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Speaker 1: Col Zone Media. Nicholas Young was at work on the

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Speaker 1: morning of August third, twenty sixteen, when federal agents showed

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Speaker 1: up to arrest him. He appeared before a judge a

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Speaker 1: few hours later, shackled but still wearing his department issued

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Speaker 1: uniform pants. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority had already

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Speaker 1: issued a public statement announcing that he'd been fired, but

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Speaker 1: the reporters in the room all took note of the pants.

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Speaker 1: Nicholas Young had just become the first police officer in

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Speaker 1: the United States to be arrested for a federal terrorism offense.

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Speaker 1: As he was being processed into federal custody, FBI agents

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Speaker 1: were searching his home, his truck, the backpack he'd been

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Speaker 1: carrying at the time of the arrest, and his worklocker

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Speaker 1: number forty five at the Metro Transit Police Department District

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Speaker 1: two substation. Box after box of evidence was carried out

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Speaker 1: of his townhouse in northern Virginia. Agents collected nineteen firearms,

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Speaker 1: eighteen thousand rounds of ammunition, seventy pieces of body armor,

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Speaker 1: and sixty bladed weapons ranging from daggers to swords, But

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Speaker 1: they also seized another kind of evidence. Nazi paraphernalia, a

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Speaker 1: framed portrait of Hitler, a Nazi flag, a tie tack

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Speaker 1: in the shape of an SS lightning bolt. On his

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Speaker 1: hard drive, they found photos of a dinner party he'd hosted.

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Speaker 1: All of the guests were wearing Nazi SS uniforms. The

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Speaker 1: agent's photographed, inventoried, and packed away dozens of pieces of

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Speaker 1: evidence that could be used to show that Nicholas Young

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Speaker 1: was a Nazi, but that wasn't what he was charged with.

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Speaker 1: He was in prison for supporting ISIS, and there's a very

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Speaker 1: good argument to be made that he didn't really do

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Speaker 1: anything at all. I'm Molly Conger in this. It's weird,

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Speaker 1: little guys. This is a story where nothing happens, no

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Speaker 1: one really did anything. A lot of the key players

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Speaker 1: in this story don't even actually exist. The only crime

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Speaker 1: Nicholas Young stands convicted of is a single count of

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Speaker 1: providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

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Speaker 2: But he's never met a real terrorist.

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Speaker 1: There's no evidence at all that Nicholas Young ever had

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Speaker 1: contact of any kind with an actual member of ISIS

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Speaker 1: or al Qaida. He sort of knew a guy who

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Speaker 1: was recruiting fra al Shabab, but even the undercover agent

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Speaker 1: investigating them both said Young had nothing to do with that.

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Speaker 1: The only member of isis Nicholas Young, ever thought he

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Speaker 1: knew was a confidential human source on the FBI payroll,

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Speaker 1: and after years of prodding and encouragement, he sent this

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Speaker 1: friend two hundred and forty five dollars worth of gift

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Speaker 1: cards to the Google Play app store.

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Speaker 2: That's all.

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Speaker 1: I made a note of this case in my messy

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Speaker 1: collection of odds and ends years ago. Buried somewhere in

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Speaker 1: this indecipherable mass of text, I wrote Nazi cop joins

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Speaker 1: isis question mark and paste it in a couple of links,

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Speaker 1: something to come back to later. I guess it's impossible

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Speaker 1: to say now what I was thinking when I wrote

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Speaker 1: most of the things in my little notes app, but

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Speaker 1: I'm almost positive I first came across this case while

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Speaker 1: I was just browsing.

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Speaker 2: I like to see what's out there.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll just waste a few hours punching in keywords

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Speaker 1: to search through federal court filings, and I think in

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Speaker 1: this case the key word was fry Corps. One of

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Speaker 1: the exhibits in this case is a photograph of Nicholas

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Speaker 1: Young's truck parked in his driveway, and in the photograph

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Speaker 1: he can see his vanity license plate, which read FRII Karp.

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Speaker 1: If you've never driven through Virginia. Vanity plates are hugely

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Speaker 1: popular here. Almost everybody has one. We have more than

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Speaker 1: any other state. I think it's because they're really cheap here.

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Speaker 1: They only charged I think ten dollars a year to

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Speaker 1: put a personalized tag on your car, and it's fifty

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Speaker 1: or seventy dollars in a lot of other states, and

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Speaker 1: Nicholas Young chose to pay ten dollars a year to

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Speaker 1: drive around northern Virginia advertising his affinity for the Fry Corps.

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Speaker 1: That's a term for the collection of loosely affiliated nationalists

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Speaker 1: paramilitary groups that formed in Germany after World War One.

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Speaker 1: They weren't Nazis technically, since there was no Nazi Party yet,

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Speaker 1: but many leaders in the Free Corps would go on

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Speaker 1: to join the Nazi Party, guys like Ernst Rome, Heinrich

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Speaker 1: Himmler and Rudolph Hess. They were the shock troops for

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Speaker 1: what was to come, carrying out acts of extra judicial

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Speaker 1: violence against left wing movements in Germany in the years

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Speaker 1: after the First World War, and the kind of guy

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Speaker 1: who romanticizes the idea of joining a nationalist street gang

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Speaker 1: to beat up leftists is the kind of guy I'm

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Speaker 1: interested to know more about, especially if that guy is

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Speaker 1: a cop. So that's how he ended up in my notebook.

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Speaker 1: But like I said, his fondness for Nazi memorabilia has

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Speaker 1: nothing at all to do with how he got arrested.

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Speaker 2: So I made my note and I forgot about it.

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Speaker 1: As interesting as I found all of these exhibits related

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Speaker 1: to his collection of Nazi paraphernalia, there's a very important

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Speaker 1: question to be asked here. Why was a jury allowed

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Speaker 1: to see them. We'll get back to that in.

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Speaker 2: A minute, but first I should.

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Speaker 1: Explain how this came ended up in front of a

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Speaker 1: jury at all. The Federal Bureau of Investigation spent six

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Speaker 1: years on this case, kind of. They spent six years

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Speaker 1: trying to connect Nicholas Young to something anything. His first

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Speaker 1: contact with an FBI agent was in September of twenty ten,

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Speaker 1: and back in the fall of twenty ten, the agents

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Speaker 1: were casting a wide net. They were interviewing scores of

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Speaker 1: people who'd known a man named Zachary Chesser. Chesster was

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Speaker 1: arrested earlier that summer, for threatening Trey Parker.

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Speaker 2: And Matt Stone.

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Speaker 1: Yes, that Trey Parker and that Matt Stone, the creators

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Speaker 1: of South Park. Chesster had taken an interest in Islam

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Speaker 1: after graduating from high school in two thousand and eight,

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Speaker 1: and he soon got involved with Revolution Muslim, a website

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Speaker 1: run by two American Muslim converts that pumped out ro

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Speaker 1: al Kaita propaganda for an English speaking audience. Plooed guilty

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Speaker 1: pretty quickly in October of twenty ten, and he was

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Speaker 1: eventually sentenced to twenty five years in prison. But the

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Speaker 1: court record in Young's case is pretty vague on the

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Speaker 1: subject of Zachary Chessar. Intentionally so the prosecutor often refers

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Speaker 1: to Chesser as a friend of Young's, but in reality

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Speaker 1: they were barely passing acquaintances.

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Speaker 2: But this was the global War on Terror.

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Speaker 1: And a twenty year old white boy had threatened the

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Speaker 1: creators of a cartoon over depictions of Muhammad, so a

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Speaker 1: lot of doors were getting knocked. When agents finally spoke

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Speaker 1: to Nicholas Young two months after Chessar's arrest, he seemed

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Speaker 1: shocked by the charges and said if he'd had any

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Speaker 1: idea Chesser was planning something violent, he would have reported it.

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Speaker 1: There's no indication in the record that this conversation was

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Speaker 1: alarming or suspicious. Nicholas Young barely knew Zachary Chesser.

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Speaker 2: And he was a cop.

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Speaker 1: But now Nicholas Young had an FBI file in a

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Speaker 1: counter terrorism investigation. So three months later, in December of

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Speaker 1: twenty ten, Young was attending a friend's wedding. At the reception,

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Speaker 1: a man introduced himself to Young as Khalil and struck

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Speaker 1: up a conversation. Khalil worked for the FBI. He later

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Speaker 1: testified that he'd attended the wedding to try to get

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Speaker 1: close to another man, a man named sale al Barmawi.

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Speaker 1: The record is again very vague when it comes to

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Speaker 1: why al Barmawi was the subject of this undercover operation,

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Speaker 1: and he's never been arrested or charged with the crime,

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Speaker 1: and it doesn't look like he lives in the United

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Speaker 1: States anymore. But in two thousand and eight, al Barmawi

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Speaker 1: was a member of the Muslim Student Association at George

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Speaker 1: Mason University, so he may have crossed paths with Zachary

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Speaker 1: Chessar during that single semester that Chesser was enrolled. There After,

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Speaker 1: Khalil met Young, though he kept in touch for about

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Speaker 1: a year and a half. The undercover maintained a friendship

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Speaker 1: with Young, meeting for dinner, watching movies at his house,

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Speaker 1: going for.

