4 hours ago
6
A group of protesters in Texas was found guilty of providing support for terrorism and other charges on Friday in a closely watched case in which prosecutors alleged anti-ICE activists were actually part of an antifa cell.
The case was seen as a major test of the first amendment and whether the government could use a broad anti-terrorism statute to prosecute leftwing protesters. It marked the first time the government alleged individuals were part of an antifa terrorist cell in a criminal prosecution.
Nine defendants – Benjamin Song, Zachary Evetts, Autumn Hill, Meagan Morris, Maricela Rueda, Savanna Batten, Ines Soto, Elizabeth Soto and Daniel Sanchez-Estrada – were all tried together in the case. They faced a mix of charges of providing material support to terrorists, rioting, attempted murder, as well as firearms and explosive charges.
Sanchez-Estrada was the only defendant not at the protest, and was only charged with corruptly concealing a document or record, after prosecutors say he moved leftwing zines following the arrest of his wife, Maricela Rueda, on the Fourth of July. Song also escaped after the incident and there was an 11-day manhunt for him. Several other people were charged with assisting Song during that period.
The nine defendants were convicted on all of the charges they faced, with limited exceptions. Of the five charged with attempted murder and firearms charges, Evetts, Hill, Morris and Rueda were acquitted.. Song was acquitted on two charges of attempted murder and convicted on one. He was also convicted of the firearms charges.
The DFW Support Committee, a coalition that has been supporting the defendants, said in a post on X they were “heartbroken”. The defendants also face state charges.
“This is only the beginning. We will continue to fight the remaining charges until every defendant is home,” the group said. “Everything about this trial from beginning to end has proven what we have said all along: this is a sham trial, built on political persecution and ideological attacks coming from the top.”
The justice department and the US attorney’s office for the northern district of Texas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After the killing of Charlie Kirk last year, Trump administration officials vowed to go after leftwing groups and designated antifa, short for anti-fascist, as a domestic terrorist group, even though the president did not have the lawful authority to do so. Antifa is also not an organization but instead used to describe a constellation of leftwing beliefs. Some have described antifa as an idea and equated designating it a terror organization akin to designating Marxism or feminism as a terror group.
The case centered around a protest on the Fourth of July last year at the Prairieland detention center just outside of Fort Worth. A group of demonstrators dressed in dark clothing arrived at the facility just after 10:30pm and had planned to set off fireworks as part of a noise demonstration to show solidarity with the protesters inside. Shortly after arriving at the facility, two or three of the protesters broke away from the larger group and began spray painting cars in the parking lot, a guard shack, slashed the tires on a government van, and broke a security camera. Two ICE detention guards came out and told the protesters to stop. A police officer arrived on the scene shortly after and drew his weapon at one of the people allegedly doing vandalism. One of the protesters was standing in the woods with an AR-15 and hit him in the shoulder. The officer would survive.
Some of the defendants did not know each other before the protests, while others met through self-defense classes, the Socialist Rifle Association, and a leftwing book club. The demonstrators brought a cache of weapons, including rifles and bulletproof vests, to Prairieland, but left all but one in a van they used to carpool there.
It is undisputed that there was only one shooter, Song, but prosecutors said the event was a coordinated ambush in which the demonstrators used the fireworks to lure guards from the facility and police and then attack them. The defendants strongly disputed that, saying they planned for a peaceful protest that ultimately went awry. They say they brought the firearms – all purchased legally – for self-defense.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors focused on several protest tactics they said was evidence that the demonstrators coordinated an ambush on law enforcement or should have reasonably expected one to occur. They pointed to the fact that the demonstrators took steps to prevent their cell phones from being tracked.
Prosecutors also pointed to the way that the protesters used Signal, a widely-used messaging application, as evidence of their coordination and conspiracy. The protesters used pseudonyms on the app and had messages autodelete, an increasingly common practice among protesters and journalists who are concerned about government surveillance. They also emphasized the defendants were wearing all black during the protest, sometimes describing it as “tactical” gear. While the defendants were dressed in dark clothing, defense lawyers highlighted that many of the things they wore could be bought by the public at a retail store like Walmart.
But the idea that violence was expected was undercut at times by the government’s own witnesses. Several witnesses who took plea deals testified that they were surprised when the protest turned to violence.
During the trial, the government offered a slew of circumstantial evidence aimed at convincing the jury that the defendants were part of an antifa terror cell. They showed the jury zines and reading lists with incendiary titles that were seized from the defendants. One zine seized was titled The satanic death cult is real. The zine is an essay analyzing the films Hereditary and Midsommar. They also displayed anti-Trump stickers seized from one of the defendants that said “Make America not Exist Again” and a pamphlet from the Socialist Rifle Association that showed someone putting a swastika into a garbage can.
Attorneys for the defendants argued that the government was punishing protesters because they disliked their beliefs.
“The government is asking you to put protesters in prison as terrorists. You are the only people who can stop that,” Blake Burns, an attorney for Elizabeth Soto, said during his closing statement to jurors.
Even though prosecutors focused on antifa throughout the case, and the justice department touted the allegation in press releases and public statements, it was not really legally relevant to the terrorism charge they face. The statute they were charged under does not require any kind of relationship to a terrorist organization. Instead, it merely says someone provides material support to terrorists if they assist them in carrying out a list of specific federal crimes. In this case, prosecutors said the underlying terrorism crimes were damaging government property and attempting to kill law enforcement.
During his closing statement, prosecutor Shawn Smith told jurors the defendant’s antifa beliefs were not why they were on trial, according to KERA. “They’re here because they used these tactics that assisted in the ambush of a cop,” he said.
Mark Pittman, a US district judge nominated to the federal bench by Donald Trump in 2019, appeared to gesture at the irrelevance of antifa in the closing moments of the trial, asking prosecutors why he should mention it in his instructions to the jury, underlining the gap between the emphasis on antifa and the technicality of the criminal charges they faced.
“Whether it’s antifa or the Methodist Women’s Auxiliary of Weatherford, why does it matter?” Pittman said.
