WEBVTT - Slow Decline 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:08.920 Col Zone Media. Nicholas Young was at work on the 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:12.360 morning of August third, twenty sixteen, when federal agents showed 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:15.640 up to arrest him. He appeared before a judge a 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:19.800 few hours later, shackled but still wearing his department issued 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:24.800 uniform pants. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority had already 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:28.360 issued a public statement announcing that he'd been fired, but 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:30.880 the reporters in the room all took note of the pants. 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:35.280 Nicholas Young had just become the first police officer in 0:00:35.320 --> 0:00:39.479 the United States to be arrested for a federal terrorism offense. 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:44.880 As he was being processed into federal custody, FBI agents 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:48.239 were searching his home, his truck, the backpack he'd been 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:51.040 carrying at the time of the arrest, and his worklocker 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:55.200 number forty five at the Metro Transit Police Department District 0:00:55.200 --> 0:01:00.520 two substation. Box after box of evidence was carried out 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:05.200 of his townhouse in northern Virginia. Agents collected nineteen firearms, 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:09.240 eighteen thousand rounds of ammunition, seventy pieces of body armor, 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:14.560 and sixty bladed weapons ranging from daggers to swords, But 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:19.720 they also seized another kind of evidence. Nazi paraphernalia, a 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:24.360 framed portrait of Hitler, a Nazi flag, a tie tack 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:27.640 in the shape of an SS lightning bolt. On his 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:30.520 hard drive, they found photos of a dinner party he'd hosted. 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:35.800 All of the guests were wearing Nazi SS uniforms. The 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:39.280 agent's photographed, inventoried, and packed away dozens of pieces of 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:41.840 evidence that could be used to show that Nicholas Young 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:45.720 was a Nazi, but that wasn't what he was charged with. 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:51.560 He was in prison for supporting ISIS, and there's a very 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:55.000 good argument to be made that he didn't really do 0:01:55.040 --> 0:02:01.480 anything at all. I'm Molly Conger in this. It's weird, 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:23.200 little guys. This is a story where nothing happens, no 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:27.000 one really did anything. A lot of the key players 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:32.280 in this story don't even actually exist. The only crime 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:35.280 Nicholas Young stands convicted of is a single count of 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:38.680 providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:42.120 But he's never met a real terrorist. 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:46.280 There's no evidence at all that Nicholas Young ever had 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:49.320 contact of any kind with an actual member of ISIS 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:53.959 or al Qaida. He sort of knew a guy who 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:57.600 was recruiting fra al Shabab, but even the undercover agent 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:00.640 investigating them both said Young had nothing to do with that. 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:05.120 The only member of isis Nicholas Young, ever thought he 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:08.440 knew was a confidential human source on the FBI payroll, 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:13.600 and after years of prodding and encouragement, he sent this 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:16.960 friend two hundred and forty five dollars worth of gift 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:19.000 cards to the Google Play app store. 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:20.720 That's all. 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:24.280 I made a note of this case in my messy 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:28.519 collection of odds and ends years ago. Buried somewhere in 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:32.639 this indecipherable mass of text, I wrote Nazi cop joins 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:36.680 isis question mark and paste it in a couple of links, 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:40.560 something to come back to later. I guess it's impossible 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:43.080 to say now what I was thinking when I wrote 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:45.680 most of the things in my little notes app, but 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:49.000 I'm almost positive I first came across this case while 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:50.400 I was just browsing. 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:52.680 I like to see what's out there. 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:55.960 Sometimes I'll just waste a few hours punching in keywords 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:59.120 to search through federal court filings, and I think in 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:04.280 this case the key word was fry Corps. One of 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:06.800 the exhibits in this case is a photograph of Nicholas 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:10.400 Young's truck parked in his driveway, and in the photograph 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:15.440 he can see his vanity license plate, which read FRII Karp. 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.719 If you've never driven through Virginia. Vanity plates are hugely 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:23.440 popular here. Almost everybody has one. We have more than 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:26.960 any other state. I think it's because they're really cheap here. 