entrapment – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Australian Feds Spent More Than $500,000 Trying To Lock Up An Autistic 13-Year-Old On Terrorism Charges

from the radicalized-by-the-feds dept

We learned earlier this year, it’s not just the FBI targeting extremely vulnerable people with the intent of radicalizing them into arrests on terrorism charges. The FBI has been a world leader in this particular category, apparently incapable of being shamed (or sued) into altering its tactics, which often appear to be on the wrong side of the term “entrapment.”

In one particularly infamous case, the FBI targeted an 18-year-old with an IQ of 51 in one its “investigations.” After easily and successfully steering him down the path of affirming his support for terrorist acts, the FBI dumped Alabama resident Peyton Pruitt on local law enforcement’s doorstep and walked away from the tragedy it had created. Pruitt was arraigned and his bail was set at $1 million — more than twice the amount set for two accused murderers and a teacher accused of sexual misconduct with a child combined.

The same sort of miscarriage of justice happened in Australia. Members of the Federal Police’s (AFP) counter-terrorism task force targeted a 13-year-old autistic teen after his parents approached local law enforcement to express their concern about the their child’s interest in the Islamic State. They gave local cops access to their home, their child’s room, his phone, their phones, and any personal information collected by the school their son attended.

While some local officers did actually try to get social workers involved, one officer decided this would be better handled by the Joint Counter-Terrorism Team (JCTT) composed of local officers and AFP officers. This steered the teen (Thomas Carrick) away from the help he needed and into the hands of law enforcement officers who knew an easy when when they saw one.

Then they held off on charging Carrick until he turned 14, denying him the opportunity to raise the “_doli incapax_” defence — one that says children cannot be held criminally responsible for their actions because they are, at that young age, incapable of fully understanding what they’re doing or the consequences of their actions. As the court order overturning the criminal charges noted, officers deliberately steered Carrick away from anything that would have helped him and towards actions that would have seen the rest of his life destroyed.

“The community would not expect law enforcement officers to encourage a 13-14 year old child towards racial hatred, distrust of police and violent extremism, encouraging the child’s fixation on ISIS,” magistrate Lesley Fleming said in the decision.

“The community would not expect law enforcement to use the guise of a rehabilitation service to entice the parents of a troubled child to engage in a process that results in potential harm to the child.

“The conduct engaged in by the JCTT and the AFP falls so profoundly short of the minimum standards expected of law enforcement offices [sic] that to refuse this [stay] application would be to condone and encourage further instances of such conduct.”

Thanks to additional reporting by The Guardian, we now know just how much the government is willing to spend to ruin an autistic 13-year-old’s life.

Documents provided under freedom of information laws show the total cost of Operation Bourglinster, the AFP investigation into a boy known as Thomas Carrick, was $507,087. No further breakdown of the cost was provided.

[…]

Answers to questions on notice from Senator David Shoebridge to the commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions also revealed that the CDPP spent a further $72,614 in external costs in relation to the case.

Great job being stewards of the public trust, much less their money, coppers. This was a slam-dunk case because it took next to no effort to “radicalize” a teen with an IQ of 71 who was already “fixated” on ISIS-related content. And it still took nearly $600k to get the job done, only to see it immediately undone once a real judge got a chance to look at the case.

That’s not the only ugly thing in the documents obtained from these public records requests, although it’s the most immediately eye-grabbing (and eye-watering) detail. There’s also this bit of communication, which was sent by a counter-terrorism force official to make the cops who had busted an autistic teen feel better about themselves in the face of outside criticism. Deputy Commissioner Krissy Barrett apparently felt the officers might possibly feel bad about what they’d done, so she took the time to assure them that they were still a valuable part of the AFP’s radicalization program Joint Counter-Terrorism Task Force.

“It is really important to note that this was a very difficult and complex investigation for everyone involved, and one which threw up many challenges,” she said in the email.

“I recognise and thank everyone involved for their tenacity, professionalism and commitment to duty.

“I also use this opportunity to acknowledge the fantastic work that our covert online operatives do, under very difficult circumstances, to keep the community safe.”

Ah. “Many challenges.” So, that’s what I’m tasting when I throw up a little in my own mouth while reading this GO TEAM TERROR missive. This was a waste of time and money. And, without the intercession of the court, this would have been the end of Carrick’s life — one already filled with actual challenges that certainly didn’t need the application of unearned challenges from gung-ho War on Terror operatives who apparently feel no sacrifice is too great to keep the country safe, so long as it’s other people making those sacrifices.

Filed Under: afp, australia, australian federal police, entrapment, mental health, own plot, terrorism, war on terror

Australian Police Go Full FBI, Radicalize Autistic Teen Officers Told Parents They Were Trying To Help

from the how-do-you-sleep dept

The FBI has done some heinous things in its pursuit of its counter-terrorism objectives. While it’s true the FBI has occasionally nabbed actual terrorists, it seems to prefer creating terrorists to going after those that are already avowed terrorists.

The FBI utilizes informants and undercover agents to perform this highly questionable work. Investigations border on entrapment. Internet loudmouths, petty criminals, or people with mental health issues are pushed and prodded to make their words a reality. In most cases, the targets of these investigations can’t. They don’t have the money, the expertise, or even the will to follow through with violent acts. Informants provide the tools, weapons, plans, and constant pressure needed to turn often otherwise harmless people into so-called terrorists the FBI can swoop in and arrest them the moment they start turning the plans the informants concocted into reality.

Apparently, the FBI is not alone in its willingness to radicalize people just so it can arrest them and hit them with charges that could result in decades of imprisonment. The counter-terrorist wing of Australian law enforcement does the same thing. This truly horrific story at least has a (partially) happy ending. But the events leading up to this conclusion are cruel and inhumane.

Thomas Carrick (the pseudonym given to him by the court) is a 13-year-old with autism. Thomas has an IQ of 71 and is a recipient of national disability insurance. He became fixated on the Islamic State, spending a lot of time watching ISIS videos and, apparently, asking his parents to purchase bomb-making ingredients for him. His parents, who are not native English speakers, asked the local police for help deterring his fascination with Islamic extremism.

They provided officers with access to Thomas, his home, his phone, his mother’s phone, his room, and to personal information gathered by his school and psychologist. At the start, the police actually did what they said they’d do: they sought help for Thomas. He was assigned to a case manager and met regularly with a psychologist. An officer who accessed the contents of Thomas’ phone noted he had downloaded a lot of stuff related to China and the Communist Party, but very little related to the Islamic State. They also set him up with an imam to discuss the religion of Islam in a more peaceful context.

Had things stayed this way, there would be nothing to report. But three months after this helpful path was opened up for Thomas, the country’s War on Terror wing decided to insert itself into the mix. The Joint Counter-Terrorism Team [JCTT] (a mix of Australian federal officers, Victoria police, and Asio members) opened up a parallel investigation that actively worked to undo and undermine all the help Thomas was receiving from other law enforcement officers.

An online covert operative was tasked with communicating to Thomas using two personae: a 24-year-old Muslim man from NSW, and a more extreme person located overseas.

[…]

The operative chatted with Thomas on 55 of the next 71 days, including during breaks at school and late at night.

[…]

The first persona introduced Thomas to the second, more extreme, persona, who encouraged him to make a bomb or kill an AFP member.

But the operative gave evidence that Thomas was naive, and living a “fantasy life online”, including by asking questions like whether he could join the kids’ section of Islamic State.

On 8 August 2021, Thomas sent a photo to the operative which showed him wearing his school uniform, a hoodie and a face mask and holding a knife with “ISIS” written on it in marker.

His house was searched within days, and he was charged less than two months later.

The JCTT was well-aware the therapeutic efforts authorized by police were still underway when it decided to turn this 13-year-old into a terrorist. When seeking authorization to arrest Thomas, the detective superintendent (apparently deliberately) failed to inform his supervisors that he had evidence the JCTT’s undercover work was having a negative impact on the rehabilitation of Thomas. And, of course, that’s the point: the JCTT only wins when it arrests terrorists. If it has to do all the dirty work itself, it apparently will.