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Speaker 2: Walks, and just chatting.

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Speaker 1: The prosecution emphasized that Young was hanging out in radical

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Speaker 1: circles and he had dangerous friends, pointing specifically to a

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Speaker 1: man named Amine al Khalifi, who was later arrested for

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Speaker 1: attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. Alarming, right,

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Speaker 1: But the government is less forthcoming about the fact that

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Speaker 1: it was the undercover who introduced Young to al Khalifi,

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Speaker 1: and the fact that el Khalifi was only arrested after

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Speaker 1: he was provided with a fake gun and a fake

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Speaker 1: bomb by the FBI agents who drove him to Washington,

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Speaker 1: d c. And dropped him off to carry out the

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Speaker 1: suicide attack they'd planned. I want to get one thing

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Speaker 1: out of the way here. I'm not defending Nicholas Young,

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Speaker 1: certainly not defending ISIS. ISIS doesn't actually even come into

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Speaker 1: the story. There's no real ISIS here. And when it

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Speaker 1: comes to Nicholas Young, oh, he's a police officer with

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Speaker 1: a house full of Hitler posters. You know, I'm not

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Speaker 1: on his side here. That should be obvious, and I'm

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Speaker 1: not denying that he made some alarming statements throughout the

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Speaker 1: course of the investigation. In one conversation with the undercover,

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Speaker 1: he was furious about the way that the FBI had

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Speaker 1: approached his friends and family when they were asking questions

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Speaker 1: about whether he knew Zachary Chesser. He allegedly fantasized about

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Speaker 1: finding out where the female agent lived so he could

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Speaker 1: kidnap and torture her. That's a very scary thing to say.

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Speaker 1: But when the undercover submitted his report about that conversation

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Speaker 1: in March of twenty eleven, he wrote that he didn't

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Speaker 1: think Young was serious. In other conversations with the undercover,

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Speaker 1: Young admitted to torturing animals as a child. He talked

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Speaker 1: about how much he hated the FBI and said that

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Speaker 1: he believed it was possible to sneak weapons into the

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Speaker 1: federal courthouse undetected, and he was paranoid who was always

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Speaker 1: talking about using phones and taking the batteries out of

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Speaker 1: his phone when he wasn't using it. He said he

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Speaker 1: was stockpiling weapons, and he hinted that any cop who

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Speaker 1: tried to search his house would run into problems. But again,

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Speaker 1: all of these conversations took place in twenty eleven. The

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Speaker 1: undercover submitted the reports, but nothing rose to the level

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Speaker 1: of a prosecutable crime. He was talking a lot of shit,

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Speaker 1: but he owned those guns legally, and he didn't do anything.

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Speaker 1: It's not my preferred dinner conversation, but legally speaking, fantasizing

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Speaker 1: about jihad at the chilis in Alexandria, Virginia isn't terrorism.

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Speaker 1: He did travel to Libya twice in twenty eleven to

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Speaker 1: provide aid to anti Gaddaffi rebel forces during the Libyan

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Speaker 1: Civil War. He had a bumper sticker on his truck

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Speaker 1: that said Libyan Civil War VET Siege of Misrata, And

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Speaker 1: he really was in miss Rada in April and May

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Speaker 1: of twenty eleven during some of the most brutal fighting there.

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Speaker 1: On re entry into the United States after that trip,

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Speaker 1: he told the ICE agent who interviewed him at the

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Speaker 1: airport that he'd had to cut his trip short, returning

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Speaker 1: home ten days earlier than he'd planned because things had

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Speaker 1: gotten too dangerous there. He returned to Libya a second

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Speaker 1: time later that year, and he made no secret of

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Speaker 1: either trip. Both times he was interviewed by a federal

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Speaker 1: agent at the airport on his way home. When he

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Speaker 1: was interviewed by the FBI after his second trip to Libya,

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Speaker 1: they attempted to recruit him as a paid informant, and

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Speaker 1: he declined.

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Speaker 2: Again. It doesn't look like.

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Speaker 1: He broke any laws here, at least not in the

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Speaker 1: United States laws. I don't know what Libya's position on

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Speaker 1: the situation might be, but the FBI was still investigating him.

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Speaker 1: If they'd found any evidence that he joined a terrorist

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Speaker 1: organization in Libya, they would have brought it up a trial.

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Speaker 2: Again.

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Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm super comfortable

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Speaker 1: with the idea of American cops packing their own body

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Speaker 1: armor to fly off to some civil war halfway around

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Speaker 1: the world. But the United States government didn't see fit

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Speaker 1: to charge him with anything in twenty eleven or twenty twelve,

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Speaker 1: or twenty thirteen, or twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen. In

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Speaker 1: twenty twelve, the undercover who'd been hanging out with Young

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Speaker 1: since twenty ten moved on. One of the other men

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Speaker 1: that he'd gotten close to was more interesting to the government,

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Speaker 1: so the agent's focus shifted. Young was interviewed once more

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Speaker 1: by the FBI later in twenty twelve when he was

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Speaker 1: crossing the Canadian border after visiting a woman he'd been

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Speaker 1: romantically involved with, but other than that, the investigation was dormant.

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Speaker 1: Two years passed before the FBI sent Nicholas Young a

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Speaker 1: new friend, a confidential human source who called himself Mo.

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Speaker 1: Young met with Moe twenty times in twenty fourteen.

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Speaker 2: They were close. They didn't just talk about jihad.

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Speaker 1: They talked about work, about dating, about Young's struggle to

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Speaker 1: overcome the depression he'd fallen into after his father's death

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven. He thought they were friends

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Speaker 1: when they talked about ISIS. It was Mo who brought

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Speaker 1: it up. In several conversations. Young even tried to cool

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Speaker 1: his friend's enthusiasm for the group, telling him he didn't

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Speaker 1: need to join ISIS, and he warned him to be

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Speaker 1: cautious about what he posted online and who he talked

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Speaker 1: to about things like this. To be fair, Young did

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Speaker 1: eventually offer some advice about how to travel overseas without

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Speaker 1: arousing suspicion, and he agreed to help Mo with his

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Speaker 1: cover story by sending him a text that would corroborate

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Speaker 1: the lie that he was going on vacation in Turkey.

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Speaker 1: Young believed that his friend was going to Syria, and

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Speaker 1: before Moe pretended to leave for Syria, the pair used

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Speaker 1: computers at a FedEx store to set up special email

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Speaker 1: addresses that they could use to communicate during the trip.

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Speaker 1: Young went to the FedEx store several times over the

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Speaker 1: next year and a half to send and receive emails.

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Speaker 1: In December of twenty fifteen, over a year after Mo

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Speaker 1: pretended to leave for Syria, FBI agents came to Young's

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Speaker 1: house twice to ask him if he knew anything about.

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Speaker 2: Mo, and he did lie.

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Speaker 1: He told agents that he'd had no contact with Mo

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Speaker 1: since he left for Turkey in late twenty fourteen, and

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Speaker 1: he had no way of getting in touch with him.

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Speaker 1: He then emailed Mo to tell him that the FBI

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Speaker 1: was asking about him, and that right there, that is

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Speaker 1: a crime. It is a crime to lie to an

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Speaker 1: FBI agent about a material fact relevant to a criminal investigation,

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Speaker 1: even if it's a fake criminal investigation. Moe wasn't real,

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Speaker 1: but Young didn't know that. In those interviews, he was

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Speaker 1: consciously obstructing what he believed to be a real investigation,

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Speaker 1: but that wasn't really enough to pull the trigger on

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Speaker 1: an indictment. They needed him to do something, something they

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Speaker 1: could take to a grand jury. In July of twenty sixteen,

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Speaker 1: an undercover agent posing as MO reached out to Young again.

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Speaker 1: He said, Isis needed gift cards. They needed someone in

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Speaker 1: the West to buy gift cards and then send them

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Speaker 1: the codes on the back, and they needed those gift

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Speaker 1: cards because that's what they used to set up the

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Speaker 1: messaging accounts that they used to communicate with supporters in

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Speaker 1: the West. MO said they'd had guys in the UK

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Speaker 1: who'd been buying the gift cards, but they stopped sending

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Speaker 1: the codes. Young wrote back, why were the brothers in

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Speaker 1: UK told to stop?

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Speaker 2: Inshallah?

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Speaker 1: More codes will come your way many sting operations and

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Speaker 1: setups in this area. He didn't agree to do it

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Speaker 1: right away. He was cordial, he was inquisitive. He hoped

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Speaker 1: things would work out for the beast, for his friend,

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Speaker 1: but he wasn't willing to do it. That same week,

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Speaker 1: two FBI agents working on the case were texting each other.

