speaker 1: The police kept the guns they found and a court
Speaker 1: order was issued that prohibited him from getting any more guns,
Speaker 1: but he was released on bond shortly after his arrest.
Speaker 1: His release sparked outrage in the community, particularly among Jewish residents,
Speaker 1: but he hadn't actually committed any acts of violence, and
Speaker 1: without access to a firearm, the judge felt he posed
Speaker 1: no imminent danger to the community. While he was out
Speaker 1: on bond, he used an encrypted messaging service to communicate
Speaker 1: with another mass shooting enthusiast, and the pair were making
Speaker 1: plans to meet up to discuss it later that summer.
Speaker 1: He also filed paperwork with a county court in California
Speaker 1: to try to fight the gun violence restraining order that
Speaker 1: was preventing him from possessing a firearm. He wanted those
Speaker 1: guns back, and he wanted to keep talking to other
Speaker 1: aspiring mass shooters. There was a lot of outrage about
Speaker 1: this whole situation for good reason, but he remained out
Speaker 1: on bond while he awaited trial most charges in California.
Speaker 1: So some federal prosecutor reached into his toolbox and pulled
Speaker 1: out eighteen USC. One thousand and one A knowingly making
Speaker 1: false statements to a government agency. Because when Farca was
Speaker 1: originally arrested in June of twenty nineteen, his bedroom was searched.
Speaker 1: They found the AR fifteen style rifle that he was
Speaker 1: charged with possessing. They found thirteen rifle magazines, They found
Speaker 1: a lot of Hitler paraphernalia, and they found paperwork related
Speaker 1: to Farca's twenty seventeen discharge from the US Army. The
Speaker 1: local cops in California collected the evidence recovered from the bedroom,
Speaker 1: but they were mostly focused on the guns, obviously, But
Speaker 1: for a federal prosecutor, that paperwork presented a new opportunity.
Speaker 1: In June of twenty seventeen, two years before that arrest,
Speaker 1: Ross Farka walked into a US Army recruiter's office in
Speaker 1: Mountain View, California, and filled out a standard Form eighty six.
Speaker 1: He'd been obsessed with joining the army for years. He
Speaker 1: had repeatedly asked his psychiatrist and his case manager at
Speaker 1: the Regional Center of East Bay, a nonprofit contracted by
Speaker 1: the state of California to coordinate services and support for
Speaker 1: adults with disabilities, about how to get off his medication
Speaker 1: and get a letter of medical clearance so he could enlist.
Speaker 1: A psychiatrist told him on three occasions in twenty fourteen
Speaker 1: and twenty fifteen that she couldn't write him a letter
Speaker 1: of medical clearance because, in her professional opinion, he was
Speaker 1: not mentally stable enough to serve in the military. After
Speaker 1: that third denial from his psychiatrist in twenty fifteen, he
Speaker 1: wrote in a Facebook message, I will take violent action
Speaker 1: against the ZOG once I have military training and perferably
Speaker 1: some military combat experience to ensure I am steady under fire.
Speaker 1: My problem is I can't initiate that process immediately for
Speaker 1: some specific personal reasons. ZOG is an acronym for Zionist
Speaker 1: occupied government. It's a popular concept among white supremacists. They
Speaker 1: believe the United States government is being controlled by Jewish
Speaker 1: influence and his specific personal reasons for being unable to
Speaker 1: enlist in the Middle Military to get the training he
Speaker 1: needed to become a better murderer were, of course, the
Speaker 1: caseworker and psychiatrist who refused to sign a letter saying
Speaker 1: he was medically fit to serve. In twenty fifteen, his
Speaker 1: case manager contacted the police after Farca's father reported to
Speaker 1: her that he was refusing to take his medication. She
Speaker 1: told the police she didn't think there was any immediate danger,
Speaker 1: but he quote fit the profile of a school shooter
Speaker 1: and one of the police to at least conduct a
Speaker 1: welfare check at the family's home. So when he walked
Speaker 1: into that recruiter's office in twenty seventeen, he knew he
Speaker 1: couldn't tell the truth, so he lied. But unlike Deca, Ramsay,
Speaker 1: and Frederina, who lied about meeting members of organized hate groups,
Speaker 1: russ Barka didn't need to lie about that. It doesn't
Speaker 1: look like he had any ties to a particular organization.
Speaker 1: But he did lie about his medical history, indicating that
Speaker 1: he had not sought treatment for any mental or emotional
Speaker 1: condition in the prior seven years. Now having been to
Speaker 1: therapy doesn't by default disqualify you from service, but there
Speaker 1: would be some kind of follow up about the nature
Speaker 1: of the issue and whether or not it was resolved,
Speaker 1: and your current mental health, and that kind of follow
Speaker 1: up would definitely have led to a conversation with Farka's psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: and that would have disqualified him for sure. So he
Speaker 1: said no, and within days of arriving at Fort Benning
Speaker 1: for basic training, Farca attacked another soldier. He was held
Speaker 1: in a psychiatric facility for two weeks before being discharged
Speaker 1: for erroneous enlistment, meaning they knew he lied about his
Speaker 1: medical fitness, but he wasn't charged with anything at the time.