And that’s not the worst of it. There’s also this:

[Magistrate Lesley] Fleming found the JCTT also deliberately delayed charging Thomas with offences until after he turned 14, as it made it harder for him to use the defence of doli incapax, which refers to the concept that a child is not criminally responsible for their actions.

The JCTT also performed another search of Thomas’ room for criminal evidence while maintaining the pretense they were part of the parallel police effort to dissuade Thomas from fixating on the Islamic State.

Fortunately, Thomas has been freed and is no longer facing charges. Magistrate Fleming’s order rips the JCTT to shreds for its abominable actions.

“The community would not expect law enforcement officers to encourage a 13-14 year old child towards racial hatred, distrust of police and violent extremism, encouraging the child’s fixation on ISIS,” magistrate Lesley Fleming said in the decision.

“The community would not expect law enforcement to use the guise of a rehabilitation service to entice the parents of a troubled child to engage in a process that results in potential harm to the child.

“The conduct engaged in by the JCTT and the AFP falls so profoundly short of the minimum standards expected of law enforcement offices [sic] that to refuse this [stay] application would be to condone and encourage further instances of such conduct.”

Thomas had a chance to be rehabilitated. But the JCTT deliberately harmed a minor to serve its own ends.

“The rehabilitation of TC was doomed once the [operator] connected online…befriended TC and fed his fixation, providing him with a new terminology, new boundaries and an outlet for him to express, what was in part, his fantasy world.”

This is truly disgusting. One wonders how the operatives involved with the deliberate destruction of a child (and their childhood) live with themselves. What possibly justifiable ends could they have been serving with this effort? Thomas was already being closely observed by law enforcement, but in the hopes that such close supervision would encourage him to find more healthy outlets for expression.

What happened here was evil. There’s no other word for it. And the added cruelty of waiting a few months to deprive the minor of a courtroom defense is symptomatic of the sickness that seems to pervade counter-terrorist agencies. The need to win subsumes the need to serve the public’s interests. And no one’s interests were served here other than the pitiable counter-terrorists cops who can’t get through the day without the brief ego boost of an unearned “win.”

Filed Under: australia, entrapment, isis, jctt, own plot, terrorism, thomas carrick, victoria police

Judge Releases Last Of The ‘Newburgh Four,’ Excoriates FBI For The Entrapment It Calls ‘Counterterrorism’

from the subtracting-freedom-while-adding-nothing-to-safety dept

The FBI’s counter-terrorism work has always been noted for its willingness to radicalize people just to arrest them. The FBI has a lot of wins in the win column, but many of those wins have been obtained through… well, let’s call it what it is: cheating.

People with mental issues or deep wells of insecurity are the government’s favorite targets. Anyone who can be persuaded they’re making a difference — even if said “difference” is an attack on America — becomes fodder for the FBI’s manipulators. People who would never have had the ability to carry out a terrorist attack, either due to a lack of intelligence or funds or both, suddenly become Public Enemy No. 1 following interactions with FBI agents and informants.

These tactics would be questionable enough. They border on entrapment the few times they don’t actually appear to cross the line. But some of the FBI informants might be even worse.

The case of the “Newburgh Four” involves a small group of Newburgh residents who were talked into a grandiose plan that involved shooting down planes at a Air National Guard base and blowing up synagogues in New York City. The FBI and its preferred informant — Shaheed Hussain — put together the plans, gave the men the “explosives” they needed to carry this out, and arrested them for trying to please their handlers.

When Judge Colleen McMahon released the other three Newburgh defendants, she wondered why the FBI didn’t spend its time and money investigating and prosecuting its lead informant.

As was revealed on cross examination, in the years prior to his becoming an FBI asset, Hussain engaged repeatedly in activity that constituted various crimes, including bankruptcy fraud, tax evasion, immigration fraud, perjury, and mail fraud. He lied repeatedly to a laundry list of government agencies, from the United States Bankruptcy Court… to the sentencing judge in his criminal case, his Probation Officer, the FBI, the INS, the IRS, the New York State Liquor Authority and the New York State Education Department. He even lied on the witness stand at the trial of this case, putting the Government in the uncomfortable position of not being able to rehabilitate certain aspects of his testimony, or adopt certain of his statements when arguing this case. More recently, Hussain was the owner of a car-for-hire business in Upstate New York that rented a defective limousine — a vehicle that had been ordered out of service following a safety inspection — that hurtled down Route 30 in Schoharie, New York, sending 21 innocent people to their deaths.

The FBI had a guy committing actual crimes but chose to focus on four men Judge McMahon said were “hapless, easily manipulated and penurious petty criminals,” rather than the terroristic masterminds the government portrayed them as while securing 25 year sentences for the men.

James Cromitie is the last of the “Newburgh Four” to be released. The government portrayed him as the ringleader of this (imaginary) four-person terrorist cell. Cromitie is now free, albeit after having lost 15 years of his life to the federal prison system.

Judge Colleen McMahon is no less scathing in her assessment of the FBI and DOJ prosecutors in this order [PDF].

First, she shuts down one of the argument the DOJ made to keep Cromitie behind bars.

The Government opposes Cromitie’s motion. It argues–as it argued in opposition to the co-defendants’ motions–that the mandatory-minimum sentence the court was required to impose on the defendants was neither the product of Government misconduct nor Government manipulation. That of course is errant nonsense…

Then she details the exploits of this supposed terrorist ringleader:

[FBI informant Shaheed] Hussain’s task was to infiltrate upstate mosques (attended largely by members of the Black Muslim movement within Islam) and identify potential terrorists. Cromitie, a small time grifter and petty drug dealer with no history of violence, pretended to be one, feeding Hussain lie after lie about his past and ingratiating himself with the man he believed to be a wealthy Pakistani businessman. Over a period of about eight months, Hussain inveigled Cromitie with promises of both heavenly and earthly rewards, including as much as $250,000, if he would plan and participate in, and find others to participate in, a jihadist “mission.” Cromitie professed interest in Hussain’s plan, often employing the same deeply offensive anti-Semitic and anti-American rhetoric that Hussain himself used, but he backed those words with absolutely nothing in the way of deeds. Cromitie strung Hussain along for six months at which point he simply disappeared for so long a period that the FBI started to move on to other ventures.

Unfortunately, in April 2008, Cromitie reached out to Hussain, presumably hoping to access some of this promised money. Hussain directed him to put together a crew and pushed the men towards carrying out a synagogue bombing of Hussain’s own creation.

There’s a reason Hussain pushed Cromitie to recruit other people: to create a terrorism crime that would not have existed without Hussain’s input and influence.

The three men were recruited so that Cromitie could conspire with someone; the real lead conspirator was the United States, but Cromitie could not conspire with the Government

The US is the best conspirator, though. It invented the conspiracy, converted a state-level charge to a federal one by driving one of the men to Connecticut to view the “bombs,” picked the equipment for the attack, set the data, and even “armed” the fake bombs because Cromitie (with all his claimed expertise) could not figure out how to do it. As soon as the fake explosives were planted, the FBI swooped in to arrest the men.

It was not enough to basically entrap these four men. The government concocted a separate plan solely for the reason of keeping them locked up for as long as possible.

The purported attack on Stewart AFB using “stinger missiles” (never carried out, even in the carefully faked manner of the Bronx operation) was added to the sting solely to subject the four men to the statutory mandatory minimum sentences of 25 years.

Cromitie was not a talented and dangerous criminal capable of terrorist acts, something recognized by the judge who previously reviewed his sentence.

[C]hief Judge Jacobs, who would have overturned Cromitie’s (and only Cromitie’s) conviction on entrapment grounds, said it best: “It is clear that Cromitie in his unmolested state of grievance would (for all the evidence shows, and as the district court found) have continued to stew in his rage and ignorance indefinitely, and had no formed design about what to do. The government agent supplied a design and gave it form, so that the agent rather than the defendant inspired the crime, provoked it, planned it, financed it, equipped it, and furnished the time and targets. He had to, because Cromitie was comically incompetent, possibly the last candidate one would pick as the agent of a conspiracy.” Had the Government not contrived its elaborate sting operation, it is highly likely that Cromitie would have lived out his life in Newburgh, quite possibly cycling in and out of jail for a string of petty offenses, but never committing a crime remotely like the ones for which he has been sitting in a federal penitentiary for 15 years.