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:29.560 They only charged I think ten dollars a year to 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:32.440 put a personalized tag on your car, and it's fifty 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:35.560 or seventy dollars in a lot of other states, and 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.560 Nicholas Young chose to pay ten dollars a year to 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:42.760 drive around northern Virginia advertising his affinity for the Fry Corps. 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:47.120 That's a term for the collection of loosely affiliated nationalists 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:51.479 paramilitary groups that formed in Germany after World War One. 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:56.040 They weren't Nazis technically, since there was no Nazi Party yet, 0:04:57.040 --> 0:04:58.960 but many leaders in the Free Corps would go on 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:02.080 to join the Nazi Party, guys like Ernst Rome, Heinrich 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:05.680 Himmler and Rudolph Hess. They were the shock troops for 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:08.960 what was to come, carrying out acts of extra judicial 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:11.520 violence against left wing movements in Germany in the years 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:15.200 after the First World War, and the kind of guy 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:19.159 who romanticizes the idea of joining a nationalist street gang 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:22.440 to beat up leftists is the kind of guy I'm 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:25.560 interested to know more about, especially if that guy is 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:29.360 a cop. So that's how he ended up in my notebook. 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:34.760 But like I said, his fondness for Nazi memorabilia has 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:36.960 nothing at all to do with how he got arrested. 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:40.720 So I made my note and I forgot about it. 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:46.240 As interesting as I found all of these exhibits related 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:50.120 to his collection of Nazi paraphernalia, there's a very important 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:53.880 question to be asked here. Why was a jury allowed 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:57.040 to see them. We'll get back to that in. 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.240 A minute, but first I should. 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:01.000 Explain how this came ended up in front of a 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:06.839 jury at all. The Federal Bureau of Investigation spent six 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:12.880 years on this case, kind of. They spent six years 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:18.839 trying to connect Nicholas Young to something anything. His first 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:21.920 contact with an FBI agent was in September of twenty ten, 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:25.440 and back in the fall of twenty ten, the agents 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:28.919 were casting a wide net. They were interviewing scores of 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:32.920 people who'd known a man named Zachary Chesser. Chesster was 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:35.960 arrested earlier that summer, for threatening Trey Parker. 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:37.080 And Matt Stone. 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:40.760 Yes, that Trey Parker and that Matt Stone, the creators 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:45.159 of South Park. Chesster had taken an interest in Islam 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:47.440 after graduating from high school in two thousand and eight, 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:51.520 and he soon got involved with Revolution Muslim, a website 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:54.680 run by two American Muslim converts that pumped out ro 0:06:54.800 --> 0:07:00.640 al Kaita propaganda for an English speaking audience. Plooed guilty 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:03.640 pretty quickly in October of twenty ten, and he was 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:07.800 eventually sentenced to twenty five years in prison. But the 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:10.760 court record in Young's case is pretty vague on the 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:16.360 subject of Zachary Chessar. Intentionally so the prosecutor often refers 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:20.360 to Chesser as a friend of Young's, but in reality 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:22.320 they were barely passing acquaintances. 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:25.560 But this was the global War on Terror. 0:07:25.840 --> 0:07:27.840 And a twenty year old white boy had threatened the 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:31.280 creators of a cartoon over depictions of Muhammad, so a 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:34.880 lot of doors were getting knocked. When agents finally spoke 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:38.600 to Nicholas Young two months after Chessar's arrest, he seemed 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:40.920 shocked by the charges and said if he'd had any 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:44.360 idea Chesser was planning something violent, he would have reported it. 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:48.800 There's no indication in the record that this conversation was 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:54.560 alarming or suspicious. Nicholas Young barely knew Zachary Chesser. 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:55.640 And he was a cop. 0:07:57.360 --> 0:08:00.400 But now Nicholas Young had an FBI file in a 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:05.560 counter terrorism investigation. So three months later, in December of 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:09.720 twenty ten, Young was attending a friend's wedding. At the reception, 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:13.080 a man introduced himself to Young as Khalil and struck 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:18.720 up a conversation. Khalil worked for the FBI. He later 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:20.920 testified that he'd attended the wedding to try to get 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:23.920 close to another man, a man named sale al Barmawi. 