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Speaker 1: The first agent wrote, let's hope he goes one more

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Speaker 1: step further and his colleague replied just one more step,

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Speaker 1: to which the first agent responded one huge step with

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Speaker 1: four exclamation points, and the second agent wrote one small

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Speaker 1: step for US, one giant leap for slow decline, slow decline.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes they would just write SD. That was Nicholas Young's

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Speaker 1: code name. They'd been calling him that for years. In

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Speaker 1: the summer of twenty sixteen, six years into their investigation,

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00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:56,560
Speaker 1: they were frustrated he was too cautious, too slow, too

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00:17:56,680 --> 00:18:00,960
Speaker 1: unwilling to take a next step. They decided to ratchet

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00:18:01,040 --> 00:18:04,480
Speaker 1: up the pressure. They sent him more and more emails

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Speaker 1: from MO about the importance of the work he was

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Speaker 1: doing over there.

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00:18:08,280 --> 00:18:09,520
Speaker 2: MO told him horror.

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Speaker 1: Stories about bombings and what was being done to Muslim children.

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Speaker 1: And as they're goading Young into taking action behind the scenes,

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Speaker 1: one agent commented that they'd just hit the case with

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Speaker 1: a defibrillator. After a few days of this convincing, Young

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Speaker 1: drove to a best Buy in Fairfax, Virginia, and he

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00:18:29,960 --> 00:18:34,840
Speaker 1: bought a handful of Google Play gift cards. Finally, in

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Speaker 1: July twenty eighth, twenty sixteen, Nicholas Young sent a text

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Speaker 1: containing twenty two sixteen digit codes, each one from the

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Speaker 1: back of a Google play gift card redeemable for ten

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Speaker 1: or fifteen dollars. The total value was two hundred and

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Speaker 1: forty five dollars. The best Buy receipt was still in

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Speaker 1: his backpack when he was arrested a few days later.

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00:19:11,359 --> 00:19:16,520
Speaker 1: So he didn't do it right. I mean he did it.

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00:19:16,680 --> 00:19:19,359
Speaker 1: He bought the gift cards. And when he bought the

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00:19:19,359 --> 00:19:22,439
Speaker 1: gift cards, he really did believe their purpose was to

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Speaker 1: allow ISIS to set up messaging accounts to communicate with

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Speaker 1: prospective fighters in the West. That's what Moe told him

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Speaker 1: they were for. There was no coded language. There's no

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Speaker 1: room for misunderstanding here. Most said they were for ISIS,

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Speaker 1: So technically yes, that is material support for terrorism. He

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Speaker 1: doesn't deny that he bought the gift cards or that

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Speaker 1: he texted the codes to Mow. That's not in dispute.

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Speaker 1: The real drama in this case is the unhinged trial

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Speaker 1: strategy pursued by the government. Remember I said at the

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Speaker 1: top of the episode that I was surprised to see

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00:20:00,040 --> 00:20:02,399
Speaker 1: that the jury had been shown so much evidence of

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Speaker 1: Nicholas Young's collection of Nazi memorabilia. It was his fondness

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Speaker 1: for Hitler that first brought this case to my attention,

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00:20:09,160 --> 00:20:12,359
Speaker 1: But ultimately that part of his life had nothing to

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00:20:12,400 --> 00:20:15,719
Speaker 1: do with this case. So how did it wind up

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Speaker 1: in the record at all? If you're not someone who

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Speaker 1: spends a lot of time sitting in a courtroom, you

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Speaker 1: might not be asking yourself that. After all, why wouldn't

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Speaker 1: a jury get to see all the weird shit they

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Speaker 1: found in this guy's house? Isn't everything the cops found

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Speaker 1: in their evidence? I know I'm about to tell you

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Speaker 1: that the judge in this case was asked that question

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Speaker 1: and he decided the answer was yes. But typically the

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Speaker 1: answer to that question is no. Pictures of this guy's

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Speaker 1: Nazi themed dinner party in two thousand and seven are

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Speaker 1: very interesting to me, but they don't actually tell a

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Speaker 1: jury anything meaningful about whether or not he knowingly financed

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Speaker 1: terrorism in twenty six sixteen. Not to get boring about it,

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00:21:03,119 --> 00:21:06,080
Speaker 1: but this is a pretty textbook example of something that

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00:21:06,280 --> 00:21:09,440
Speaker 1: fails to satisfy the only two federal rules of evidence

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Speaker 1: that I could name for you off the top of

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Speaker 1: my head. It's both irrelevant and highly prejudicial. Relevance is

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00:21:18,480 --> 00:21:22,119
Speaker 1: easy to explain. That's rule four oh one, and it

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00:21:22,200 --> 00:21:27,280
Speaker 1: reads evidence is relevant if a it has a tendency

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00:21:27,320 --> 00:21:29,679
Speaker 1: to make a fact more or less probable than it

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00:21:29,680 --> 00:21:33,480
Speaker 1: would be without the evidence, and b the fact is

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00:21:33,520 --> 00:21:38,880
Speaker 1: of consequence in determining the action. That's pretty straightforward. It

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00:21:38,920 --> 00:21:40,560
Speaker 1: does just what it says on the tin. You know,

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00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:44,359
Speaker 1: does seeing this piece of evidence tell you anything about

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00:21:44,359 --> 00:21:47,760
Speaker 1: the facts at issue in this case? Does knowing he

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00:21:47,800 --> 00:21:50,440
Speaker 1: had a Nazi tattoo on his neck give you any

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00:21:50,560 --> 00:21:56,399
Speaker 1: valuable information about the gift cards? It really doesn't easy enough.

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Speaker 1: I know I'm always telling you I didn't go to

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00:22:00,560 --> 00:22:04,400
Speaker 1: law school, but Rule four h three and its state

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Speaker 1: court equivalents are something I hear argument about in I

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Speaker 1: think every case I've ever sat through. Quote the court

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Speaker 1: may exclude relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially

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Speaker 1: outweighed by a danger of one or more of the

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00:22:19,200 --> 00:22:25,520
Speaker 1: following unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading a jury, undue delay,

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Speaker 1: wasting time, or needlessly presenting cumulative evidence. So sometimes evidence

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Speaker 1: that gets excluded is relevant. It passes the relevance test,

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00:22:38,320 --> 00:22:41,960
Speaker 1: it would help a jury make a determination about the facts,

359
00:22:42,560 --> 00:22:48,639
Speaker 1: but it's inflammatory, it's prejudicial. Its probative value, so whether

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00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:52,119
Speaker 1: or not it tells you anything is outweighed by the

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00:22:52,160 --> 00:22:56,240
Speaker 1: prejudicial impact it would have. There's information to be learned

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00:22:56,240 --> 00:22:59,240
Speaker 1: from it, but there's a real likelihood that it could,

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Speaker 1: for example, make the jury too emotional to be fair

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00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:07,440
Speaker 1: and impartial. Sometimes that means that a jury won't see

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00:23:07,720 --> 00:23:12,280
Speaker 1: particularly graphic crime scene or autopsy photos because those would

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Speaker 1: upset them without meaningfully adding to their understanding of the case.

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Speaker 1: In a lot of cases where I hear this argued,

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00:23:19,880 --> 00:23:22,639
Speaker 1: it's usually because the defense doesn't want the jury to

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Speaker 1: be told about their client's affiliation with a hate group.

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00:23:26,240 --> 00:23:28,600
Speaker 1: They might file emotion ahead of time, asking the court

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Speaker 1: to prohibit any mention of it, or prohibit the introduction

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Speaker 1: of evidence that a defendant who did something like assault

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00:23:35,080 --> 00:23:38,040
Speaker 1: a black person or vandalize a synagogue. They might not

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Speaker 1: want evidence introduced that they have a swastika tattoo or something.

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Speaker 1: The idea is that you don't want the prosecutor to

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Speaker 1: be able to flood the jury with a bunch of

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00:23:48,119 --> 00:23:51,359
Speaker 1: images that will leave them thinking, damn, this is a

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00:23:51,440 --> 00:23:55,040
Speaker 1: really bad guy and he needs to be punished. The

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Speaker 1: jury is supposed to decide if the state has proved

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00:23:58,280 --> 00:24:02,440
Speaker 1: the elements of the case. The jury decides did this

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00:24:02,520 --> 00:24:08,679
Speaker 1: person do this crime not. Is this defendant a good person. So,

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Speaker 1: even if the evidence might contribute a little bit to

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00:24:12,160 --> 00:24:15,400
Speaker 1: their understanding of the facts of the case, it may

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00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:17,800
Speaker 1: be that this evidence is more likely to sway the

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00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:22,320
Speaker 1: jury into making a decision for the wrong reasons. And,

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Speaker 1: to be honest, most of the time I hear this argued,

387
00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:27,800
Speaker 1: I feel like the jury should have gotten to hear it.