More benchslapping is handed down as Judge McMahon dispenses of the government’s arguments in favor of keeping Cromitie locked up for another decade.

The Government argues… that Cromitie was involved in the scheme “far longer” than the others. But it does not admit that Cromitie did nothing that violated the law–not even make plans to violate the law–during the extra months that he was subjected to Hussain’s repeated inveigling. Nor does the Government acknowledge that Cromitie spent a considerable portion of that “extra time” hiding from the informant in order to escape the pressure he was under. And while Crornitie did technically “recruit” the co-defendants, he did so at the behest of Hussain, who urged (badgered) him to involve others, solely that the Government-created conspiracy would be legally possible.

The notion that Cromitie was selected as a “leader” by the co-defendants is inconceivable, given his well-documented buffoonery and ineptitude. That ineptitude extended to his manipulation of the Government-made fake bombs, which Cromitie was unable to “arm” despite being shown how to do it by the informant. The Government selected Cromitie, pressured Cromitie, and anointed him as its vessel-the “leader” of its conspiracy. The Government believes that Cromitie had a more significant role in the offense, but to the rest of the world, and certainly to this Court, it appears that the Government selected the most expendable, most pathetic, least capable and least discerning individual it could find and then used him in the scheme it designed.

Judge McMahon says Cromitie has served his time… and then some, given the underlying circumstances of this case.

A decade and a half in prison, the last few years under conditions harsher than anything imagined by the court at the time of sentencing, is more than sufficient to provide deterrence and promote respect for the law. As far as this court is concerned, the only thing connected to this case that undermined anyone’s respect for the law was the Government’s questionable decision to send a villain like Hussein to troll among the poorest and weakest of men for “terrorists” who might prove susceptible to an offer of much-needed cash in exchange for committing a faux crime.

In less than three months, Cromitie will regain his freedom. How much freedom remains is questionable. A 58-year-old convicted felon doesn’t have a whole lot of options. But things could have gone differently for him. Imagine if the government was willing to spend this much time and effort dissuading people from sympathizing with terrorists or ensuring those expressing an interest in these things don’t find themselves in echo chambers populated by a mix of extremists and government informants. The FBI doesn’t seem all that interested in actually making the country better, much less safer. And it will surely shrug off these judicial admonitions because it has demonstrated a clear preference for easy wins in the War on Terror.

Filed Under: colleen mcmahon, confidential informant, doj, entrapment, fake terrorists, fbi, james cromitie, newburgh four, own plot, shaheed hussain, terrorism

Federal Judge Frees ‘Terrorism’ Suspects While Calling Out The FBI For Its Entrapment-Esque Tactics

from the gotta-break-a-few-innocents-to-make-a-national-security dept

For years, we’ve pointed out that the FBI is more interested in easy wins than actually securing the nation. And for years, the FBI has maddeningly refused to take our harsh criticism into consideration. It has done its own thing, because of course it has. Who could possibly stop it? A mass violators of rights both domestic and foreign isn’t going to stop doing what it likes to do just because these actions are wrong.

The FBI is fully engaged in the War on Terror. And if that means radicalizing people for the sole purpose of generating bullshit prosecutions, so be it. If anyone can talk the FBI out of basically engaging in entrapment to “protect” the nation from people who never would have posed an actual threat to it, it’s the courts.

But the courts often feel they’re just too dumb to understand the nuances of national security work. And they’re bound by plenty of precedent that instructs them to believe they’re too stupid to ask too many questions during national security related court cases. And, so, the FBI does what it does — that is, create terrorists so it can arrest terrorists — without facing much friction from any of the checks and balances meant to protect citizens from the abuses of government agencies.

Some notable pushback has occurred recently, though. And perhaps this federal court decision will prompt other federal judges to engage in more scrutiny of the FBI’s counter-terrorism efforts, which have mainly been comprised of undercover operatives doing everything they can to turn impressionable people into so-called “terrorists” — people who’ve often done nothing more than try to appease the FBI operatives applying endless pressure on them to board the jihad bus.

Here’s a bit of background on this surprising turn of events, as reported by Jesse McKinley for the New York Times:

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the “compassionate release” of three Hudson Valley men who were part of a group known as the “Newburgh Four” after finding that F.B.I. agents had used an “unscrupulous operative” to persuade them to join a plot to blow up synagogues and bring down military planes more than a decade ago.

The decision, by Judge Colleen McMahon of United States District Court in Manhattan, was scathing in its description of the methods used by the F.B.I. in its pursuit of the three — Onta Williams, Laguerre Payen and David Williams — calling the plot in which they were convicted of participating in 2010 “an F.B.I.-orchestrated conspiracy.”

“A person reading the crimes of conviction in this case would be left with the impression that the offending defendants were sophisticated international terrorists committed to jihad against the United States,” Judge McMahon wrote. “However, they were, in actual reality, hapless, easily manipulated and penurious petty criminals.”

That decision reduces the sentences of three of the accused to time served plus 90 days, rather than the 25+ years they were originally sentenced to. The judge also called out the FBI’s featured informant — Shahed Hussain — as a lifelong federal lawbreaker who only managed to escape punishment because he decided to convert people less deserving of prison time into “terrorists” for the FBI in order to escape being held accountable for his own misdeeds. It also calls out the fourth defendant for being complicit with Hussein in seeking to convert “impoverished small time grifters” into counter-terrorism fodder for the FBI’s “Build-A-Terrorist Workshop” efforts.

While the New York Times does bring the details, it does not bring the actual court order [PDF], despite the fact that anyone with a working internet connection and the willingness to do battle with PACER (or better yet, be loved freely and unconditionally by RECAP [SUPPORT RECAP, YO]) could find, download, and embed this precious stack of PDF paper. Do better, Paper Of Record.

It’s a hell of a read. (And it’s also very hard to read because the uploaded document resembles a ninth generation copy from an all-in-one fax/printer/copier with a nearly empty toner cartridge that was inadvertently put in someone’s pocket and run through a washing machine before being uploaded in “draft” mode [which probably isn’t even a thing you can do] to the SDNY PACER portal. But, hey, what can you do. Obviously the court was restrained by having access to only the infinite amount of funding supplied by taxpayers. Oh well.)

Early on, a pair of sentences lets readers know how it’s going to go for the DOJ:

Defendant’s arguments are persuasive; the government’s are not. The motion is granted.

More to that point:

A person reading the crimes of conviction in this case would be left with the impression that the offending defendants were sophisticated international criminals committed to jihad against the United States. They were, in reality, hapless, easily manipulated and penurious petty criminals.

That’s the national security “win” the FBI tried to obtain: a quarter-century in jail for people deceived by a person far more worthy of a long-term federal sentence than these defendants. There’s no “win” here. If anything, the country is less safe because the FBI wasted time pushing petty criminals towards terrorist acts, rather than pursue those already inclined to do serious damage to America and Americans.

These were the two people instrumental to this so-called “investigation” and subsequent prosecution:

[D]efendant Cromitie, the lead defendant in this case, was the object of a lengthy sting operation conducted by the FBI with the aid of a most unsavory “confidential informant,” Shaheed Hussain. Hussein’s task was to infiltrate upstate mosques (attended largely by members of the Black Muslim movement within Islam) and identify potential terrorists. Cromitie, a small time grifter and petty drug dealer with no history of violence, pretended to be one, feeding Hussein lie after lie about his past and ingratiating himself with the man he believed to be a wealthy Pakistani businessman. Hussain inveigled Cromitie with promises of both heavenly and earthly rewards, including as much as $250,000, if he would plan and participate in, and find others to participate in a jihadist “mission.” Cromitie professed interest in often deeply offensive anti-Semitic and anti-American rhetoric, but backed his words with absolutely nothing in the way of deeds. He strung Hussain along for six months, only to disappear for a long period — so long that the FBI started to move on to other ventures.