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:28.120 The record is again very vague when it comes to 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:31.360 why al Barmawi was the subject of this undercover operation, 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:35.160 and he's never been arrested or charged with the crime, 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:36.840 and it doesn't look like he lives in the United 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:41.040 States anymore. But in two thousand and eight, al Barmawi 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:44.320 was a member of the Muslim Student Association at George 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:47.640 Mason University, so he may have crossed paths with Zachary 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:53.680 Chessar during that single semester that Chesser was enrolled. There After, 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:57.400 Khalil met Young, though he kept in touch for about 0:08:57.400 --> 0:08:59.640 a year and a half. The undercover maintained a friendship 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:03.200 with Young, meeting for dinner, watching movies at his house, 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:03.839 going for. 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:05.720 Walks, and just chatting. 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:10.720 The prosecution emphasized that Young was hanging out in radical 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:14.840 circles and he had dangerous friends, pointing specifically to a 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:18.200 man named Amine al Khalifi, who was later arrested for 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:22.680 attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. Alarming, right, 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:26.880 But the government is less forthcoming about the fact that 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:30.760 it was the undercover who introduced Young to al Khalifi, 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:34.800 and the fact that el Khalifi was only arrested after 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:37.520 he was provided with a fake gun and a fake 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:40.880 bomb by the FBI agents who drove him to Washington, 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:43.640 d c. And dropped him off to carry out the 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:48.800 suicide attack they'd planned. I want to get one thing 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:51.760 out of the way here. I'm not defending Nicholas Young, 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:56.200 certainly not defending ISIS. ISIS doesn't actually even come into 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:59.200 the story. There's no real ISIS here. And when it 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:02.000 comes to Nicholas Young, oh, he's a police officer with 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:04.880 a house full of Hitler posters. You know, I'm not 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:08.400 on his side here. That should be obvious, and I'm 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:11.280 not denying that he made some alarming statements throughout the 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:15.360 course of the investigation. In one conversation with the undercover, 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:18.160 he was furious about the way that the FBI had 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:21.000 approached his friends and family when they were asking questions 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:25.800 about whether he knew Zachary Chesser. He allegedly fantasized about 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:28.360 finding out where the female agent lived so he could 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:33.840 kidnap and torture her. That's a very scary thing to say. 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:37.120 But when the undercover submitted his report about that conversation 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:40.280 in March of twenty eleven, he wrote that he didn't 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:45.040 think Young was serious. In other conversations with the undercover, 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:49.280 Young admitted to torturing animals as a child. He talked 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:51.600 about how much he hated the FBI and said that 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:54.079 he believed it was possible to sneak weapons into the 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:59.080 federal courthouse undetected, and he was paranoid who was always 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:01.880 talking about using phones and taking the batteries out of 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:04.640 his phone when he wasn't using it. He said he 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:07.640 was stockpiling weapons, and he hinted that any cop who 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:12.720 tried to search his house would run into problems. But again, 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:16.600 all of these conversations took place in twenty eleven. The 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:20.520 undercover submitted the reports, but nothing rose to the level 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:24.440 of a prosecutable crime. He was talking a lot of shit, 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:28.640 but he owned those guns legally, and he didn't do anything. 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:35.920 It's not my preferred dinner conversation, but legally speaking, fantasizing 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:42.360 about jihad at the chilis in Alexandria, Virginia isn't terrorism. 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:46.120 He did travel to Libya twice in twenty eleven to 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:49.320 provide aid to anti Gaddaffi rebel forces during the Libyan 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:52.839 Civil War. He had a bumper sticker on his truck 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:58.160 that said Libyan Civil War VET Siege of Misrata, And 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:00.760 he really was in miss Rada in April and May 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:03.760 of twenty eleven during some of the most brutal fighting there. 