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00:24:28,119 --> 00:24:30,240
Speaker 1: They deserve to hear about the racist shit this guy's

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Speaker 1: getting up to in his extra curriculars.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 1: One example that comes to mind right away is during

392
00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:40,240
Speaker 1: the lawsuit against the organizers of the Unite the Right rally,

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00:24:40,359 --> 00:24:44,040
Speaker 1: the judge ruled that it was unfairly prejudicial to introduce

394
00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:48,399
Speaker 1: evidence about one of the organizer's past. There was plenty

395
00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:51,720
Speaker 1: of evidence about statements leading up to, during, and immediately

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00:24:51,800 --> 00:24:55,720
Speaker 1: after the rally, but in a case involving a racially

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00:24:55,800 --> 00:24:59,880
Speaker 1: motivated violent conspiracy, the judge felt it was unfairly pres

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00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:02,879
Speaker 1: judicial to tell the jury that one of the defendants

399
00:25:02,880 --> 00:25:07,240
Speaker 1: had previously been convicted of something you could fairly call

400
00:25:07,320 --> 00:25:12,480
Speaker 1: a racially motivated violent conspiracy, specifically that he'd want stolen

401
00:25:12,560 --> 00:25:15,240
Speaker 1: machine guns from the army and given them to the

402
00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 1: clan so they could start a race war. So I

403
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 1: was under the impression that the bar was pretty high

404
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:25,960
Speaker 1: for this kind of thing. So as I'm picking through

405
00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:29,560
Speaker 1: the filings in the Nicolas Young case, it seemed very

406
00:25:29,600 --> 00:25:31,720
Speaker 1: weird to me that they were able to convince a

407
00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:35,920
Speaker 1: judge to let them show the jury so many pictures

408
00:25:35,960 --> 00:25:39,560
Speaker 1: of Hitler. What does Hitler have to do with Jihad?

409
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:42,840
Speaker 1: Why would pictures of his Nazi tattoos help a jury

410
00:25:42,840 --> 00:25:45,120
Speaker 1: decide if he was guilty of buying a gift card

411
00:25:45,160 --> 00:25:51,119
Speaker 1: for Isis. Unfortunately for you, the answer is another boring

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00:25:51,119 --> 00:25:55,399
Speaker 1: bit of legalese. The defense wanted to argue that this

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00:25:55,600 --> 00:26:01,080
Speaker 1: was a case of entrapment. That word doesn't mean when

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00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:04,800
Speaker 1: you think it means. I can promise you, unless you

415
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:08,600
Speaker 1: practice criminal law, I can almost guarantee you that whatever

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00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:11,680
Speaker 1: you think entrapment means is not what a judge thinks

417
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:16,480
Speaker 1: it means. An undercover cop doesn't have to tell you

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00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:20,480
Speaker 1: they're a cop, even if you ask. They can lie

419
00:26:20,560 --> 00:26:26,239
Speaker 1: to you about anything and everything. Undercovers and informants can

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00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:30,320
Speaker 1: do illegal stuff with you. It can even be entirely

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00:26:30,359 --> 00:26:33,639
Speaker 1: their idea. They can buy you the gun, put it

422
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:36,960
Speaker 1: in your hand, and drive you to the crime scene.

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00:26:37,040 --> 00:26:40,000
Speaker 1: Almost every scenario you can think of for an undercover

424
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:44,040
Speaker 1: cop is so outrageously over the top. Complicit in the

425
00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:47,640
Speaker 1: planning and execution of a crime isn't entrapment.

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00:26:49,720 --> 00:26:51,560
Speaker 2: It does happen.

427
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:56,359
Speaker 1: It's rare, but it is technically possible to succeed in

428
00:26:56,520 --> 00:26:59,119
Speaker 1: arguing that you're not guilty of a crime because an

429
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:02,640
Speaker 1: agent of the state induced you to do it. It

430
00:27:02,800 --> 00:27:07,960
Speaker 1: can work, but it's never worked in a terrorism case.

431
00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 1: According to an article in the Journal of Criminal Law

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00:27:10,840 --> 00:27:16,720
Speaker 1: and Criminology, I read the whole paper twice before I

433
00:27:16,800 --> 00:27:20,119
Speaker 1: realized I know the author, and I probably could have

434
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:22,119
Speaker 1: just asked him nicely to explain it to me in

435
00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:25,440
Speaker 1: smaller words. But that's my punishment for getting all my

436
00:27:25,480 --> 00:27:28,639
Speaker 1: writing down in the middle of the night. Of the

437
00:27:28,800 --> 00:27:31,439
Speaker 1: hundreds of terrorism cases brought by the DJ in the

438
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:35,640
Speaker 1: first decade after nine to eleven, Thomas Frampton wrote quote

439
00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:39,640
Speaker 1: in the popular press, the improbability of such plots has

440
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:44,800
Speaker 1: generated skepticism. Several authors have suggested that the FBI, in

441
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:48,560
Speaker 1: its zeal to demonstrate tangible success in the fight against terrorism,

442
00:27:49,280 --> 00:27:57,080
Speaker 1: has been improperly manufacturing nonexistent terrorist schemes. The FBI is

443
00:27:57,520 --> 00:28:02,000
Speaker 1: catching guys who almost did something they were never going

444
00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:06,600
Speaker 1: to do. But despite the fact that almost all of

445
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:09,440
Speaker 1: the terrorism related prosecutions in the United States are based

446
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:14,000
Speaker 1: on sting operations where the would be terrorist was induced, coached,

447
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:17,120
Speaker 1: and aided every step of the way by a copper informant,

448
00:28:18,200 --> 00:28:21,560
Speaker 1: no one has ever prevailed in court by asserting an

449
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:30,280
Speaker 1: entrapment defense. So what is entrapment? In order to successfully

450
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:33,639
Speaker 1: argue entrapment, you have to show that a state actor,

451
00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:37,720
Speaker 1: so a copper, a paid informant, induced you to commit

452
00:28:37,760 --> 00:28:42,880
Speaker 1: the crime, and that you lacked the predisposition to have

453
00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:47,520
Speaker 1: done it on your own. The first part's easy. The

454
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:50,560
Speaker 1: informant and the undercover agent coaxed him into it.

455
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:53,120
Speaker 2: It was their idea. They begged and pleaded.

456
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:57,240
Speaker 1: They spent years insinuating themselves into his life. They got

457
00:28:57,280 --> 00:29:00,880
Speaker 1: close to him. The agents were having private conversations behind

458
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:02,920
Speaker 1: the scenes about how to push him over the edge

459
00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: to actually commit a crime. They were essentially saying to

460
00:29:06,960 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 1: each other, this guy isn't going to break the law

461
00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:13,800
Speaker 1: unless we make him. But the second prong of the

462
00:29:13,840 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 1: test is slippery. Sure, maybe the government talked you into

463
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:22,760
Speaker 1: committing the crime. But you wouldn't have actually done it

464
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:26,640
Speaker 1: unless you were predisposed to doing things like that. Right,

465
00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:30,160
Speaker 1: If you weren't the kind of person who had a

466
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:35,360
Speaker 1: natural predisposition to commit this crime, you wouldn't have This

467
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 1: crime is obviously in your nature. For this part of

468
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:43,320
Speaker 1: the test, there are some courts that use what's called

469
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 1: an objective test, asking the question would this have worked

470
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 1: on a reasonable person? But most courts, including the federal courts,

471
00:29:53,360 --> 00:29:58,200
Speaker 1: use a subjective standard. So the question becomes, was this

472
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:05,000
Speaker 1: particular defendant predisposed to committing this crime? Now? I read

473
00:30:05,000 --> 00:30:08,720
Speaker 1: a couple of papers, but if you ask me, this

474
00:30:08,920 --> 00:30:13,040
Speaker 1: is the law saying does the defendant have bad vibes?

475
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:20,160
Speaker 1: And the answer, it turns out, is always yeah. Determining

476
00:30:20,160 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 1: whether someone is predisposed towards crime is alarmingly vibes based.

477
00:30:27,520 --> 00:30:30,080
Speaker 1: It's not just a question of your criminal history. You know,

478
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:33,160
Speaker 1: have you done something like this before? Have you even

479
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:37,680
Speaker 1: tried to do something like this before? No. It opens

480
00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:42,160
Speaker 1: up the door for an exploration of your character, and

481
00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:44,720
Speaker 1: that's something that's normally very much off limits in a

482
00:30:44,760 --> 00:30:50,240
Speaker 1: criminal trial. As Prampton wrote, quote, the defense is unusual

483
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:53,360
Speaker 1: because it makes a searching inquiry into the defendant's character

484
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:57,800
Speaker 1: or criminal propensities the centerpiece of the criminal trial. This

485
00:30:57,840 --> 00:31:01,080
Speaker 1: stands in marked contrast to the traditional focus of Anglo

486
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:06,000
Speaker 1: American criminal jurisprudence, which generally spurns such evidence as irrelevant

487
00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:09,120
Speaker 1: to the central issue of moral blameworthiness for a particular

488
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 1: volitional criminal act. In a twenty fourteen report, Human Rights

489
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 1: Watch suggests that it may not even be possible for

490
00:31:17,880 --> 00:31:21,640
Speaker 1: an entrapment defense to work in a terrorism case. The

491
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 1: nature of the argument requires the jury to make a

492
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:29,040
Speaker 1: determination about the defendant's character. They're not deciding if the

493
00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:33,200
Speaker 1: defendant is guilty or not guilty of the crime. They're

494
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:36,080
Speaker 1: deciding if this is an innocent person.

495
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:38,480
Speaker 2: Quote.