Big on words, short on action, and really not all that interested in jihad despite endlessly dangled promises of rewards to be enjoyed here or in the Great Beyond. There’s a footnote attached to the first mention of the FBI’s informant Shaheed Hussain. And it’s quite the ride:

As was revealed on cross examination, in the years prior to his becoming an FBI asset, Hussain engaged repeatedly in activity that constituted various crimes, including bankruptcy fraud, tax evasion, immigration fraud, perjury, and mail fraud. He lied repeatedly to a laundry list of government agencies, from the United States Bankruptcy Court… to the sentencing judge in his criminal case, his Probation Officer, the FBI, the INS, the IRS, the New York State Liquor Authority and the New York State Education Department. He even lied on the witness stand at the trial of this case, putting the Government in the uncomfortable position of not being able to rehabilitate certain aspects of his testimony, or adopt certain of his statements when arguing this case. More recently, Hussain was the owner of a car-for-hire business in Upstate New York that rented a defective limousine — a vehicle that had been ordered out of service following a safety inspection — that hurtled down Route 30 in Schoharie, New York, sending 21 innocent people to their deaths.

If the FBI and DOJ needed a criminal to send away for decades, they already had one. Instead, they turned this criminal into an informant — one that pretty much sabotaged their case from the moment he took the stand.

These two principles combined with the FBI’s worst impulses to result in this miscarriage of justice:

Nothing about the crimes of conviction was of defendants’ own doing. The FBi invented the conspiracy; identified the targets; manufactured the ordnance; federalized what would have otherwise been a state crime (the Bronx “bomb” plot) by driving three of the four men (Onta Williams was not available) into Connecticut to view the “bombs” and “stinger missile launchers” that would be used in the operation; and picked the day for the “mission” (which was filmed in real time so it could be shown on television news the night the men were arrested). On May 20, Hussain drove four men to Riverdale (they had no way to drive themselves); “armed” the “bomb” (because the hapless Cromitie, despite his “training,” could not figure out how to do it); and told Cromitie how to place the device while David Williams, Onta Williams and Payen performed lookout duty. As soon as the fake device was left by the community center door, law enforcement arrested the four men.

That sure as shit looks like entrapment. That defense appears not to have been raised. But, at least for now, the defendants wrangled into fulfilling the FBI’s fantasies with the assistance of the FBI’s preferred federal criminal/confidential information, will be going home, freed from the remainder of the illicitly obtained 25-years sentences these War on Terror warriors felt was worth blowing taxpayer money on, rather than, say, prosecuting the person with the longest existing rap sheet: Shaheed Hussain.

But here’s the downside: this release order follows 14 years of federal prison time already served by defendants who were dragged into a conspiracy not of their own making and forced to “do the time” despite not actually having done much in the way of “doing the crime.”

That’s the real tragedy here: the FBI got away with this for 14 years. And its ongoing anti-terrorist efforts — despite being largely made up of similar sting efforts — are given respect the FBI hasn’t earned by judges overseeing these criminal cases. The release order here compares this bullshit to the ATF’s “stash house” sting efforts: something used to saddle easily manipulated people with hefty prison sentences following “stings” that follow this same pattern. The government pushed, cajoles, and threatens — in almost every case, poor minorities — into “participating” in illegal acts that are concocted, funded, supplied, and enacted every step of the way by government informants, rather than the alleged “criminals,” who likely never would have even considered doing anything like this if it weren’t for the incessant pressure of government employees.

Will this change the way the FBI conducts counter-terrorism business going forward? It seems unlikely. But it will at least give defendants similarly entrapped a plan of action when challenging prosecutions, convictions, or prison sentences. And, if nothing else, it gives three men back their freedom, albeit after exploitative, supremely lazy federal employees robbed them of 14 years of their lives.

Filed Under: entrapment, fbi, newburgh four, own plot, terrorism

Sixth Circuit Reverses Conviction For Man Talked Into Criminal Acts By Undercover FBI Agents

from the make-your-own-terrorists,-lose-your-own-convictions dept

BE THE TERRORISM YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD.

FBI motto (ca. 2001)

The FBI’s penchant for self-ownership dates back to its reinvention as a counter-terrorism agency, a move that followed a bunch of power and budget expansions for any federal agencies that might help George W. Bush avenge his father’s loss in the 1992 election.

This case, handled by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals is just more of the same, self-defeating “national security” work the FBI prefers to engage in, rather than engaging with actual terrorists. Why put yourself in danger when you can just coerce non-dangerous people into violating federal laws?

This case begins — as so many of them do — with completely ridiculous circumstances more suited to satire than real life events. This is from the opening of the Sixth Circuit’s decision [PDF]:

[Christian] Ferguson, a black man from Cleveland, then 20 years old, aroused FBI suspicion in March 2020 with his internet postings. Ferguson led an online chat room on the Discord platform known as the 75th Spartans. In this chatroom, Ferguson, whose moniker was “Grinch75R,” described his desire to create a militia group and revolt against tyranny. On March 18, 2020, Ferguson wrote that he wanted to organize the Spartans into “centurions to orchestrate raids for supplies such as weapon and armor.” On April 7, 2020, Ferguson asked a member of the chatroom, a 14-year-old with the moniker “SecretAgentRandyBeans,” whether he could drive because Ferguson wanted to do a “small claim” with the cops and “leave a calling card with the Spartans name.”

Would anyone outside of an opportunistic FBI agent actually think these online interactions would result in violence? I mean, Ferguson’s conspirator was 14 years old. His online handle was “SecretAgentRandyBeans.” The term used to discuss the undetermined violent act was “small claim,” a term that has only struck fear in the hearts of absentee landlords and payday lenders.

Then there’s the nature of this conspiracy — one in which both conspirators were equally useless:

Ferguson stated he had not found any recruits yet. In response, SecretAgentRandyBeans stated he could “kinda drive.”

A reasonable terrorist would have found a different chat room to inhabit. But unscrupulous federal agents love fruit hanging so low they often trip over it. After watching two underachievers plot destruction they could never hope to realize, the undercover agents tried to make their dreams a reality.

It took an FBI agent to move this forward.

On April 15, while chatting with Ferguson, [FBI confidential informant] Guiness stated that he had been “training at home with another guy” and invited Ferguson to join them. Ferguson did not respond. Two days later, on April 17, Guiness contacted Ferguson again and asked to meet, offering to “[n]ail down some times we can start training small unit tactics?” Ferguson agreed and they met the next day (April 18) at the Metroparks near the Cleveland Zoo.

“Guiness” tried again a couple of days later, talking Ferguson into “hiking” and “land nav.” Ferguson blew this off as well, citing problems with his bank card. Finally, the two got together on April 28, where a vague conversation occurred about combining a SWATting with grand theft auto of a cop car and its communication equipment. If needed, cops would be shot, but the main concern appeared to be securing cop tech while cops were otherwise distracted. The only info Ferguson could provide to the persistent FBI informant was that a 14-year-old known as “SecretAgentRandyBeans” would be involved to help create the distracting domestic violence call. Ferguson told the CI he planned to “handcuff” responding officers in order to steal their gear.

On May 5th, the FBI informant sent Ferguson another unsolicited message — this one containing a photo of an abandoned house, suggesting it could be used to engage in the extremely vague appropriation of cop things.

On May 8th, the FBI informant decided to make Ferguson’s unstable dreams a reality.

Guiness then suggested that they conduct a “dry run” of the plan by placing a fake call to law enforcement and timing how long it would take the officers to get there. Ferguson agreed and Guiness placed the call. The three waited in the woods and watched for the park rangers. After the rangers arrived, Ferguson, Steve, and Guiness ran away from the rangers back towards the barn where their car was parked. When they got to the barn, police officers arrested all three men (to make Ferguson believe Guiness and Steve were suspects as well).

Following the arrest, FBI agents searched Ferguson’s house, finding an AR-15, ammo, tactical gear, and a “guerrilla warfare manual.” Ferguson was charged with two counts of attempted kidnapping of a federal agent despite having done nothing more than meet with someone while they placed a bogus call to law enforcement and running away from the officers once they arrived to handle the bogus call.

Ferguson challenged the charges, arguing there was no evidence proving he intended to kidnap officers. The appeals court looks at the record and (mostly) agrees. Most of what Ferguson affirmatively stated he wished to do did not involve kidnapping officers. (Emphasis in the original.)