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:07.640 On re entry into the United States after that trip, 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:10.000 he told the ICE agent who interviewed him at the 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:13.600 airport that he'd had to cut his trip short, returning 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:16.800 home ten days earlier than he'd planned because things had 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:20.720 gotten too dangerous there. He returned to Libya a second 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:22.920 time later that year, and he made no secret of 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:26.200 either trip. Both times he was interviewed by a federal 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:29.679 agent at the airport on his way home. When he 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:32.760 was interviewed by the FBI after his second trip to Libya, 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:36.400 they attempted to recruit him as a paid informant, and 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:37.760 he declined. 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:41.400 Again. It doesn't look like. 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:43.920 He broke any laws here, at least not in the 0:12:44.000 --> 0:12:46.199 United States laws. I don't know what Libya's position on 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:51.200 the situation might be, but the FBI was still investigating him. 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:54.120 If they'd found any evidence that he joined a terrorist 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:57.360 organization in Libya, they would have brought it up a trial. 0:12:58.679 --> 0:12:58.920 Again. 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:02.960 Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm super comfortable 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:05.560 with the idea of American cops packing their own body 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:08.040 armor to fly off to some civil war halfway around 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.400 the world. But the United States government didn't see fit 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:15.040 to charge him with anything in twenty eleven or twenty twelve, 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:22.800 or twenty thirteen, or twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen. In 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.320 twenty twelve, the undercover who'd been hanging out with Young 0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:29.040 since twenty ten moved on. One of the other men 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:31.920 that he'd gotten close to was more interesting to the government, 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:36.000 so the agent's focus shifted. Young was interviewed once more 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:38.520 by the FBI later in twenty twelve when he was 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:41.120 crossing the Canadian border after visiting a woman he'd been 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:47.240 romantically involved with, but other than that, the investigation was dormant. 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:50.400 Two years passed before the FBI sent Nicholas Young a 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:54.640 new friend, a confidential human source who called himself Mo. 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:58.880 Young met with Moe twenty times in twenty fourteen. 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:03.480 They were close. They didn't just talk about jihad. 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:07.720 They talked about work, about dating, about Young's struggle to 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:10.640 overcome the depression he'd fallen into after his father's death 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:14.080 in two thousand and seven. He thought they were friends 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:18.520 when they talked about ISIS. It was Mo who brought 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:22.600 it up. In several conversations. Young even tried to cool 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:26.320 his friend's enthusiasm for the group, telling him he didn't 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:30.120 need to join ISIS, and he warned him to be 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:33.000 cautious about what he posted online and who he talked 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:37.600 to about things like this. To be fair, Young did 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:40.720 eventually offer some advice about how to travel overseas without 0:14:40.720 --> 0:14:43.840 arousing suspicion, and he agreed to help Mo with his 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:46.800 cover story by sending him a text that would corroborate 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:50.880 the lie that he was going on vacation in Turkey. 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:54.680 Young believed that his friend was going to Syria, and 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:58.600 before Moe pretended to leave for Syria, the pair used 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:01.440 computers at a FedEx store to set up special email 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:03.880 addresses that they could use to communicate during the trip. 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:07.080 Young went to the FedEx store several times over the 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:10.800 next year and a half to send and receive emails. 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:13.880 In December of twenty fifteen, over a year after Mo 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:17.880 pretended to leave for Syria, FBI agents came to Young's 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:20.680 house twice to ask him if he knew anything about. 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:23.880 Mo, and he did lie. 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:26.760 He told agents that he'd had no contact with Mo 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:29.880 since he left for Turkey in late twenty fourteen, and 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:32.120 he had no way of getting in touch with him. 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:34.760 He then emailed Mo to tell him that the FBI 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:39.000 was asking about him, and that right there, that is 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:41.400 a crime. It is a crime to lie to an 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:44.840 FBI agent about a material fact relevant to a criminal investigation, 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:49.760 even if it's a fake criminal investigation. Moe wasn't real, 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:54.800 but Young didn't know that. In those interviews, he was 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:58.560 consciously obstructing what he believed to be a real investigation, 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:02.840 but that wasn't really enough to pull the trigger on 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:07.800 an indictment. They needed him to do something, something they 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:13.560 could take to a grand jury. In July of twenty sixteen, 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:16.960 an undercover agent posing as MO reached out to Young again. 