Peaceful Protestors Are Facing Decades in Prison - Inside the Prairieland Trial

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:03 Xavier: It's not about the convictions. It's about quashing resistance, opposition, a movement, and dissent.

0:00:17 Ron: How he makes money is researching leftists, trying to frame anything they're doing as anti -government terrorism.

0:00:34 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1252. I'm Thomas Smith, and in a moment, I'll be joined by Matt Cameron. It is Monday, so normally it might be a Jenessa episode, but we're doing a little change -up because Matt and I are going to be speaking with two people with knowledge of the Prairieland case. Now, we've talked a bit about this before. I am still as confused as ever at how this went down. This was, of course, the successful prosecution of multiple people based on them being, I don't know, Antifa terrorists and doing anything in connection with someone who did something in the name of Antifa. It's so confusing. And I think that's because it doesn't make any sense would be why that is. But we're going to be joined by Ron, who is a community member who attended the trial, and Javier de Janone of the People's Law Collective and National Lawyers Guild. I'm hoping they can explain the inexplicable here, but I don' t know. Know. This thing is outrageous. The story is outrageous, it is not at all getting enough attention, so I'm really glad we're doing this, and there's more to be said and covered about this, so I'll throw us to our first break here, and then we're going to be on speaking about this disaster, this miscarriage of justice, what went on, how did it go from eyes and ears inside the trial itself. All right, if you'd like to support the show, hey, please share it. Number one, share share this. It is important that people know about this. This is just crazy to me. I don't understand it. To share the show, support the show patreon .com slash law. If you'd like to see more things like this in the world, that's the place to go. And you get to skip the annoying ads, some of which you'll probably have to hear right now. Apologies. All right, we'll take an ad break and then we'll be on.

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0:02:17 Matt: We're very pleased to be joined today by two important people from the Prairieland ICE protest case that we've talked about recently. We have Xavier Ajanan. He's an attorney with the People's Law Collective. He represents one of the Prairland defendants and is also the director of the Mass Defense for the National Lawyers Guild. And we're also joined by Ron, who's a community member and member of the Parairland Support Committee. So I'm excited to get both of your perspectives on this important case. Thanks so much for coming in.

0:02:42 Xavier: Of course, thank you for having me.

0:02:43 Ron: Thanks for having us.

0:02:45 Matt: Ron, I want to start with you. Can you tell us just a little bit about your connection to these defendants and how you've been involved in this case before we get going.

0:02:51 Ron: Yeah, certainly. I am someone who has lived in the North Texas area for a number of years. I don't currently and haven't for a while. But for a lot of the 20 teens I did, and I intersected with a few of these folks, and I know them to, you know, be really smart, kind people. Of course, when I heard about this incident, it's alarming to everyone. Of Course, as more details come out, we've learned that the narrative about what actually happened that night was very different than what we heard in trial.

0:03:22 Ron: So folks have been working really hard to support these defendants through a very uphill battle to try to correct the kind of public narrative that has been out there for most of the last seven or eight months leading up to this big court date?

0:03:22 Matt: Is it right to say you attended most of the trial or all of the trials? Did you get to see the whole thing?

0:03:41 Ron: I did. I missed a couple days in person, but yeah, I was there in person for almost all of it.

0:03:46 Matt: Have you sat through a federal trial before?

0:03:48 Ron: No, this was the first for me.

0:03:51 Matt: Interesting. Okay. Interested to hear your perspective as we go here. And the support committee, from what I've been able to tell, is kind of a model of community defense when people get into these issues. Can you tell us a little bit about how that got organized, what you've done?

0:04:02 Ron: Yeah, certainly. Well, I can say that I was a little bit late to the party. A lot of folks who are based there in the Dallas -Fort Worth area organized a lot from since the aftermath of this previous July 4th incident through the present and onward as there's more trials to come. But what it's look like is, of course, supporting a lot of the needs that these friends have had while in jail, having to deal with these severe charges, having bonds that are millions of dollars and kind of inaccessible, being ripped from their daily lives. Some of them have children, houses, mortgages, things like this. So trying to organize to support the wreckage that was left by the state by just being so severe with their bails and with their charges. But then as far as supporting them to the outside world, folks have tried to do a lot of work to bring attention to this case and the stakes. And it's been hard, I think, for a lot OF folks to really put out a sophisticated narrative of what actually happened because it was kind of a black box. These folks all being incarcerated ever since the demonstration itself, it's Been hard to actually communicate with a network of supporters of what's actually happened through things like the jail phones and surveilled communications. So unfortunately, I think a lot of the support network was actually learning what happened for the first time in real time as the whole world was in court.