Ferguson initially told Guiness and Steve that he wanted to surround the officers and take their gear, thus describing only a robbery. Later that same day, however, Ferguson stated that they might have to handcuff officers while they took their gear, actions which might indicate a longer holding to complete the robbery. On May 8, however, Ferguson changed his plan, saying that they would have to take the gear quickly and in under three minutes, acts which would constitute a robbery without any “holding.” Yet again on May 8, Ferguson darkly described the possibility of needing to kill most of the officers.

Two things become clear from Ferguson’s statements. First, any possible plan was in its infancy, as it was constantly changing. Second, Ferguson had not decided and apparently did not know what he wanted to do with the officers other than take their gear and leave them with a “calling card.” Given the mixed facts and the even more uncertain legal issue, we cannot resolve this case based on whether Ferguson did or did not intend a kidnapping.

Intent is one thing. But equally important here is timing. And without a coherent plan in place, it’s extremely presumptive for the government to claim an attempted kidnapping was in the making.

Ferguson had no timeline for his plan let alone an intent to execute it imminently. On May 2, Ferguson vaguely stated the possibility of organizing for a raid more than a month into the future. On May 8, Ferguson stated “right now, I’m just trying to get more people.” As FBI confidential source “Steve” admitted at trial, Ferguson never provided a date or timeline for the plan. The government pointed us to no Sixth Circuit case in which an attempt conviction was predicated on a plan as far in the future as Ferguson’s here.

The Appeals Court says maybe a kidnapping would have taken place if Ferguson was given an unlimited amount of time and resources. Just as likely, it would never have happened. The government simply doesn’t have enough information or evidence to support the charges it brought against him. The jury standard is “beyond reasonable doubt.” Every doubt expressed by the Sixth Circuit is reasonable.

The only consistent theme of Ferguson’s statements was that he wanted to lure officers to some location and take their gear, acts which likely would likely have constituted only a robbery. Had he adapted his plan to evolving circumstances, he might have ended up kidnapping officers. We will never know. What we do know, however, is that the government had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ferguson overtly acted in a way that “unequivocally corroborated” his intent to kidnap someone. Bilderbeck, 163 F.3d at 975. No reasonable juror could find that the government met that burden.

The government fucked up in its haste to generate criminal charges by pushing someone towards a certain federal crime and pulling the trigger on an arrest before it had all of its entrapment ducks in a row (all emphasis in the original):

Without more evidence, a jury cannot convict Ferguson for a crime that might have happened during some contingency of a future plan which still required much preparation.

Also, simply owning a gun while being encouraged to engage in criminal acts by an FBI informant does not make gun possession relevant to the government’s assertions about criminal intent, much less support its wild-ass kidnapping theory:

[T]he government admitted it did not know when Ferguson acquired his gear, and the record demonstrates unequivocally that he at minimum owned his AR-15 rifle prior to espousing his idea on April 28.

The court also doesn’t like the government’s attempt to criminalize protected speech just because it might help it in this particular case.

The government provides no case that supports the proposition that mere discussion of a criminal idea—without some action—is sufficient to constitute an attempt.

The defendant never raised the entrapment defense. The Sixth Circuit notes this, implying the government is very lucky he didn’t. Because this definitely looks like the government pushing someone to do something they’ve showed very little interest in doing and then arresting them because they relented to the persistent cajoling of an FBI informant.

On its face, Ferguson’s trip to the National Park on May 8 did not corroborate any resolve to commit a kidnapping and was tainted by the FBI’s prompting. The FBI instigated the first non virtual meeting. The FBI informant pressured Ferguson for a plan and told him if he did not have one, he “planned on losing.” The FBI initiated the May 2 meeting, after Ferguson had already cancelled their outing. The FBI initiated the May 8 meeting. The FBI picked the location, on federal land, thereby creating federal jurisdiction. After the men’s arrival at the location, the FBI suggested conducting a “dry run.” The FBI placed the call to execute the “dry run.” At every juncture, Ferguson reiterated the preliminary nature of his plan. At every meeting, he mentioned the need to recruit more people and do more planning.

The FBI wanted to create its own domestic terrorist. It failed here. The conviction cannot stand:

[E]very overt act was initiated and shepherded by the FBI from beginning to end.

The FBI could have stayed out of this and let Ferguson and 14-year-old “SecretAgentRandyBeans” wow each other with their online bravado long past the point anyone would have cared. It could have intervened and spoke with Ferguson and his conspirator, informing them they were treading on dangerous ground if they continued to make plans to steal gear from cops. But it chose to push Ferguson into something he was clearly unprepared to do and then hit him with federal charges for being polite enough to rendezvous with a persistent online compatriot.

The FBI never asks itself this simple question: does this make the country safer? It should. Because that’s what it claims it’s doing every time it makes a ridiculous bust like this. Or refuses to discuss encryption like an adult. Or demands backdoor access to the NSA’s dragnet hauls. This is clearly bullshit. And it’s clearly the way the FBI would prefer to engage in the business of preventing terrorist attacks.

Filed Under: 6th circuit, christian ferguson, entrapment, fbi

Supreme Court Asked To Deny Qualified Immunity To County Engineer Who Decided Entrapment Was The Best Use Of Taxpayer Money

from the pettiest-of-tyrants dept

We all know this country is capable of evils normally associated with authoritarian regimes — things like torture, illegal spying, the occasional exhortation to commit suicide, etc. But we expect the country we love to only violate our sense of justice for big things: War on Terror, War on Drugs, War on… Equal Rights, I guess.

But government agencies and employees are capable of extremely petty evils — the sort far more often associated with authoritarian regimes. Everyone just kind of accepts violent crushing of dissent, state-sponsored terrorism, and ethnic cleansing as being the things bad governments do. But we expect even the worst governments to do bad things in big ways, rather than do shitty things to individuals who don’t serve their larger schemes just because.

But that’s what we’re dealing with here. Even worse, this petty abuse of law-abiding citizens has already been given a free pass by an appeals court. Here’s what the Eighth Circuit Appeals Court ok’ed last November, as recounted by Stephen Montemayor for the Minnesota Star Tribune.

The state contracted Central Specialties in 2016 for road work on a state highway. According to the company’s attorneys, the agreement “roused new disagreements in an already contentious relationship between CSI (Central Specialties) and Large, centering on the number of roads that would be designed as haul roads and the company’s ability to use non-haul roads as a return route for its empty trucks.”

The company told Large one day in July 2017 that it planned to use a non-haul road to bring home empty semitrucks. The next morning, he persuaded Mahnomen County’s board of commissioners to change the highway’s weight restriction so that even the empty trucks would violate the weight limit. Central Specialties’ attorneys argue that Large violated the constitutional rights of its employees when he pulled over two trucks and detained them for more than three hours over the new weight limit established earlier that day. The local Sheriff’s Office and tribal police refused to intervene and a State Patrol citation for the trucks was dismissed a day later.

The “Large” mentioned above is Mahnomen County Engineer Jonathan Large. He disagreed with the capability of the roads to carry even the load of empty trucks. And, despite only having authority over a small stretch of the affected roads, Large changed the road limit roughly one hour before CSI’s trucks hit the road. Road signs were deployed. Whether or not they were placed before CSI’s empty trucks began rolling is still up for debate. And the company was never informed of the weight limit change by Large. Instead, Large contacted a Minnesota Dept. of Transportation project manager, who supposedly sent out an email roughly an hour after they had been informed of the change by Large.

Having set up CSI to fail, Large parked his county vehicle across the road, preventing CSI trucks from moving forward. He then called the local sheriff’s office. The local sheriff informed Large the department did not have officers to spare to help the county engineer pretend to be a cop. Large then called tribal police from White Earth. They arrived at the scene but decided they did not have jurisdiction. Finally, Large called the Minnesota state police — the only agency willing to oblige the engineer in his unilateral, unsupported-by-law, quasi-traffic stop. Troopers cited the first driver of an empty truck for violating the brand new, established-earlier-that-day weight limit. The troopers did not cite any other CSI drivers. In total, the drivers were detained for more than three hours by Large’s largely unilateral law enforcement effort.