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:22.360 He said, Isis needed gift cards. They needed someone in 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:25.200 the West to buy gift cards and then send them 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:28.240 the codes on the back, and they needed those gift 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:30.000 cards because that's what they used to set up the 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:32.760 messaging accounts that they used to communicate with supporters in 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:36.280 the West. MO said they'd had guys in the UK 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:39.320 who'd been buying the gift cards, but they stopped sending 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:43.800 the codes. Young wrote back, why were the brothers in 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:45.000 UK told to stop? 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:46.360 Inshallah? 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:50.120 More codes will come your way many sting operations and 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:54.560 setups in this area. He didn't agree to do it 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:58.960 right away. He was cordial, he was inquisitive. He hoped 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:00.720 things would work out for the beast, for his friend, 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:06.080 but he wasn't willing to do it. That same week, 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:09.280 two FBI agents working on the case were texting each other. 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:13.720 The first agent wrote, let's hope he goes one more 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:18.679 step further and his colleague replied just one more step, 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:23.439 to which the first agent responded one huge step with 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:28.399 four exclamation points, and the second agent wrote one small 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:35.760 step for US, one giant leap for slow decline, slow decline. 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:41.280 Sometimes they would just write SD. That was Nicholas Young's 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:46.480 code name. They'd been calling him that for years. In 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:51.000 the summer of twenty sixteen, six years into their investigation, 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:56.560 they were frustrated he was too cautious, too slow, too 0:17:56.680 --> 0:18:00.960 unwilling to take a next step. They decided to ratchet 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:04.480 up the pressure. They sent him more and more emails 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:06.679 from MO about the importance of the work he was 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:07.440 doing over there. 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:09.520 MO told him horror. 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:13.680 Stories about bombings and what was being done to Muslim children. 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:17.880 And as they're goading Young into taking action behind the scenes, 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:21.240 one agent commented that they'd just hit the case with 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:27.080 a defibrillator. After a few days of this convincing, Young 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:29.919 drove to a best Buy in Fairfax, Virginia, and he 0:18:29.960 --> 0:18:34.840 bought a handful of Google Play gift cards. Finally, in 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:38.760 July twenty eighth, twenty sixteen, Nicholas Young sent a text 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:43.119 containing twenty two sixteen digit codes, each one from the 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:46.080 back of a Google play gift card redeemable for ten 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:50.280 or fifteen dollars. The total value was two hundred and 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:54.080 forty five dollars. The best Buy receipt was still in 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:56.160 his backpack when he was arrested a few days later. 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:16.520 So he didn't do it right. I mean he did it. 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:19.359 He bought the gift cards. And when he bought the 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:22.439 gift cards, he really did believe their purpose was to 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:25.879 allow ISIS to set up messaging accounts to communicate with 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:29.440 prospective fighters in the West. That's what Moe told him 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:32.280 they were for. There was no coded language. There's no 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:35.520 room for misunderstanding here. Most said they were for ISIS, 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:42.600 So technically yes, that is material support for terrorism. He 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:44.639 doesn't deny that he bought the gift cards or that 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:48.680 he texted the codes to Mow. That's not in dispute. 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:53.320 The real drama in this case is the unhinged trial 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:57.280 strategy pursued by the government. Remember I said at the 0:19:57.320 --> 0:19:59.920 top of the episode that I was surprised to see 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:02.399 that the jury had been shown so much evidence of 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:06.920 Nicholas Young's collection of Nazi memorabilia. It was his fondness 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:09.040 for Hitler that first brought this case to my attention, 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.359 But ultimately that part of his life had nothing to 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:15.719 do with this case. So how did it wind up 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:19.760 in the record at all? If you're not someone who 0:20:19.800 --> 0:20:22.639 spends a lot of time sitting in a courtroom, you 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:26.400 might not be asking yourself that. After all, why wouldn't 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:28.159 a jury get to see all the weird shit they 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:31.639 