0:05:35 Ron: Yeah, they were able to talk with lawyers confidentially in a way that wasn't always communicated out to this larger support network and able to make it into media narratives. So I don't want to present as though So nobody knew, but certainly I think a lot of people in the support network were learning things about what really happened that night in trial, as opposed to hearing them from the people directly impacted.

0:05:59 Matt: Just for context, because this is a really important part of this case, can you tell us a Little bit about the kind of organizing and community work that these people were doing before this incident?

0:06:08 Ron: It's a broad spectrum. There's a lot OF folks that come together or know each other as being active in social justice movements in the North Texas area. It's a relatively small community in North Texas, folks who are opposed to the expanding power of the Republican Party in the states or who are more interested in local control and autonomy, who are, as these folks are, like resistant to the immigration policies of the current administration in Texas at a state level. Folks that have that type of political alignment tend to move in smaller circles and intersect with each other. Folks that were active in the Black Lives Matter movement in the last decade, for instance, would end up seeing each other a lot. The political things that are making national headlines for the last decades, anything that's thought to be more leftist or progressive, I think there's a relatively small circle of people spread out over a very large population area from Dallas and Fort Worth. It takes well over an hour to get from one side of that metroplex to another. So I think the support network isn't necessarily folks that live in the same neighborhood or grew up together, but folks that both have political alignment and have intersected with each other and understand the stakes of something happening to an entire community of people who maybe don't live their lives together, although some of these defendants certainly do, but share a political affinity and common ideas of how to make the world a better place.

0:07:47 Thomas: In other words, some people who are like anti -fascism, them probably roughly speaking oh that

0:07:51 Matt: You might say which of course brings us to the uh you know one of the reasons that we're here that the fact that these are people who were accused of being in a an antifa terror cell I think they called it with the north texas antifa cell or something

0:07:51 Ron: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yes.

0:08:07 Thomas: One yeah yeah okay

0:08:08 Matt: Yeah it's in my directory I don't know about yours

0:08:10 Thomas: Yeah I just was I want to get like my bearings on which to

0:08:13 Matt: Right now not the west texans yeah obviously as we've discussed on this show and as we all know there's no such thing as capital a antifa as an organization my it's my my understanding, just from reading up on the case, that this is sort of what you're talking about, the overlapping sort of networks of people that have maybe slightly different political backgrounds or beliefs, but believe in the same causes and coming together for mutual aid, community defense, organizing, that kind of thing, right? Is that fair to say?

0:08:13 Thomas: Sell you know yeah totally different

0:08:37 Ron: Yeah, that's very well said.

0:08:39 Thomas: How many defendants are we talking about I'm sorry if I'm jumping the gun but I just

0:08:43 Matt: No, go ahead, please.

0:08:44 Ron: In the federal trial that just happened, there were nine defendants, but in the larger case, I believe it's now up to 19. Is that right, Javi?

0:08:52 Thomas: 19

0:08:53 Xavier: Yes, there's a total of 19 defendants, federal and state level, and some defendants have only federal charges, some only state, most of them federal and State.

0:09:04 Thomas: Wow and you're saying none of them were allowed like bail out of they were all detained

0:09:10 Xavier: Only one defendant, Dario Sanchez, was given bond. It was reduced from, I think, a million dollars. So only one defendant who only has state charges is out on an ankle monitor.

0:09:21 Thomas: That is I mean matt is that that's crazy right am I

0:09:24 Matt: That sounds pretty extreme. Yeah, so I

0:09:25 Thomas: Because what are they even, is it that they're all, they managed to, well, okay, sorry, I don't want to jump ahead into the legal part, but I didn't know that part of it, and that's really surprising.

0:09:36 Matt: Wanted to kind of get into the facts here, talk about how we got to the point. So this, of course, we've talked about this on the show show before, but just to make sure we get the background, this is an event on July 4th. This was an organized noise protest where a number of people agreed to show up and support people in ICE custody in Prairieland. And first of all, I guess just for context, if either of you want to tell us about what's going on in Prairland, what is the importance of that facility particularly?

0:10:01 Ron: Sure. It's a pretrial detention center that's run by a private for -profits corporation called LaSalle. It was built between 2015 and 2016, I think. When it opened. It houses a couple thousand detainees. The warden in trial said that the average detainee is in there for only about 90 days or less, although there have been news reports over the years that suggest people have been in there far longer.