Speaker 1: They just sent him home. So fast forward to two
Speaker 1: years later, it's twenty nineteen. He's out on bond, he's
Speaker 1: trying to get his guns back, he's frightening the community,
Speaker 1: and in that box of evidence collected from his bedroom,
Speaker 1: there's that discharge paperwork. The state of California can't hold
Speaker 1: him on the criminal threats charges, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of incentive here, a lot of pressure from the community
Speaker 1: to get him back into custody. So in November of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, he was indicted on a federal charge for
Speaker 1: lying on that s F eighty six, and this time
Speaker 1: a federal judge says, there's no way we're letting this
Speaker 1: man out of custody. So he was held in federal
Speaker 1: custody from November of twenty nineteen until May of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: He entered a guilty plea on the federal charge in
Speaker 1: April of twenty twenty and was sentenced to time served,
Speaker 1: which ended up being about six months, which is normal
Speaker 1: for this kind of charge. He was still awaiting his
Speaker 1: criminal trial in California, but he was back out on
Speaker 1: bond for a few months in the summer of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty before he was re arrested in October. In those
Speaker 1: few months that he was out of custody, he refused
Speaker 1: to participate in the mandated computer monitoring program and cut
Speaker 1: off his ankle monitor. When his home was searched in October,
Speaker 1: officers discovered that he had obtained a secret cell phone
Speaker 1: in order to circumvent the monitoring software, and he had
Speaker 1: been sending texts about things like carrying out a mass shooting.
Speaker 1: He was discussing child pornography, although it doesn't say he
Speaker 1: actually had any it just said he was discussing it,
Speaker 1: and he was also having conversations about forming a militia.
Speaker 1: He also threatened to murder the police officer who was
Speaker 1: conducting this search of his home, and this obviously resulted
Speaker 1: in that judge in California revoking his bond again, putting
Speaker 1: him back in state custody. He was convicted on those
Speaker 1: state charges in twenty twenty one and sentenced to fifty
Speaker 1: seven months, with time already served. He was released in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, but the state of California was done
Speaker 1: with him, but that doesn't mean he was home free.
Speaker 1: He was immediately re arrested by federal authorities for violating
Speaker 1: his release conditions back in twenty by refusing to cooperate
Speaker 1: with the computer monitoring program, and when he threatened to
Speaker 1: kill that police officer, that was a new criminal charge.
Speaker 1: So he had violated those release conditions in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: and so the federal government was just waiting for California
Speaker 1: to be done with him so then it could be
Speaker 1: their turn again to put him back in federal prison.
Speaker 1: For those violations, he was sentenced to another six months,
Speaker 1: and he was released earlier this year and remains on
Speaker 1: probation with the State of California. So with all of
Speaker 1: that said, now we have to ask ourselves who gets
Speaker 1: charged with lying on their s F eighty six and
Speaker 1: why who doesn't get charged and why don't they? And
Speaker 1: I think the answer is that this charge, like most
Speaker 1: criminal charges, if we're being honest, is a tool. It
Speaker 1: is a tool that gets used when it is the
Speaker 1: most useful tool available. You could pound in a nail
Speaker 1: with the butt of a tape measure if you had
Speaker 1: but it's not the best tool for the job. So
Speaker 1: charging Jordan Duncan or Brandon Russell with lying on their
Speaker 1: security clearance application may have been possible, but better tools
Speaker 1: were available. It was a lot more efficient to just
Speaker 1: go with the gun stuff for Duncan and the plan
Speaker 1: to blow stuff up for Russell. But when a soldier
Speaker 1: is posting online about his ideological desire to murder black people,
Speaker 1: what tool did they have to arrest Killian Ryan? His
Speaker 1: posts were alarming, but not really against the law. If
Speaker 1: a guy who wasn't fantasizing about mass murder had lied
Speaker 1: about hanging out with his dad, the DOJ probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: get involved. But they had a problem, and there was
Speaker 1: a tool in the toolbox to solve it. And that's
Speaker 1: what I find so interesting about the Kai Knicks case.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really look like they needed this tool. He
Speaker 1: was charged with a couple of gun related crimes too. Well.
Speaker 1: Have to wait for the case to move along a
Speaker 1: little bit to see exactly what they have here, but
Speaker 1: it seems like the firearm charges probably would have been
Speaker 1: enough to accomplish their goal of getting Nicks out of
Speaker 1: the army and into federal custody. Adding the charge relying
Speaker 1: on his background check is unique, Like that attorney said
Speaker 1: in the Killian Ryan case, It's unusual and potentially signals
Speaker 1: that the government is taking a stronger position on keeping
Speaker 1: white nationalists out of the armed forces. Obviously, one case
Speaker 1: doesn't make a pattern, so I've got my eyes glued
Speaker 1: to new federal violence. I wonder if we'll see a
Speaker 1: real effort to address this problem, because, if it's not
Speaker 1: already clear from the Sampler platter, a violent white supremacist
Speaker 1: in the military I was teasing earlier in the episode,
Speaker 1: America has a serious problem with weird little guys stealing
Speaker 1: guns from the armory to try to start a race wall.
Speaker 1: Weird little guys to production of cool Zone Media. For
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