The Eighth Circuit said this was fine [PDF]. Well, maybe it wasn’t fine, but (quite understandably) it could find no analogous precedent that would have put Mr. Large on notice that changing the law at short notice before pretending he was some sort of cop would result in clearly established rights violations. The court reasoned (I use that term carelessly) that Large only “stopped” the truck from proceeding. He did not prevent them from exiting the area by turning around and finding another route. But when a county car blocks a road, most drivers for contractors currently in the employ of the government would logically assume they were not free to leave… not if they didn’t want to be subjected to something worse than what they were already experiencing.

The Institute of Justice wants the Supreme Court to re-examine this issue. Should county employees be granted qualified immunity for behaving like law enforcement officers (even if they had no power to do so)? And should they be allowed to escape a lawsuit that was the direct result of a county employee securing a last-minute law change to use against drivers who had no way of knowing the roads they had previously been given permission access to use were now closed to them?

The situation the Institute of Justice wants the Supreme Court to take another look at is akin to a person pouring accelerant, gathering flammable materials, laying matches carelessly close to both, and then exiting the scene before the fire starts. That the fire didn’t start until other people arrived on the scene doesn’t mean the person who set the whole thing up is blameless. That other professionals took over and ensured the property was properly arsoned doesn’t absolve the instigator. That everyone involved was a government employee doesn’t make any of this more acceptable.

As the IJ’s report on the ongoing case notes, it has now been accompanied by a couple of law professors who — like the Institute for Justice itself — would prefer not to see qualified immunity expanded to cover something that really looks like vindictive entrapment performed by a county engineer who used his county-branded car to act like a cop until he could convince real cops to finish his dirty work for him.

But this is being tossed into the current Supreme Court, which appears to be very selective about what cases it will address. Lately, it seems far more interested in discussing opportunities to limit rights enjoyed by citizens while expanding the government’s ability (at both federal and local levels) to control what citizens can or can’t do. Very little of its recent work seems willing to act as a check on government power. And this case, unfortunately, is right in that wheelhouse, which means it’s far more likely to deny cert than examine a case that might result in qualified immunity being reined back in.

Filed Under: 8th circuit, entrapment, jonathan large, mahnomen county, minnesota, qualified immunity, supreme court

Supposed Terrorist Gets 20 Years In Prison For Uploading A Bomb-Making Video An FBI Agent Made For Him

from the continuing-the-FBI's-proud-post-2001-tradition dept

The FBI’s shift from law enforcement to counter-terrorism began shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, but really took off about a decade later, when it got into the business of radicalizing internet randos to turn them into “terrorists” worth hitting with material support charges.

While the FBI continued to pretend it was making the world safer, it racked up plenty of criticism for its tactics. A lot of what FBI undercover agents did in far too many terrorist support cases looked an awful lot like entrapment. FBI informants pushed ISIS-curious people towards acts of violence. And they went further than just offering verbal support. The FBI literally materially supported these supposed “terrorists,” buying them supplies and weapons, handing them cash to spend on necessities, and writing scripts/operating cameras for ISIS allegiance videos.

Here’s another one for the FBI’s dubious anti-terrorism rap sheet: another person who found himself communicating with fake terrorists (undercover agents) who nudged him down the path towards terrorist acts. And when that nudging wasn’t producing results quickly enough for the FBI, the undercover agent basically did all the terrorist homework for the suspect, giving him enough proverbial rope to allow the FBI to hang him.

Here’s the end result of the FBI’s questionable efforts:

United States Attorney Roger Handberg announces today that a Florida man was sentenced today to 20 years in federal prison, followed by 15 years of supervised release, for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, also known as ISIS, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

According to the DOJ’s press release, Romeo Langhorne “pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2014.” Then nothing much happened for almost a half-decade. In late 2018/early 2019, Langhorne appeared to have rediscovered his appreciation for ISIS and began posting pro-ISIS content to social media platforms and hanging out in pro-ISIS chatrooms.

That’s when the FBI inserted one of its own into the mix.

In February 2019, Langhorne began communicating with an undercover employee (UCE) of the FBI who was posing as someone working on behalf of ISIS. Langhorne told the UCE about his plans to create and disseminate an instructional video on making TATP and sought the UCE’s assistance in creating the video.

Langhorne got way more than “assistance.” All Langhorne contributed to the video were ideas. It was the undercover employee who actually put together the video.

During the summer of 2019, Langhorne sent multiple messages to the UCE for assistance with creating a Nasheed, which is a form of Islamic vocal music. Langhorne stated he wanted the Nasheed to include a particular recording of an ISIS member yelling “Allahu Akbar” while breaking out of prison, as well as a clip of children saying, “kill them all.” Langhorne explained that he wanted the Nasheed “to encourage justified retaliation” against the United States for its role in killing Muslims.

The FBI produced a video in accordance with Langhorne’s instructions, but – unbeknownst to Langhorne – it featured an inert chemical formula for TATP that would not produce an explosion. In November 2019, the UCE provided versions of the TATP video to Langhorne, and Langhorne distributed the video by uploading it to a video-sharing website.

Who knows what would have happened if the FBI agent had simply refused to make the video? What if the agent had pushed back on Langhorne’s demands by insisting Langhorne do the work himself? Would the video ever have been made? Or what if — and hear me out — the UCE had pointed out to Langhorne that what he was asking for was not only illegal but would make him culpable for any violent acts stemming from the video’s distribution? Maybe simply pointing out the legal ramifications or suggesting extremists (not just Muslim extremists) would use the information to harm innocent people would have forced Langhorne to reconsider his love for ISIS — something that seemed largely limited to being obnoxious on the internet.

Sure, it’s foolhardy to play armchair quarterback. But one wonders if FBI informants and undercover operatives ever try to nudge people off the path to terrorism, rather than propel them forward towards their inevitable arrest.

And the fact that the FBI did all the production work on the video makes this statement from an FBI official unintentionally hilarious.

“The willingness of this dangerous individual to go to great lengths to harm innocent Americans was always very real,” said FBI Jacksonville Special Agent in Charge Sherri E. Onks, “but through hard work and determination, the FBI Jacksonville Joint Terrorism Task Force successfully disrupted his plan early on, and averted a threat to the safety of our community.”

It was the FBI UCE that went “to great lengths.” Langhorne hung out in chat rooms and sent text messages to the undercover agent every time a new video idea occurred to him. But it doesn’t look like he went to any lengths, much less “great” ones, to “harm innocent Americans.” He talked a lot but when it came to action, he couldn’t even be bothered to engage in the actual production of the video. And someone who takes five years off from engaging in pro-ISIS antics is hardly the sort of monomaniacal threat he’s being portrayed as by FBI personnel willing to congratulate themselves for putting Langhorne on a leash and walking him into an arrest.

Filed Under: doj, entrapment, fbi, own plots, romeo langhorne, terrorism

Court Docs Appear To Show FBI Informants Contributed Two-Thirds Of The Conspirators To The Michigan Governor Kidnapping Plot

from the crime-continues-to-pay,-but-mostly-for-informants dept

The FBI’s proclivity for inside jobs has not gone unnoticed here at Techdirt. The FBI primarily considers itself a counterterrorist agency these days, which has led to a lot of undercover work that closely resembles entrapment.

Utilizing a large number of informants (some coerced into this work by threats of visa revocation, travel restrictions, etc.), the FBI has gone into the business of radicalization, turning internet loudmouths (and the occasional nursing home denizen) into would-be terrorists — going so far as to come up with all the plans, provide all the funding, and supply all the necessary items to engage in terrorism, foreign or domestic.

The focus has largely been on the nation’s Muslim population, operating on the assumption that the next threat to this nation will be like the last confirmed threat to this nation — the one observed on September 11, 2001. The FBI has been late in arriving to the domestic terrorism party — largely because, like other law enforcement agencies, it chose to believe white nationalists and other far right extremists were less of a threat than residents with darker skin.

But now that this domestic threat can no longer be ignored, the FBI has apparently thrown itself into its new work. The tactics — quasi-entrapment utilizing a large number of informants — haven’t changed. BuzzFeed has two reports on the FBI’s involvement in the plot to kidnap and kill Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer — one that was hatched as the nation underwent the growing pains of dealing with a pandemic while “led” by a president who claimed the virus killing thousands of US residents was either a hoax, a Chinese-led conspiracy to dethrone him, or an exaggerated threat.