0:10:34 Ron: There have been some unfortunate stories of malpractice and mistreatment in the facility, but it's within an easy drive of the Dallas -Fort Worth area. It's like due south of Fort Worth by less than an hour from like downtown Fort Worth. For folks looking for a place to express their discontent of immigration policy, it's probably one of the closest places in the Dallas Fort Worth metro area.

0:11:02 Matt: This is primarily an immigration detention facility, just to be clear about that.

0:11:06 Xavier: Also importantly about Prairieland, when the noise demo was being organized, a pro -Palestine activist, Lekha Kordia, was being held there. She was just recently released after spending almost a year in immigration custody for her pro -Palestine activism in Columbia University.

0:11:21 Matt: And she was there at the time in July.

0:11:27 Xavier: Yes, she was at the Prairialand Detention Center when the Noise Demo happened.

0:11:30 Matt: Yeah, just To Be Clear, a noise demonstration, demonstration. I'd heard of this before, but just for listeners, so we'd be clear about what this is. But what is a noise demonstration? I guess I'll just ask. What is the purpose?

0:11:38 Xavier: From my understanding, it is what it says on the name. It is a rally, a show of people, and they make noise to reach the people behind bars, people in jail, detention center, prisons. And this is extremely common. It happens usually in very loud days like 4th of July, like New Year's Eve. And the entire purpose is to make as much noise as possible so that people inside know they're not forgotten.

0:12:08 Matt: And the people in this case had agreed to bring fireworks on the 4th of July. We're talking consumer over -the -counter fireworks, right? Not any kind of specialty exotic stuff.

0:12:17 Ron: Yes. That's exactly right.

0:12:19 Matt: They were charged, just to kind of get this out, that they were charged with possession and use of explosives, which I thought was really, I guess maybe I hadn't heard of This before, But using regular fireworks that you could buy to shoot off on the fourth of July, because my understanding is, and even from the picture and the indictment, it doesn't seem like the fireworks, I guess, also breached the facility, right? They were just shot out outside in the usual way, up into the air, right? They weren't shooting at anybody. What was that charge about, the explosive charge, and how did they support that?

0:12:46 Xavier: From a legal perspective, what an explosive is, is arguable, right? In the law in this country, everything is arguble. Sometimes cars are considered deadly weapons. Sometimes they're considered the means to escape murder, right. So what constitutes an explosive? In this case, the federal prosecutor said that these consumer grade fireworks equaled explosives. And the jury, unfortunately, agreed with this proposition. There are post -trial motions and arguments that consumer -grade fireworks shouldn't be explosives as a matter of law, but that is how this case played out.

0:13:28 Matt: It's just because they have gunpowder and detonators or whatever. I mean, I just never had thought of them as an explosive. I know they literally are designed to explode. That's what they're for. But I didn't know that stores around the country were selling explosives to so many people.

0:13:39 Ron: The state did put on an ATF explosive expert and his his rationale was that, yes, they have something a little over one gram of a black powder in them. And then they read the federal statute that lists things that have that black powder categorically as explosive. So it was kind of like a gotcha on a technicality argument. And it seemed that nobody in the courtroom, including the judge, was really impressed by that argument. So I think there was a lot of surprise that the jury went along with it.

0:13:59 Matt: Interesting. Yeah, I would just just think it would have to be something you'd have to get a license or some kind of permit for to have, not something anybody could buy.

0:14:19 Thomas: I'm not the lawyer here, but if somebody took a bunch of fireworks, and there's ones that are, fireworks are obviously dangerous, and they put them in a police officer's car or something, yeah, obviously that would be like a terrorist attack or whatever. It could be an attack of some kind. Yeah.

0:14:32 Matt: You could really hurt somebody, no doubt.

0:14:34 Thomas: Were there injuries? Were there, like what? I'm still so confused. We've covered this before. I still don't understand what even happened, like what the charges are. I don't get it. Like, was somebody attacked with fireworks?