496
00:31:38,720 --> 00:31:42,480
Speaker 1: This character inquiry makes it exceptionally difficult for a defendant

497
00:31:42,520 --> 00:31:46,200
Speaker 1: to succeed in raising the entrapment defense, particularly in the

498
00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:51,880
Speaker 1: terrorism context, where inflammatory stereotypes and highly charged characterizations of

499
00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 1: Islam and foreigners often prevail. And that is how we

500
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:01,720
Speaker 1: ended up with dozens of exacts its demonstrating that Nicholas

501
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:09,560
Speaker 1: Young loved Hitler. Young's attorneys tried to keep this evidence

502
00:32:09,560 --> 00:32:14,480
Speaker 1: out at emotions hearing. Assistant US Attorney Gordon Kromberg argued

503
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:18,840
Speaker 1: that quote, the Nazi stuff in this case is very

504
00:32:18,920 --> 00:32:20,000
Speaker 1: much related to the.

505
00:32:21,520 --> 00:32:22,440
Speaker 2: Isis stuff.

506
00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:30,160
Speaker 1: The Nazi stuff is related to the Isis stuff. A

507
00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:32,320
Speaker 1: great deal of ink was spilled on the subject in

508
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:37,240
Speaker 1: motions back and forth. But I'm not convinced by Kromberg's argument,

509
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:40,000
Speaker 1: nor that of the expert witness he put on the

510
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:43,680
Speaker 1: stand to explain it to the jury at trial. I'm

511
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:47,120
Speaker 1: not saying that there's no conversation to be had about

512
00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:51,680
Speaker 1: the curious phenomenon of cross pollination within online communities of

513
00:32:51,760 --> 00:32:57,200
Speaker 1: right wing accelerationists and Salafi jihadists. I'd intended to devote

514
00:32:57,200 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 1: a little more time to exploring that in this episode,

515
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 1: but I think it's a longer conversation for another day.

516
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:05,920
Speaker 1: There's been some interesting writing in just the last five

517
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:09,719
Speaker 1: years on the nature of this trend within some fringe

518
00:33:09,760 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 1: online spaces of melding the narrative and esthetics of neo

519
00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:20,920
Speaker 1: Nazism and Islamic extremism. The trend itself isn't necessarily new,

520
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 1: but all of the scholarship I can find is fairly recent.

521
00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 1: But it is out there, and we've already talked in

522
00:33:28,240 --> 00:33:33,560
Speaker 1: passing about several examples of this phenomenon. Remember Brandon Russell,

523
00:33:33,760 --> 00:33:37,080
Speaker 1: the founder of Adam Woffen. Back in twenty eighteen, he

524
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:39,479
Speaker 1: was sharing a house in Florida with three other members

525
00:33:39,520 --> 00:33:42,600
Speaker 1: of his neo Nazi terrorist organization when one of them,

526
00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:48,480
Speaker 1: Devon Arthur's, murdered the other two. Arthur's had recently converted

527
00:33:48,480 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 1: to Islam. And remember Ethan Melzer, the young Army private

528
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 1: who communicated classified troop movements to someone that he thought

529
00:33:57,120 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 1: was in Al Qaida because he thought a little had

530
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:03,800
Speaker 1: would help kick off the kind of worldwide violence necessary

531
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:07,280
Speaker 1: for the race war envisioned by his particular brand of

532
00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:11,880
Speaker 1: neo Nazism. And in a more general sense, it's not

533
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:14,800
Speaker 1: even all that rare to see your average neo Nazi

534
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:20,080
Speaker 1: terror enthusiasts talking about things like white Shariah or white Jihad,

535
00:34:21,160 --> 00:34:25,880
Speaker 1: borrowing the language and symbolism, or drawing inspiration from groups

536
00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:29,960
Speaker 1: like al Qaeda or ISIS, And in a broad sense,

537
00:34:30,920 --> 00:34:34,400
Speaker 1: they do have things in common. On the extreme end

538
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:39,359
Speaker 1: of both of these ideologies, you have misogyny, homophobia, anti semitism,

539
00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:43,879
Speaker 1: glorification of violence. Think about terogram, where you have the

540
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: idolization of the mass shooters that they call saints, these

541
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:51,839
Speaker 1: people who have killed and died for the cause. What

542
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:55,520
Speaker 1: is that if not a martyr. White supremacists have been

543
00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:59,520
Speaker 1: calling for RAHOA for decades. That's a shortened form of

544
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:01,680
Speaker 1: the phrase racial holy war.

545
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 2: So you can kind of see.

546
00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:08,239
Speaker 1: Where the edges of these things could bleed together a

547
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:12,919
Speaker 1: little bit. It's an interesting topic to explore, and there's

548
00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:16,879
Speaker 1: not a clear cut answer here about how sincere any

549
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:21,120
Speaker 1: particular actor is. What's a meme, what's a recruitment tactic,

550
00:35:21,239 --> 00:35:27,120
Speaker 1: what's trolling? What's just equal opportunity, love of violence? It's

551
00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:31,719
Speaker 1: all over the map, and it's evolving. I'll pop a

552
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:33,760
Speaker 1: few links in the show notes to a few papers

553
00:35:33,760 --> 00:35:36,279
Speaker 1: on the topic that I thought were interesting. But I'm

554
00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:37,920
Speaker 1: going to come back to this when I've had some

555
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:41,200
Speaker 1: time to do a little more reading. So I'm not

556
00:35:41,239 --> 00:35:45,080
Speaker 1: saying there's no basis for an argument that Nicholas Young's

557
00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:49,600
Speaker 1: interest in Nazi memorabilia could potentially be relevant to his

558
00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:53,640
Speaker 1: material support of ISIS. There is room here for a

559
00:35:53,760 --> 00:35:58,760
Speaker 1: conversation about some interplay between his belief in these ideologies.

560
00:36:00,160 --> 00:36:03,520
Speaker 1: But I am saying that I thought about it. I

561
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:05,760
Speaker 1: considered the facts of the case that are on the record.

562
00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: I read a pretty significant chunk of the extant literature

563
00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:14,480
Speaker 1: on syncretic extremism, and I gotta say I think they

564
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:18,879
Speaker 1: violated the civil rights of this Hitler enthusiast. I take

565
00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:21,880
Speaker 1: no pleasure in telling you that Nicholas Young is an

566
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:26,279
Speaker 1: extremely unsympathetic individual. No one is more upset than I

567
00:36:26,320 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 1: am that I have to tell you that. I don't

568
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:31,280
Speaker 1: think they were fair to the cop with the Nazi tattoos,

569
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:37,200
Speaker 1: and he say some pretty wild stuff about jihad.

570
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:37,759
Speaker 2: To those informants.

571
00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:41,799
Speaker 1: But I don't think it was proper to present these

572
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:45,920
Speaker 1: two things as reinforcing evidence of one another in a

573
00:36:45,960 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 1: criminal trial. Again, I'm not even saying there's no possibility

574
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:55,799
Speaker 1: that these things were intertwined for him, but that's not

575
00:36:55,800 --> 00:36:59,480
Speaker 1: what they put on the record. This evidence was produced

576
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:04,720
Speaker 1: to counter the entrapment defense. It was produced to show predisposition.

577
00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 1: The entire purpose was to show the jury that this

578
00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:13,000
Speaker 1: is a bad guy who believes bad things, so he

579
00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:14,680
Speaker 1: probably does bad things.

580
00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:33,320
Speaker 2: And that's not how it's supposed to work. For this case.

581
00:37:33,640 --> 00:37:37,319
Speaker 1: Doctor Dovid Gartenstein Ross was hired by the prosecution to

582
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:41,680
Speaker 1: prepare a report on quote the relationship between affinity for

583
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:48,080
Speaker 1: Nazism and inclination to support militant Islamic groups. The first

584
00:37:48,080 --> 00:37:51,360
Speaker 1: ten pages of the report are I guess they're supposed

585
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:54,680
Speaker 1: to be a resume, but it's in narrative form. It's

586
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:57,600
Speaker 1: not the traditional CV that's submitted to the court when

587
00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:01,960
Speaker 1: you offer up an expert. And then what follows is

588
00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:07,560
Speaker 1: just a loosely connected series of largely unsubstantiated statements and anecdotes,

589
00:38:08,520 --> 00:38:10,680
Speaker 1: and it all somehow adds up to the conclusion that

590
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:15,400
Speaker 1: Nazis and Isis both hate Jewish people, thus making them

591
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:19,719
Speaker 1: ideologically similar in such a significant way that it would

592
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:23,120
Speaker 1: be common and expected for someone to drift from one

593
00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:27,080
Speaker 1: worldview into the other. And he ends with the bold

594
00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:31,280
Speaker 1: pronouncement that quote, I conclude that evidence in individual's affinity

595
00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:33,719
Speaker 1: for Nazism is related to the question of whether that

596
00:38:33,800 --> 00:38:40,400
Speaker 1: individual is predisposed to supporting militant Islamist groups. This report

597
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:43,520
Speaker 1: was written shortly after the case was filed back in

598
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:48,640
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, and at that time there was no meaningful

599
00:38:48,680 --> 00:38:54,040
Speaker 1: existing scholarship on this phenomenon. He cites none. It doesn't exist.