A handful of the defendants facing federal charges in the kidnapping case are now asking the courts to take a closer look at the FBI’s involvement, claiming what happened here was more entrapment than a grassroots movement to forcibly remove a state official from office.

The government employed at least a dozen confidential informants to infiltrate groups of armed extremists who allegedly plotted to kidnap the governor of Michigan, according to a new filing in federal court on Monday.

The filing, made by one of the five defendants in the federal case, asked that prosecutors be ordered to share more information about those informants, their relationship with the FBI, and the specific roles they played in building the case. It came among a blizzard of 15 new defense motions in the high-profile case, including requests to move it to a different district, to suppress evidence from a search warrant, and to try at least one defendant separately from the others.

For those keeping score at home: if these allegations are true, the number of FBI informants involved in this case outnumbered the non-FBI informants by a ratio of more than 2-to-1. Twelve (alleged) informants. Five (5) regular people charged in the kidnapping conspiracy. Now, I’m no expert on peer pressure, but even if the conspiracy was a straight-up democracy, the ayes would have carried the motion to kidnap, even if those votes were limited to people being paid by the FBI.

There are even more details in the follow-up report, compiled by BuzzFeed after taking a look at the flurry of filings by the defendants in this case.

Here’s just one example of how this plot unfolded day-by-day:

“Everybody down with what’s going on?” an Iraq War veteran in the group demanded to know when they ended their recon mission, well past midnight, at a campsite where they were all staying.

“If you’re not down with the thought of kidnapping,” someone else replied, “don’t sit here.”

The men planned for all kinds of obstacles, but there was one they didn’t anticipate: The FBI had been listening in all along.

For six months, the Iraq War vet had been wearing a wire, gathering hundreds of hours of recordings. He wasn’t the only one. A biker who had traveled from Wisconsin to join the group was another informant. The man who’d advised them on where to put the explosives — and offered to get them as much as the task would require — was an undercover FBI agent. So was a man in one of the other cars who said little and went by the name Mark.

The informants were anything but passive. They did far more than observe and report. They moved plans forward, supplied intel and items, and — according to these documents — possibly instigated the plot to kidnap the Michigan governor.

And this wasn’t the only plot the FBI had a hand in. One informant organized similar meetings of minds all over the country, apparently hoping to find enough far-right extremists willing to take the next step towards criminal activity if adequately goaded by the FBI’s network of informants.

Because of this, multiple defendants in this case are hoping a judge sees the FBI’s involvement as far more than investigatory. The allegations made — coupled with some of the evidence handed over to defendants — appear to show FBI informants were the prime movers in these plots, pushing and cajoling reluctant targets into doing more than simply being extremely online.

To be sure, there are some dangerous individuals out there. But the five rounded up here with the involvement of 12 FBI informants, for the most part, weren’t. Here’s BuzzFeed’s description of one of the accused kidnappers, Pete Musico:

Musico bragged that he had thrown Molotov cocktails in cops’ homes and showed off a lump of something he claimed was C-4. But there was no proof he’d ever attacked any officers and the plastic explosives later turned out to be fake. All the tough talk had never gotten beyond jokes and disturbing but vague rhetoric.

And here’s only a small part of the FBI’s involvement in turning this online smack-talking into a reality:

A few weeks later, [FBI informant] Dan drove five Watchmen and 6,000 rounds of ammunition to Cambria, Wisconsin, for a national training exercise organized by Robeson. He rented a Suburban for the weekend, paid for gas, and subsidized food and lodging for the group, all courtesy of the FBI.

This led to the involvement of even more FBI employees.

By this point, Dan had managed to insert an undercover FBI agent — “Red,” a supposed explosives expert — into the group. A second undercover agent, known as Mark, had also joined up, after a woman posing as his girlfriend had approached Fox’s then-fiancé, saying they wanted to train.

Dan set them up to buy 4,000inexplosives.Theonlynon−FBImembersofthisgrouphetookwithhimonlymanagedtoputtogether4,000 in explosives. The only non-FBI members of this group he took with him only managed to put together 4,000inexplosives.Theonlynon−FBImembersofthisgrouphetookwithhimonlymanagedtoputtogether298. Despite being completely unable to buy the explosives they wanted, they were arrested by FBI agents during the so-called “buy.”

The entire article is a fascinating read, detailing the FBI’s extremely heavy involvement in this case. It may well be a plot to kidnap the Michigan governor would have been carried out without the FBI’s encouragement and funding, but the idea may also have died the swift death of thousands of other heated online conversations.

Then there’s this disturbing postscript:

An FBI agent at the center of the investigation into the plot to kidnap and kill Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is accused of smashing his wife’s head against a nightstand and choking her after a dispute stemming from their attendance at a swingers’ party, according to court records.

Special Agent Richard Trask, 39, of Kalamazoo, was charged Monday with assault with intent to do great bodily harm, less than murder following the alleged incident Sunday.

An affidavit filed by the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office in Kalamazoo County District Court said Trask’s wife had bloody lacerations to the right side of her head and “blood all over chest, clothing arms and hand,” as well as “severe” bruising to her neck and throat.

This won’t help the FBI. This is something the defense can use to attack the agent’s credibility — something that can potentially undermine his testimony and statements, as well as his personal integrity. It also raises questions about how much leeway the FBI gives its agents and informants, and how much it overlooks as long as they produce results.

There’s still a long way to go in these prosecutions. But this doesn’t look good. There may have been some people out there willing to kidnap and kill a politician they disagreed with, but this plot appears to have involved more people pretending to be conspirators than actual conspirators.

Filed Under: doj, domestic terrorism, entrapment, fbi, gretchen whitmer, informants, kidnapping, michigan, own plot

Disproving The Nonsense About The FBI & Jan. 6th Would Be Easier If The FBI Didn't Have A History Of Entrapping People In Made Up Plots

from the you-guys-made-this-worse dept

There’s a very, very dumb conspiracy theory making the rounds — and I want to be very clear on this — that has zero evidence to support it, that the FBI was actually behind the January 6th invasion of the Capitol. It was originally reported by a wacky extremist news organization that I won’t even bother naming here, and then got a lot more attention when Fox News made it a story via Tucker Carlson’s show. The underlying confusion is that a (former Trump admin official who was let go after attending a conference with white nationalists but then later appointed to a new job within the Trump White House) reporter completely misunderstood what “unindicted co-conspirator” means in various charging documents.

What it generally means are people the government has not yet charged, and who they don’t want to name so they don’t tip them off (or where they don’t yet know who they are, or don’t have enough evidence to charge, or for a variety of other reasons). What it absolutely never means, is an undercover FBI agent or informant. Those people are not ever described as unindicted co-conspirator. But the reporter somehow got it into his head that this meant they were FBI agents, and then went to town with a conspiracy theory blaming the FBI for the insurrection, claiming that it was designed to “frame the entire MAGA movement.”

As noted, this is false, and there is no evidence to support this. At all. It’s a fiction of imagination from someone who has no idea what he’s talking about, and of course Tucker Carlson ran with it, because that’s what Tucker Carlson does.

But… here’s the thing: it would be a hell of a lot easier to debunk this nonsense if the FBI (especially since 9/11) didn’t have a depressingly long history of… setting up fake terrorist plots in order to entrap people to get big headlines around an arrest of someone who never had any means to actually carry out the attack. We’ve covered examples of these kinds of FBI activities for years. We’ve written about examples of this over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

No doubt, what the FBI does in those cases is disgusting and highly questionable. It often involves them searching out people who are either mentally troubled or really desperate, and then proposing they get involved in a completely fictional terrorist plot — a plot that the individuals would have no possible chance of actually carrying out on their own. The undercover FBI agents (or the confidential informant working for the FBI) then proceed to do all the actual “planning” including buying any of the necessary materials and getting all the details in order. Then, after the planning has reached a certain point and the sucker is bought in on the plan, they’re arrested, and the FBI claims it “stopped” a terrorist attack — which usually gives the FBI lots of glowing press attention.