0:14:47 Ron: No, far from it. I mean, there were multiple state witnesses that all agreed there were there was no damage or no injuries caused by these fireworks. It was a rainy day also. So the ground was wet. There was no sign of like a fire potentially starting anywhere. Where there's multiple CCTV cameras that showed these fireworks going off in the air. A couple of them were angled a little bit more laterally and went like towards a perimeter fence line instead of really high into the air but even the warden himself who testified to all the damage that was done agreed that no damage was done by fireworks and even remarked that fireworks like that couldn't possibly hurt his facility. The folks were outside of the perimeter fence line shooting these fireworks in the air. And as you can imagine, with most jails or prisons or detention centers, the fence line is also very far from the building itself. So we're talking, I would guess, you know, something close to 100 yards from where these fireworks were being shot in the Air to where the facility or the closest human actually was. Certainly.

0:15:54 Matt: These fireworks brought the attention of law enforcement, obviously, inside the facility. And that's when we get into the meat of the charges here. And of course, we're talking a few weeks after the verdict, which was March 18th. And as a matter of law, Benjamin Song, I believe, has been convicted for attempted murder of a law enforcement officer. That is the reality that we're working with here. You alluded to the account of the true story, what happened that that night. If you want to share a little bit about the defense that was presented at trial and where they're coming from, I'd like to hear about that.

0:16:24 Ron: I mean, Javi can certainly fill in some as well. But I think the important distinction that we learned right from the very first witness is the state had been hammering this ambush narrative that Antifa terrorists were luring police officers and ICE agents out of this detention center to murder them. We learned right away that that's not what happened. This is a large facility, and there was a group of people spread out in different areas around this facility. One group, the largest constituency of them, went along the perimeter fence to shoot fireworks and yell in a megaphone in the spot where they saw windows and they thought maybe they could be heard. A couple other people were on the other side of it, where people did spray paint and break a surveillance camera. And then in a different area altogether, kind of the entranceway where the gate is, is where Ben Song was standing as like a safety role, open carrying a rifle and watching to see if anyone came or went.

0:17:37 Ron: We learned that a couple guards came out with the fireworks and told people they had to leave. Almost everyone at that point did leave. After most everyone had left is when the first police officer arrived. The police officer, we saw their body cam and dash cam videos. They, within two or three seconds of arriving, immediately got out of their car and pulled their gun on someone who was running away from them, pointed it at their back, and Ben Song fired a few warning shots. What was alleged by Ben's defense is that those shots went into the ground. The CCTV kind of showed dust clouds coming up from the ground as though bullets were hitting the ground, and it seemed somehow a fragment of something or a ricochet bullet ended up hitting that cop in the shoulder, kind of above the collarbone. The cop then turned and fired his gun at Bensong and hit Ben's rifle on the side of its body as though the rifle was turned sideways away from the police officer. At that point, backup was called, everyone that they could track down. People were parked kind of a little ways away in a neighborhood. People, as they were still walking to their cars and had not yet arrived, were rounded up by police officers. And ever since then, they've been incarcerated. Correct.

0:18:59 Matt: To be clear, I understand that Benjamin Song was a former Marine Corps reservist, and I assume that was a legally registered weapon at firearm.

0:19:07 Ron: None of the weapons that they took from anyone's houses or anyone's person are alleged to be illegally owned or stolen or anything illicit about them. They're all legal guns.

0:19:19 Matt: I'm just going to assume I've only been to Texas for a day or two, but it seems possible that in an event like this that you might expect right -wing counter -protesters, is that something that people are concerned about around there?

0:19:28 Ron: Yeah, of course, very much so. I think folks that are in opposition to the way ICE operates and the way detention is administered in this country are in a minority in North Texas. A number of the defendants also are trans people, and they certainly face a lot of repression everywhere in the U .S., and especially in North Texas.

0:19:50 Ron: And I think it makes people feel safer to defend themselves that way.

0:19:55 Matt: And that's absolutely the right. We know the state of mind because there were signal chats before the event where they were organizing. There's a pretty clear expression, as I understand it, in the signal chats that this was not the intent. The intent was to do a noise protest, and there was discussion of showing up armed or not, and that was about it, as I understand it. Did I get that right?

0:20:12 Ron: Yes, that's right. I mean, there were questions about if people were going to be bringing guns. There was a difference of opinion. Some of the defendants were not into it. Song said that they were going too. But there was certainly no planning or plotting, as alleged by the state, that there was an ambush or that people had any intention on using the guns for anything other than just open carrying and being a deterrent from any repression or violence towards them. Right.

0:20:38 Matt: Okay. Yeah, and I just wanted to settle that up because, obviously, we're talking about a lot of people. Ultimately, the conviction for the most serious offense for this shot that was fired, or shots, there's no allegation that anybody else took any shots. The legal responsibility came down to Benjamin Song for the assault on the law enforcement officer, and then everyone else was charged with basically supporting. And then the explosives charges, I think that's pretty fair summary.