found in this guy's house? Isn't everything the cops found 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:35.080 in their evidence? I know I'm about to tell you 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:37.560 that the judge in this case was asked that question 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:43.439 and he decided the answer was yes. But typically the 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:48.160 answer to that question is no. Pictures of this guy's 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:51.240 Nazi themed dinner party in two thousand and seven are 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:55.080 very interesting to me, but they don't actually tell a 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:58.919 jury anything meaningful about whether or not he knowingly financed 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:03.080 terrorism in twenty six sixteen. Not to get boring about it, 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:06.080 but this is a pretty textbook example of something that 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:09.440 fails to satisfy the only two federal rules of evidence 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:11.280 that I could name for you off the top of 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:18.440 my head. It's both irrelevant and highly prejudicial. Relevance is 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:22.119 easy to explain. That's rule four oh one, and it 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:27.280 reads evidence is relevant if a it has a tendency 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:29.679 to make a fact more or less probable than it 0:21:29.680 --> 0:21:33.480 would be without the evidence, and b the fact is 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:38.880 of consequence in determining the action. That's pretty straightforward. It 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:40.560 does just what it says on the tin. You know, 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:44.359 does seeing this piece of evidence tell you anything about 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:47.760 the facts at issue in this case? Does knowing he 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:50.440 had a Nazi tattoo on his neck give you any 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:56.399 valuable information about the gift cards? It really doesn't easy enough. 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:00.480 I know I'm always telling you I didn't go to 0:22:00.560 --> 0:22:04.400 law school, but Rule four h three and its state 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:08.119 court equivalents are something I hear argument about in I 0:22:08.119 --> 0:22:12.240 think every case I've ever sat through. Quote the court 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:17.040 may exclude relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially 0:22:17.080 --> 0:22:19.199 outweighed by a danger of one or more of the 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:25.520 following unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading a jury, undue delay, 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:32.600 wasting time, or needlessly presenting cumulative evidence. So sometimes evidence 0:22:32.600 --> 0:22:38.200 that gets excluded is relevant. It passes the relevance test, 0:22:38.320 --> 0:22:41.960 it would help a jury make a determination about the facts, 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:48.639 but it's inflammatory, it's prejudicial. Its probative value, so whether 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:52.119 or not it tells you anything is outweighed by the 0:22:52.160 --> 0:22:56.240 prejudicial impact it would have. There's information to be learned 0:22:56.240 --> 0:22:59.240 from it, but there's a real likelihood that it could, 0:22:59.480 --> 0:23:03.160 for example, make the jury too emotional to be fair 0:23:03.160 --> 0:23:07.440 and impartial. Sometimes that means that a jury won't see 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:12.280 particularly graphic crime scene or autopsy photos because those would 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:16.440 upset them without meaningfully adding to their understanding of the case. 0:23:18.040 --> 0:23:19.840 In a lot of cases where I hear this argued, 0:23:19.880 --> 0:23:22.639 it's usually because the defense doesn't want the jury to 0:23:22.680 --> 0:23:25.200 be told about their client's affiliation with a hate group. 0:23:26.240 --> 0:23:28.600 They might file emotion ahead of time, asking the court 0:23:28.640 --> 0:23:31.840 to prohibit any mention of it, or prohibit the introduction 0:23:31.920 --> 0:23:35.040 of evidence that a defendant who did something like assault 0:23:35.080 --> 0:23:38.040 a black person or vandalize a synagogue. They might not 0:23:38.160 --> 0:23:41.720 want evidence introduced that they have a swastika tattoo or something. 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:45.760 The idea is that you don't want the prosecutor to 0:23:45.800 --> 0:23:48.080 be able to flood the jury with a bunch of 0:23:48.119 --> 0:23:51.359 images that will leave them thinking, damn, this is a 0:23:51.440 --> 0:23:55.040 really bad guy and he needs to be punished. The 0:23:55.119 --> 0:23:58.240 jury is supposed to decide if the state has proved 0:23:58.280 --> 0:24:02.440 the elements of the case. The jury decides did this 0:24:02.520 --> 0:24:08.679 person do this crime not. Is this defendant a good person. So, 0:24:08.800 --> 0:24:12.119 even if the evidence might contribute a little bit to 0:24:12.160 --> 0:24:15.400 their understanding of the facts of the case, it may 0:24:15.400 --> 0:24:17.800 be that this evidence is more likely to sway the 0:24:17.880 --> 0:24:22.320 jury into making a decision for the wrong reasons. And, 0:24:22.359 --> 0:24:25.200 to be honest, most of the time I hear this argued, 0:24:25.880 --> 0:24:27.800 I feel like the jury should have gotten to hear it. 0:24:28.119 --> 0:24:30.240 They deserve to hear about the racist shit this guy's 0:24:30.240 --> 0:24:31.840 getting up to in his extra curriculars. 0:24:31.880 --> 0:24:32.080 You know. 0:24:33.680 --> 0:24:36.879 One example that comes to mind right away is during 0:24:36.880 --> 0:24:40.240 the lawsuit against the organizers of the Unite the Right rally, 0:24:40.359 --> 0:24:44.040 the judge ruled that it was unfairly prejudicial to introduce 0:24:44.080 --> 0:24:48.399 evidence about one of the organizer's past. There was plenty 0:24:48.440 --> 0:24:51.720 of evidence about statements leading up to, during, and immediately 0:24:51.800 --> 0:24:55.720 after the rally, but in a case involving a racially 0:24:55.800 --> 0:24:59.880 motivated violent conspiracy, the judge felt it was unfairly pres 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:02.879 judicial to tell the jury that one of the defendants 0:25:02.880 --> 0:25:07.240 had previously been convicted of something you could fairly call 0:25:07.320 --> 0:25:12.480 a racially motivated violent conspiracy, specifically that he'd want stolen 0:25:12.560 --> 0:25:15.240