600
00:38:55,200 --> 00:38:57,640
Speaker 1: The academic writing produced on the topic in the last

601
00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:03,280
Speaker 1: few years does recognize the existence of this ideological soup

602
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:06,799
Speaker 1: that exists at the far fringes, But most of the

603
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:10,040
Speaker 1: authors I've read seem to agree that it's not common,

604
00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:14,799
Speaker 1: it's not universal, and it's not well documented enough to

605
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:20,239
Speaker 1: make a conclusion like that. When you read a study,

606
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 1: you should look into how it came to be written,

607
00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:28,200
Speaker 1: who wrote it, what's their background, what did they study,

608
00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:31,359
Speaker 1: where did they work, did someone pay for it?

609
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:35,640
Speaker 2: What else have they written? Is there any publicly.

610
00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 1: Available evidence about their beliefs or their motivations. You can't

611
00:39:40,200 --> 00:39:43,080
Speaker 1: always answer all of these questions, and god willing, the

612
00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:47,400
Speaker 1: answers are usually pretty mundane. In this case, the report

613
00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:50,719
Speaker 1: was paid for by the government. Doctor grtnstein Ross was

614
00:39:50,719 --> 00:39:53,000
Speaker 1: paid sixteen thousand dollars for his work on the case.

615
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:57,880
Speaker 1: That in itself isn't unusual or cause for concern. You

616
00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:00,319
Speaker 1: often see it presented that way in a trial. You know,

617
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:03,719
Speaker 1: the opposing council insinuating that the expert is only saying

618
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 1: what they've been paid to say. But it's not weird

619
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:09,160
Speaker 1: to pay an expert for their time, and serving as

620
00:40:09,160 --> 00:40:13,400
Speaker 1: an expert witness can be a significant time commitment. So

621
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:19,400
Speaker 1: question answered not a huge red plaque. His background appears

622
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:23,879
Speaker 1: to be in Islamic extremism, both as a past participant

623
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 1: and a current researcher. After dabbling briefly in Islamic extremism,

624
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 1: he went to work in a nonprofit called the Investigative

625
00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:37,000
Speaker 1: Project on Terrorism. The IPT is one of the leading

626
00:40:37,120 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 1: purveyors of pseudo academic Islamophobia, and it's cited as an

627
00:40:41,600 --> 00:40:46,160
Speaker 1: example of groups with quote thinly veiled political motives typically

628
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:50,400
Speaker 1: infused with poor scholarship and extremely selective reporting in a

629
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:54,960
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen issue of Critical Studies on Terrorism. After a

630
00:40:54,960 --> 00:40:58,239
Speaker 1: brief stint there, doctor Grtnstein Ross moved on to the

631
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:01,839
Speaker 1: Foundation for Defense of Democrat, where he's been since two

632
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:07,080
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. The FDD claims to have been founded

633
00:41:07,080 --> 00:41:09,440
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of nine to eleven to address the

634
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:14,680
Speaker 1: global threat of terrorism, but the original incorporation paperwork shows

635
00:41:14,680 --> 00:41:17,879
Speaker 1: that it was founded in April of two thousand and one,

636
00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:21,760
Speaker 1: several months before nine to eleven, and the original stated

637
00:41:21,760 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 1: purpose of the organization was providing quote education meant to

638
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:31,800
Speaker 1: enhance Israel's image in North America. They revised that mission

639
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 1: statement after nine to eleven, and they've sought to distance

640
00:41:34,600 --> 00:41:37,720
Speaker 1: themselves from their original mission as a pro Israel lobbying group,

641
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:43,080
Speaker 1: but public disclosures of their lobbying expenditures show a disproportionate

642
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:48,240
Speaker 1: interest in pro Israel and anti Iran measures. A founding

643
00:41:48,280 --> 00:41:51,960
Speaker 1: board member and a primary donor to FDD is Trump

644
00:41:52,040 --> 00:41:56,799
Speaker 1: Megadnor and former Home Depot CEO Bernie Marcus. And. After

645
00:41:56,800 --> 00:42:00,640
Speaker 1: Trump's win in twenty sixteen, several analysts of the Foundation left,

646
00:42:01,280 --> 00:42:04,839
Speaker 1: claiming the organization was limiting criticism of Trump in their analysis.

647
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,719
Speaker 1: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies has been called an

648
00:42:09,719 --> 00:42:14,320
Speaker 1: anti Muslim fringe group by Duke University sociologist Christopher Bale.

649
00:42:15,200 --> 00:42:19,680
Speaker 1: Farid Hafez, a political scientist at Salzburg University, identified FDD

650
00:42:19,840 --> 00:42:22,920
Speaker 1: as a key player in what he calls a transatlantic

651
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:28,000
Speaker 1: network of Islamophobia. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to

652
00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:32,080
Speaker 1: Colin Powell, has accused the Foundation of knowingly peddling falsehoods

653
00:42:32,080 --> 00:42:35,439
Speaker 1: to push for war with Iran. The progressive think tank

654
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:39,160
Speaker 1: Institute for Policy Studies has noted that while the organization

655
00:42:39,239 --> 00:42:43,040
Speaker 1: is quote an ardent critic of terrorism, it has not

656
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:46,919
Speaker 1: criticized actions taken by Israel against Palestinians that arguably fall

657
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:51,680
Speaker 1: into this category, and for what it's worth, Iran's Ministry

658
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:54,640
Speaker 1: of Foreign Affairs has designated the Foundation as a foreign

659
00:42:54,680 --> 00:42:57,839
Speaker 1: terrorist organization. So I guess two can play at that game.

660
00:43:00,280 --> 00:43:02,920
Speaker 1: And the prosecutor who put this expert on the stand

661
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:06,359
Speaker 1: is no stranger to accusations of Islamophobia of his own.

662
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:11,400
Speaker 1: Gordon Kromberg has been called a loose cannon by legal

663
00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:16,400
Speaker 1: ethicists and has been accused of personal animus against Muslim defendants.

664
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:19,920
Speaker 1: When the subject of a grand jury subpoena requested a

665
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:22,480
Speaker 1: postponement until after Ramadan.

666
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:25,359
Speaker 2: Kromberg called it quote part of the.

667
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:31,360
Speaker 1: Attempted Islamization of the American justice system. According to a

668
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:36,279
Speaker 1: complaint from that individual's attorney, Kromberg quote became agitated in

669
00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:40,080
Speaker 1: the court room and said, quote, they can kill each

670
00:43:40,080 --> 00:43:44,160
Speaker 1: other during Ramadan, they can testify before a grand jury.

671
00:43:44,920 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 1: When Ahmed Abu Ali, a United States citizen, was arrested

672
00:43:48,560 --> 00:43:52,640
Speaker 1: and tortured in Saudi Arabia, the man's lawyer asked Kromberg

673
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:55,080
Speaker 1: if his client might be returned to the United States

674
00:43:55,120 --> 00:43:59,680
Speaker 1: to face pending charges here, and Kromberg reportedly said, quote,

675
00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:05,359
Speaker 1: He's no good for us here. He has no fingernails left,

676
00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:08,840
Speaker 1: though he denies making light of the fact that Ali

677
00:44:08,960 --> 00:44:13,520
Speaker 1: was being tortured. In another case of an American accused

678
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:18,279
Speaker 1: of supporting a foreign terrorist organization, Kromberg explicitly instructed the

679
00:44:18,360 --> 00:44:24,040
Speaker 1: jury to disregard testimony offered by Muslim witnesses because their

680
00:44:24,040 --> 00:44:27,520
Speaker 1: religion teaches that it is acceptable to lie to non believers.

681
00:44:29,040 --> 00:44:31,839
Speaker 1: Law professor Wadis Said told The Intercept in twenty twenty

682
00:44:31,840 --> 00:44:36,400
Speaker 1: one that Kromberg has a history of provocative stances and quote.

683
00:44:36,920 --> 00:44:40,000
Speaker 1: The positions that he has taken are quite tendentious and

684
00:44:40,040 --> 00:44:42,760
Speaker 1: even vindictive in terms of his mindset toward the person

685
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:43,480
Speaker 1: he's targeting.

686
00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:46,759
Speaker 2: I'm not so naive.

687
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:49,400
Speaker 1: As to think it's unusual for a prosecutor to exaggerate

688
00:44:49,440 --> 00:44:52,719
Speaker 1: for dramatic effect, But I just think it's important to

689
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:56,840
Speaker 1: evaluate the source of a fantastic claim. So when a

690
00:44:56,840 --> 00:44:58,840
Speaker 1: man stands in front of a jury and says that

691
00:44:58,880 --> 00:45:00,920
Speaker 1: a couple of gift cards should send a man to

692
00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:04,400
Speaker 1: prison for fifteen years, you should take a minute to

693
00:45:04,480 --> 00:45:09,160
Speaker 1: check out his track record. Perhaps the most egregious bit

694
00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:13,760
Speaker 1: of evidence offered at trial was an honest to god lie,

695
00:45:13,880 --> 00:45:16,680
Speaker 1: I mean, showing them all the Hitler stuff. That was real.