0:21:01 Ron: I mean, material support for terrorism is the other big one that everyone was charged with, except for one person who wasn't there.

0:21:05 Matt: Right. Yeah, we should get into that. So I flagged this back when the superseding indictment was filed as a very concerning development of the use of material support for terror in this domestic way, because obviously the terror group that's alleged, first of all, doesn't exist. I think we can agree that capital A Antifa is not an organization unto itself. And this North Texas terror cell thing was completely fabricated as some sort of combination of social networks that they're putting together. But I wanted to talk to to have you hear a little bit about this part of it, because this is, to me, this is the most concerning. All of this is very concerning, and I'm very sympathetic to how this has gone down. This material support for terror charge, I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn, first of all, that you don't actually have to prove any actual connection to a terror organization, and yet they spent a lot time pre -trial and at trial talking about Antifa. So what's that about?

0:21:54 Xavier: Yeah, so I think part of the strategy of the federal government in this case was creating the first Antifa terror cell. We know that no such thing exists just in reality in the world we live in. There are no Antifa terror cells in the United States. The FBI itself concluded that during Trump's first administration. And in the Dallas -Fort Worth area, there's been reports that the FBI concluded the same for DFW -Antifa, a group that existed during Trump's First Administration. It doesn't have criminal elements to it. They concluded. However, there's a federal offense that's called providing material supports to terrorists terrorists that when you read it, it doesn't even need to have a domestic terrorist organization or any organization at all. What that offense criminalizes is materially supporting the commission of a bunch of enumerated offenses, which includes, right, the murder charge that was brought in this case.

0:23:06 Thomas: A murder charge? Wait, what?

0:23:08 Matt: Attempted.

0:23:09 Xavier: The attempted murder charge, yes. In other words, it's a workaround, right you charge people with material support for terrorism so the government can have the political benefits and the scandal of it for its propaganda machine I would say but when you go to the offense itself and even the the trial itself they didn't need to establish any terrorist organization any terrorist group any group in general because all that's required is is individual material support for these offenses.

0:23:45 Matt: Yeah, it's a very strange statute. I hadn't really taken a closer look at it until I got into this trial. And it's just to be clear for everybody listening, it's 18 U .S .C. 2339A. And there is also a 2339B. And BUI is familiar with as an immigration attorney because that is providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations, which are enumerated by Congress, where they actually will list out and who the agency can update that list. So you know for sure that if you're sending money to Al -Qaeda or Hezbollah or something, we understand that that's material support for terror. That's pretty easy to get your head around. But there is no such thing in the law, as I understand it, as a domestic terror organization, even though they've tried now to designate capital A Antifa as such an organization, 2339A does not require that you prove that as an element, which I just was very surprised about.

0:24:27 Xavier: And what the federal government has done, right, you're totally head on, there's 2339B, the FTO, Foreign Terrorist Organization statute. What the federal department did is they did designate Antifa OST as a foreign terrorist organization, OST. What Antifa Ost is, is a Germany -based alleged group.

0:24:44 Thomas: Antifa what? Uh -huh.

0:24:52 Xavier: Now, if you look at the designation itself, Hungary declared Antifa Ost a terrorist organization. And when you look it up, in my opinion, from a legal perspective, it resembles an ideology as well. It's not clear if there's even an organization. But again, right, this federal government does workarounds. I have an intuition that because now there is such a thing as an Antifa Host foreign terrorist organization, this government might draw some kind of confusing line to what is happening domestically. Even during the trial, that was one of the things brought up, that international solidarity organizations were helping with legal fees for the Prairieland defendants. We are in a quite troublesome political reality. This federal government is doing every workaround to call anti -fascist terrorists.

0:25:48 Thomas: Matt, how is any of that constitutional? I don' t understand.

0:25:52 Matt: I'd like to know that myself. As far as I know, this is a first -time use of this statute against anything called Antifa. It's pretty rare from what I was looking into that they use this statute against domestic groups at all. 2339B is very commonly used for all kinds of things, the international aspect, but the domestic one is very concerning because obviously that can be turned on all of us.

0:26:11 Thomas: How far does it date back? Is it from 9 -11 or is it from, like, you know, Oklahoma City or something? Or what is it?