Of course, the reality is that there was no threat. There was no actual plot. There is never any ability to actually carry anything out. The weapons or bombs or whatever are all faked or never actually in existence. It’s all a shadow play so the FBI can try to get some headlines and pretend they’re doing something.

But that’s clearly not what happened with January 6th. For one thing, the events of January 6th actually happened. The Capitol was actually invaded. Damage was actually done. If the FBI was planning it as per their usual homegrown plots, no actual attack would have happened. Also, if you look at the pattern of who the FBI has gone after with these plots… it’s not really been the Trump supporting MAGA militia type.

Either way, though, people wouldn’t have to be doing this big silly debunking of this kind of nonsense conspiracy theory if the FBI didn’t actually have a track record of doing this kind of thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

So, you know, perhaps they should stop doing that.

Filed Under: conspiracy theory, doj, entrapment, fbi, january 6th, own plot, tucker carlson, undercover

Federal Judge Asks DEA To Explain Why All 179 Of Its Stash House Sting Targets Are Minorities

from the stings-themselves-still-problematic-even-without-the-bias dept

Federal judges appear to be tiring of the government’s long-running entrapment programs. One of the federal law enforcment’s favorite “enforcement” efforts is creating crime in order to bust “criminals.” Agencies like the ATF and DEA find someone in need of cash — usually a minority someone — and use undercover agents and confidential informants to convince them to raid a drug stash house for some easy money.

The twist is the drug stash house is fake. There are no drugs. There are no armed guards protecting the drugs. Once the mark arrives with a weapon and a plan of attack, the ATF arrests the person for thinking about robbing a fake stash house to steal nonexistent drugs.

The other twist is the prosecution. Since the drugs never existed, the ATF is free to claim the targeted stash was large enough to trigger mandatory minimum sentences.

A handful of judges have already found stash house stings to be a questionable use of government resources, if not ultra-shady operations that put the government in the position of being the judge and the jury by fabricating drug amounts to ensure longer sentences are handed down.

Here’s what federal judge Ruben Castillo had to say about stash house stings:

It is undisputed that between 2006 and 2013, the defendants charged in this District in the ATF false stash house cases were 78.7 black, 9.6 percent Hispanic, and 11.7 percent white. During this same period, the District’s adult population was approximately 18 percent black, 11 percent Hispanic, and 63 percent White. These numbers generate great disrespect for law enforcement efforts. Disrespect for the law cannot be tolerated during these difficult times. It is time for false stash house cases to end and be relegated to the dark corridors of our past. To put it simply, our criminal justice system should not tolerate false stash house cases in 2018.

Castillo also noted that the government never engaged in this type of borderline entrapment during the darkest days of Prohibition.

[E]ven during the low points of the great violence caused by the alcohol wars of Prohibition, the ATP did not seek to use “false alcohol warehouse” tactics against any ethnic organized crime groups to promote public safety.

Judge Jane Stranch’s words — written for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals — were no less harsh.

The unseemly nature of the Government’s activity is emphasized by its failure to achieve its declared goals of jailing dangerous criminals and making our streets safer. Evidence showing that these hurry-up set-ups achieve the stated goals was not proffered and the facts here demonstrate why: no known dangerous individuals or criminal enterprises were researched or targeted and no pre-existing drug rings or conspiracies were broken up. In fact, this sting trapped Flowers, a gainfully employed young man with no criminal record.

Unfortunately, the court found no way to reverse the sentence handed down. The barriers to a successful lawsuit against a federal government agency are almost insurmountable, and the ATF knows this, so it has no reason to stop performing the laziest form of “enforcement” it can engage in.

Judge Otis Wright tore into the ATF in his decision as well:

In these stash-house cases, the Government’s “participation in the offense conduct” is what makes them particularly repugnant to the Constitution. Everything about the scheme—and therefore almost everything bearing upon a defendant’s ultimate sentence—hinges solely on the Government’s whim. Why were there not 10 kilograms in the stash house? Or 100? Or 1,000? Why were the guards allegedly armed—necessitating that Defendants bring weapons along with them? All of these factors came down to the ATF and the undercover agent alone. That sort of arbitrariness offends the Constitution’s due-process demands.

The end result was only five years shaved off the defendant’s 19-year sentence — a sentence that rested solely on the ATF’s claims about the total weight of the nonexistent drugs in the nonexistent stash house the defendant never raided.

Perhaps the remedy lies somewhere earlier in the process, well before mandatory minimum sentences — prompted by government agents’ claims about nonexistent drugs — are imposed. Judge Jed Rakoff is demanding the government produce some evidence that its stings don’t primarily target minorities.

This case involves a DEA sting operation utilizing a number of fictitious drug shipments. They follow the same pattern as the ATF’s stings. The government approaches its marks and tries to talk them into robbing fake drug dealers of their fake drugs. Then it swoops in and arrests its dupes the moment they start moving forward with robbery suggested by the government.

The opening paragraph of the order [PDF] makes it clear Judge Rakoff thinks these stings are bullshit:

By their very nature, so-called “reverse sting” operations, in which the Government creates the illusion of crimes in order to catch would-be criminals, are open to potential abuse, since they are not cabined by the demands of reality, but only by the vagaries of imagination.

The seven defendants in this case — all “men of color” — are arguing the government is engaging in selective enforcement by primarily targeting minorities with sting operations. Judge Rakoff appears to think that might be true. Or, at the very least, the government should be obliged to explain why every single one of its sting efforts result in arrested minorities.

After some discussion about which discovery standard should be applied to selective enforcement allegations, the court comes to this conclusion:

[T]he appropriate standard is that where a defendant who is a member of a protected group can show that that group has been singled out for reverse sting operations to a statistically significant extent in comparison with other groups, this is sufficient to warrant further inquiry and discovery.

Here, defendants have presented evidence that not a single one of the 179 individuals targeted in DEA reverse sting operations in SDNY in the past ten years was white, and that all but two were African-American or Hispanic. This is in stark contrast to the racial makeup of New York and Bronx Counties, which are 20.5% African-American, 39.7% Hispanic, and 29.5% White. This is also in contrast to NYPD crime and enforcement data for felony drug arrests (42.7% African-American, 40.8% Hispanic, and 12.7% White), firearms arrests (65.1% African-America, 24.3% Hispanic, 9.7% White), and robbery arrests (60.6% African-American, 31.1% Hispanic, 5.1% White).

And, just in case the government wants to argue this is merely a statistical fluke, the defendants also have some expert testimony they’d like the DEA to attempt to rebut.

Furthermore, defendants have provided compelling expert analysis demonstrating that these numbers are statistically significant. According to a rigorous analysis conducted by Dr. Crystal S. Yang, a Harvard law and economics professor, it is highly unlikely, to the point of statistical significance, that the racially disparate impact of the DEA’ s reverse sting operations is simply random.

Here’s how Yang explains the unlikeliness of 177 of 179 targets being “randomly” Black or Latino:

[U]nless the pool of similarly situated individuals is comprised of at least 96.0% Latinos or Blacks~ it is highly unlikely that one could get a sample of 179 targeted individuals where 177 or more individuals are Latino or Black.

The government will need to produce paperwork showing how it initiates stings and how it decides on sting targets.

Accordingly, and for now, discovery will be limited to the Government providing to the defendants, by no later than November 22, 2019, (1) all DEA manuals, circulars, protocols, and the like that provide guidelines for how and when reverse stings should be originated; and (2) all notes, memoranda, or other investigative material showing how defendants were identified and evaluated as targets in this particular reverse sting operation.

It’s unlikely anything turned over by the DEA will say “exclusively target Latinos and Blacks.” But this won’t help the government, which will still need to explain how guidelines and protocols that don’t insist on targeting minorities seem to produce nothing by minority defendants. And if it can’t explain that to Judge Rakoff’s satisfaction, the claims of selective enforcement will move forward.

More judges should push back against “reverse sting” operations. There’s been no evidence offered these operations do anything more than put harmless people behind bars for years. When the targets are fake drugs and fake drug runners, zero drugs/drug runners are being taken off the streets.

Filed Under: dea, doj, entrapment, jed rakoff, racism, stash houses, targeting minorities