696
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:19,680
Speaker 1: That was real evidence. He really did have those things

697
00:45:19,719 --> 00:45:21,680
Speaker 1: in his home. I just don't think it was appropriate

698
00:45:22,000 --> 00:45:25,240
Speaker 1: to use them as evidence in this case. But throughout

699
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:29,160
Speaker 1: the case, Kromberg claimed that Nicholas Young had attended a

700
00:45:29,239 --> 00:45:32,840
Speaker 1: neo Nazi rally in two thousand and one, and in

701
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:35,719
Speaker 1: a later article published by doctor Gartnstein Ross in the

702
00:45:35,760 --> 00:45:39,520
Speaker 1: Journal of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, he suggests that

703
00:45:39,560 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 1: this is evidence that Young actually converted to Islam in

704
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:47,080
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, six years later because of his

705
00:45:47,239 --> 00:45:50,759
Speaker 1: interest in Nazism, as evidence by his attendance at this

706
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:58,759
Speaker 1: Neo Nazi rally. The problem is that didn't happen. A

707
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:01,960
Speaker 1: former classmate test In two thousand and one. They were

708
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:05,360
Speaker 1: both taking a course on European racism taught by Professor

709
00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:09,080
Speaker 1: Aaron Gillette at George Mason University. As part of a

710
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 1: class project. The two students attended a dinner hosted by

711
00:46:13,239 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 1: a neo Nazi group where British fascist Mark Catterill would

712
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:21,160
Speaker 1: be speaking. Their professor arranged for them to attend and

713
00:46:21,280 --> 00:46:25,560
Speaker 1: even interviewed Catterall after his speech. Mark Catterall was living

714
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:27,680
Speaker 1: in Virginia at the time. Running a group called the

715
00:46:27,719 --> 00:46:31,160
Speaker 1: American Friends of the British National Party, and the dinner

716
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:35,200
Speaker 1: was organized by the neo Nazi group National Alliance. And

717
00:46:35,320 --> 00:46:39,279
Speaker 1: here's a weird little guy's Easter egg. I think that

718
00:46:39,400 --> 00:46:41,560
Speaker 1: this was one of those weekly dinners that was hosted

719
00:46:41,600 --> 00:46:44,880
Speaker 1: by Sam Francis at a Thai restaurant in northern Virginia,

720
00:46:45,640 --> 00:46:48,279
Speaker 1: those dinners that a Ron Paul Staffer was outed as

721
00:46:48,520 --> 00:46:54,640
Speaker 1: occasionally attending, but characterizing a school project, one that had

722
00:46:54,680 --> 00:46:58,040
Speaker 1: been signed off on by their history professor as evidence

723
00:46:58,080 --> 00:47:00,960
Speaker 1: that the defendant had a history of attending Nazi rallies,

724
00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:04,200
Speaker 1: which in turn shows that he's predisposed to trying to

725
00:47:04,239 --> 00:47:12,360
Speaker 1: fund isis that's outrageous. Like I said, Nicholas Young is

726
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:16,319
Speaker 1: not a sympathetic character. He's definitely a weird little guy.

727
00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:20,879
Speaker 1: There are a lot of salacious details about his interests

728
00:47:20,920 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 1: that were, in my opinion, improperly presented to the jury

729
00:47:26,480 --> 00:47:29,799
Speaker 1: under other circumstances. It's the kind of stuff I would

730
00:47:29,840 --> 00:47:32,600
Speaker 1: expect to see in a case where a guy really

731
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:36,000
Speaker 1: did try to do some kind of terrorism, the kind

732
00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 1: of terrorism I write about. But they charged him for

733
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:45,360
Speaker 1: buying some gift cards, which he did do sure, but

734
00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 1: only after a six year investigation involving hundreds of man hours,

735
00:47:50,440 --> 00:47:53,440
Speaker 1: a team of handlers, a two year relationship with an

736
00:47:53,520 --> 00:47:57,000
Speaker 1: undercover agent, another two year relationship with a paid informant,

737
00:47:57,640 --> 00:48:03,160
Speaker 1: an active encouragement to commit the crime in question. Throughout

738
00:48:03,200 --> 00:48:06,520
Speaker 1: the case, the prosecution implied that Young had committed a

739
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:11,120
Speaker 1: wide variety of other crimes. In one filing, it's implied

740
00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:15,520
Speaker 1: that he had bomb making materials, but none were presented

741
00:48:15,560 --> 00:48:19,040
Speaker 1: as evidence and he wasn't charged with it. There are

742
00:48:19,080 --> 00:48:22,880
Speaker 1: repeated assertions that he's been illegally purchasing steroids online and

743
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:26,080
Speaker 1: having them shipped from overseas. They even claim to have

744
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:28,319
Speaker 1: found illegal steroids in his home on the day of

745
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:31,879
Speaker 1: the arrest. He's accused of plotting to smuggle guns into

746
00:48:31,920 --> 00:48:34,520
Speaker 1: a courthouse, of plotting to kidnap an FBI agent, of

747
00:48:34,600 --> 00:48:38,160
Speaker 1: joining a terrorist organization in Libya, but it wasn't charged

748
00:48:38,200 --> 00:48:41,279
Speaker 1: with any of that. Did they think they couldn't prove

749
00:48:41,360 --> 00:48:45,160
Speaker 1: those things? Were they padding out the allegations to make

750
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:46,960
Speaker 1: the underlying case look more serious?

751
00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:51,880
Speaker 2: Who knows? In the end, they.

752
00:48:51,760 --> 00:48:56,080
Speaker 1: Relied on an anti terrorism statute that is notoriously abused

753
00:48:56,120 --> 00:49:00,800
Speaker 1: in sting operations that target Muslim Americans. This former FBI

754
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:04,879
Speaker 1: agent Mike Jerman wrote in his recent book Policing White Supremacy,

755
00:49:05,080 --> 00:49:09,160
Speaker 1: the material support for Terrorism statute is quote used in

756
00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:16,640
Speaker 1: FBI sting operations that manufacture terrorism threats to produce statistical accomplishments,

757
00:49:18,760 --> 00:49:24,759
Speaker 1: so law enforcement resources are disproportionately allocated to combating foreign terrorism,

758
00:49:25,440 --> 00:49:29,600
Speaker 1: which then results in agents being quote pressured to demonstrate

759
00:49:29,640 --> 00:49:37,320
Speaker 1: their success even if no genuine plots exist. This is

760
00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:40,960
Speaker 1: a question I keep running into on the show. What

761
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:48,160
Speaker 1: is terrorism? Whose crimes matter to us more importantly, whose

762
00:49:48,200 --> 00:49:53,520
Speaker 1: crimes matter to the government. What kinds of violence are unacceptable?

763
00:49:54,960 --> 00:49:59,560
Speaker 1: What kinds of violence are allowed? What message is being

764
00:49:59,560 --> 00:50:03,400
Speaker 1: communi in the decisions that they make about who, how,

765
00:50:03,480 --> 00:50:08,800
Speaker 1: and when to prosecute and for what. Despite a twenty

766
00:50:08,840 --> 00:50:12,359
Speaker 1: seventeen report from the United States Government Accountability Office which

767
00:50:12,640 --> 00:50:16,520
Speaker 1: showed that right wing extremists are responsible for three times

768
00:50:16,800 --> 00:50:20,000
Speaker 1: the number of domestic attacks as compared to Islamic extremists,

769
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:22,880
Speaker 1: we don't use the same words.

770
00:50:22,480 --> 00:50:24,520
Speaker 2: To talk about these things.

771
00:50:25,239 --> 00:50:28,760
Speaker 1: When Dylan Roof murdered nine people at a Bible study

772
00:50:29,239 --> 00:50:32,839
Speaker 1: at a Manual African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South

773
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:39,400
Speaker 1: Carolina FBI Director James Comey said, quote, terrorism is an

774
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:43,200
Speaker 1: act of violence to try to influence a public body

775
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:44,120
Speaker 1: or citizenry.

776
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:46,360
Speaker 2: So it's more of a political act.

777
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:50,279
Speaker 1: And again, based on what I know so far, I

778
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:56,560
Speaker 1: don't see it as a political act, not a political act.

779
00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:02,759
Speaker 1: Dylan Roof was very clear about his motivations. He had

780
00:51:02,760 --> 00:51:08,439
Speaker 1: a manifesto. He intentionally left people alive so they could

781
00:51:08,440 --> 00:51:10,600
Speaker 1: tell the story of what happened in that Bible study.

782
00:51:11,960 --> 00:51:14,920
Speaker 1: He was trying to incite a race war, a civil

783
00:51:14,960 --> 00:51:18,040
Speaker 1: war once again ignited in South Carolina, and fought over

784
00:51:18,080 --> 00:51:20,120
Speaker 1: the right of black people to exist freely in the

785
00:51:20,200 --> 00:51:26,600
Speaker 1: United States. That feels very political to me, but that's

786
00:51:26,640 --> 00:51:30,680
Speaker 1: not how we talk about it. As Bruce Hoffman wrote

787
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:34,520
Speaker 1: in his book God's Guns and Sedition, terrorism as it

788
00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:39,080
Speaker 1: is currently defined in American law treats domestic terror and

789
00:51:39,200 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 1: foreign terror very differently, and in the book he refers

790
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:46,040
Speaker 1: to this case directly, noting that Young was sentenced to

791
00:51:46,120 --> 00:51:50,240
Speaker 1: fifteen years in prison. The average sentence for this charge

792
00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:54,280
Speaker 1: providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization is thirteen

793
00:51:54,320 --> 00:51:59,640
Speaker 1: point five years. Domestic terrorism, on the other hand, often

794
00:51:59,680 --> 00:52:05,239
Speaker 1: results in significantly shorter sentences, even in cases where we've

795
00:52:05,320 --> 00:52:08,120
Speaker 1: used the word, even in cases where the crime is

796
00:52:08,239 --> 00:52:11,600
Speaker 1: much more serious. I mean, first of all, you can't

797
00:52:11,640 --> 00:52:15,359
Speaker 1: even get charged with an equivalent offense. You are free

798
00:52:15,400 --> 00:52:19,600
Speaker 1: to materially support organizations that absolutely should be called a

799
00:52:19,640 --> 00:52:24,200
Speaker 1: domestic terrorist organization without consequence. That's allowed. You can't send

800
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:26,520
Speaker 1: a ten dollars gift card to ISIS, but you can

801
00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:31,160
Speaker 1: give everything you own to Adam Woffin. Hoffmann lists several

802
00:52:31,280 --> 00:52:36,120
Speaker 1: contrasting examples. So Brendan Russell, the founder of Adam Woffin,

803
00:52:36,560 --> 00:52:39,560
Speaker 1: was arrested in twenty eighteen after officers found his bomb

804
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:43,920
Speaker 1: making workshop while they were investigating the double homicide committed

805
00:52:43,920 --> 00:52:48,000
Speaker 1: inside his home by his roommate. Russell was released in

806
00:52:48,040 --> 00:52:51,840
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one after serving most of a three year sentence,

807
00:52:52,600 --> 00:52:55,240
Speaker 1: and he immediately got back to work planning another active

808
00:52:55,280 --> 00:52:56,840
Speaker 1: domestic terrorism.

809
00:52:57,600 --> 00:52:58,800
Speaker 2: He was convicted.

810
00:52:58,400 --> 00:53:00,960
Speaker 1: Earlier this year for cons firing to take out the

811
00:53:00,960 --> 00:53:05,560
Speaker 1: power grid in Maryland, three years for a garage full

812
00:53:05,560 --> 00:53:09,160
Speaker 1: of bomb making materials and full knowledge that he was

813
00:53:09,200 --> 00:53:14,320
Speaker 1: going to reoffend, but fifteen years for some gift cards.

814
00:53:16,239 --> 00:53:17,640
Speaker 2: Writing about the legal.

815
00:53:17,400 --> 00:53:22,160
Speaker 1: Double standard of defining terrorism, Australian criminologist Helen Taylor wrote

816
00:53:22,160 --> 00:53:27,080
Speaker 1: that quote, the asymmetric use of the terrorism label entrenches

817
00:53:27,200 --> 00:53:31,319
Speaker 1: fear of the other. That is, because we only talk

818
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:36,040
Speaker 1: about terrorism when we mean Islamic extremist terrorism, we come

819
00:53:36,080 --> 00:53:42,520
Speaker 1: to associate Islam with terrorism. This has obvious negative consequences

820
00:53:42,520 --> 00:53:46,040
Speaker 1: for Muslims. Of course, the last twenty five years have

821
00:53:46,160 --> 00:53:50,880
Speaker 1: been an unending litany of civil rights violations, but it

822
00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:56,280
Speaker 1: also prevents us from appropriately addressing any other form of terrorism.

823
00:53:57,040 --> 00:54:00,560
Speaker 1: The inability to recognize terror when it is something other

824
00:54:00,640 --> 00:54:03,879
Speaker 1: than Post nine to eleven hysteria leads to right wing

825
00:54:03,960 --> 00:54:10,520
Speaker 1: extremist violence being deprioritized. Terrorism investigations are thorough. I mean,

826
00:54:10,560 --> 00:54:15,640
Speaker 1: think about Zachary Chesser, right, the FBI spent six years

827
00:54:16,000 --> 00:54:19,600
Speaker 1: investigating a man that he spoke to twice over a

828
00:54:19,719 --> 00:54:22,560
Speaker 1: year before he made an online threat against the creators

829
00:54:22,560 --> 00:54:27,840
Speaker 1: of a cartoon. But right wing extremist violence, because we

830
00:54:27,880 --> 00:54:32,440
Speaker 1: can't call it terrorism, is quickly relegated to lone wolf territory,

831
00:54:32,960 --> 00:54:36,000
Speaker 1: and there's little attention page of the environment that radicalized

832
00:54:36,040 --> 00:54:40,359
Speaker 1: the perpetrator or potential sources of support and encouragement within

833
00:54:40,400 --> 00:54:45,319
Speaker 1: his network. If the government put even ten percent of

834
00:54:45,360 --> 00:54:50,480
Speaker 1: that energy into investigating and prosecuting far right extremists. They'd

835
00:54:50,520 --> 00:54:54,520
Speaker 1: be drowning in prosecutions. It would not take six years

836
00:54:54,560 --> 00:54:57,600
Speaker 1: to catch your average American neo Nazi agreeing to engage

837
00:54:57,600 --> 00:54:58,560
Speaker 1: in a terrorist act.

838
00:55:00,480 --> 00:55:04,680
Speaker 2: But is that useful? I mean, ultimately, I think the.

839
00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:08,839
Speaker 1: Word itself is dangerous territory. In the twenty four years

840
00:55:08,880 --> 00:55:13,400
Speaker 1: since nine to eleven, the word terrorism has largely served

841
00:55:13,400 --> 00:55:17,800
Speaker 1: as a tool for increasing state surveillance or systematically violating

842
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:23,240
Speaker 1: civil rights and engorging law enforcement budgets, and it hasn't

843
00:55:23,239 --> 00:55:26,879
Speaker 1: made a safer But if we're going to use that word,

844
00:55:27,520 --> 00:55:30,520
Speaker 1: if we're going to have that framework, we need to

845
00:55:30,560 --> 00:55:34,279
Speaker 1: think about what we mean when we say it. As

846
00:55:34,320 --> 00:55:38,840
Speaker 1: Taylor writes, quote, labeling an act as terrorism serves as

847
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:43,600
Speaker 1: an official statement about the severity of the crime. It's

848
00:55:43,640 --> 00:55:48,480
Speaker 1: a legal framework, sure, but it's a statement about what matters.

849
00:55:49,360 --> 00:55:51,719
Speaker 1: Maybe there's no grand theory of change that I can

850
00:55:51,760 --> 00:55:55,839
Speaker 1: offer you here. Giving the government more tools for prosecution

851
00:55:56,640 --> 00:56:00,800
Speaker 1: probably won't really help. They're already making ideal, logical choices

852
00:56:00,800 --> 00:56:04,719
Speaker 1: about how to use the tools they have. I guess

853
00:56:04,760 --> 00:56:08,120
Speaker 1: the only real takeaway from this story is that no

854
00:56:08,160 --> 00:56:11,760
Speaker 1: one is ever going to text you demanding the codes

855
00:56:11,800 --> 00:56:15,040
Speaker 1: off the back of a gift card for any legitimate reason.

856
00:56:16,480 --> 00:56:18,080
Speaker 2: Usually it's a scammer.

857
00:56:17,719 --> 00:56:20,319
Speaker 1: Pretending to be the irs to scare your grandma into

858
00:56:20,320 --> 00:56:26,080
Speaker 1: emptying her savings account. But sometimes it's an FBI agent

859
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:45,439
Speaker 1: pretending to be your friend. Who joined isis? Weird Little

860
00:56:45,480 --> 00:56:47,719
Speaker 1: Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.

861
00:56:48,120 --> 00:56:51,480
Speaker 1: It's researched, written and recorded by me, Molly Hunger. Our

862
00:56:51,520 --> 00:56:54,839
Speaker 1: executive producers are Sophie Leuchtermann and Robert Evans. The show

863
00:56:54,880 --> 00:56:57,319
Speaker 1: is edited by the wildly talent of Gry Gigan. The

864
00:56:57,320 --> 00:57:00,000
Speaker 1: theme music was composed by Brad Diggert. You can email

865
00:57:00,160 --> 00:57:02,200
Speaker 1: me at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com.

866
00:57:02,239 --> 00:57:04,000
Speaker 1: I will definitely read it, but I probably.

867
00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:04,399
Speaker 2: Won't to answer it.

868
00:57:04,400 --> 00:57:07,600
Speaker 1: It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the

869
00:57:07,600 --> 00:57:09,800
Speaker 1: show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit.

870
00:57:10,480 --> 00:57:12,880
Speaker 1: Just don't post anything that's going to make you one

871
00:57:12,880 --> 00:57:13,800
Speaker 1: of my Weird Little Guys