0:26:16 Matt: A, I believe, goes back to 94. That was actually, I believe, it was a Joe Biden joint, if I remember correctly,

0:26:22 Thomas: Take something like Oklahoma City. Does it make sense to charge? You know, that's domestic terrorism. It's not like domestic terrorism doesn't exist, but you're saying there's no such thing as a domestic terror organization? I guess I didn't totally understand that point.

0:26:28 Matt: As a designation, the way there is for foreign terrorist organization. And when Trump signed an executive order, my understanding, and just from my look at all of this, is that that was just meaningless. It basically just allows them to investigate them in a different kind of way or to treat the FBI. I'm sorry, maybe I should just ask about this because I'm I'm trying to understand it myself. We've talked before about NPSM -7, the memo that basically designated Antifa as something of concern. And I guess I'd be interested to know, Javier, how that memo and how the Antifa designation plays into this investigation, because it seems like it really did end into this trial.

0:27:09 Xavier: The reality of the case is, I mean, if you look at it at how it evolved, it started being described as a pre -planned ambush to kill police officers. Then it evolved to something larger until eventually in one of the indictments Antifa was named. So there was also a evolution in the charges that the government was crafting. I think when this first happened, the local police probably was like, oh gosh, someone shot at one of our cops, right? Like this was the focus of the investigation. But as the federal government got involved, I believe that they saw an opportunity to test the Antifa prosecution and the Antifascare. They jumped on it the political effect the psychological effect on social movements might be more important and more impactful than the legal effect legally this is a case very narrow very specific in the northern district of texas with a very specific judge but nationwide this might have way more impacts than just that

0:28:22 Matt: Yeah. And then I want to talk about at the end too about sort of what this means in the broader way. But maybe Ron, you could speak to this as well. But I understand the investigation was pretty aggressive once the federal government really got going on this and just went after pretty much anybody who might have been associated with the signal chat. Is that what happened?

0:28:39 Ron: There were many homes that were raided, and these were very aggressive SWAT team raids. These weren't just, we have a warrant knocking on your door. People with their doors and windows smashed open, flashbang grenades being thrown. People's electronics seized who still don't have charges in this case and have been without their computers or whatnot for the better part of a year now. A lot of it has to do with people that were connected not by what they did, but with how they think. There was kind of a larger announcements chat on this app Signal that y 'all are probably familiar with, just a messaging app. And there was like a North Texas events and discussion, news and discussion chat where anything with there's a protest or an event, like I'm sure like these No Kings marches or rallies that just happened. In. Info about those would be things as example that would be shared on them. There's a new book or interesting political analysis that's been published. Maybe a link to that would be shared. People might chat about that. But it has hundreds of people. It's not like an intimate private chat. The state made a big deal about that as being evidence of like an actual organization, an actual cell

0:29:53 Ron: Of people that are connected only for their desire to somehow do terrorism in America.

0:30:01 Matt: And as Javier said, I can't imagine the psychological effects across the board for organizing in Texas and in a place where, as you said, you're already in the minority ideologically.

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0:30:13 Matt: How did this progress when it got to trial as things were getting into pretrial stages? What was notable? I guess, Javier, I'll ask you kind of how this went

0:30:21 Xavier: From the get -go the amount of charges and the the bonds set at the state level were super overwhelming. The breadth, the size, the scope of the federal investigation was also very intense. Houses were raided. People were pulled over on the street randomly. So much property was taken away. That didn't stop for a while. Raids continued all the way until August, September in the DFW area. And then as the the federal indictments, the final drafts were finished and indicted, the judge who oversaw the case, Judge Pittman, started issuing orders and decisions that made defending the case harder and harder. What stands out is he fined some lawyers for filing motions on discovery. He fined $500. He threatened another lawyer with contempt and six months in jail if he didn't withdraw from the the case because the judge didn't believe that he was a local attorney and he only was going to allow local lawyers. Then eventually this became, you know, big news. He declared a mistrial originally because one of the defense attorneys wore a t -shirt with civil rights leaders during the first jury selection. Yes.

0:31:13 Thomas: What?

0:31:24 Matt: During jury selection, right? Yeah, sure.

0:31:40 Xavier: The way that he contained and constrained the trial with time Time limits and limitations on objections and rules on court decorum made it a very tight and challenging case to defend against, really. The atmosphere in the courtroom during the trial was like there was no oxygen because it was so tightly prescribed. There were so many marshals looking at everyone in the audience. Family members were kicked out for allegedly falling asleep or making a face. That reality during the trial was happening throughout all the months leading up to it that is something that we can't take for granted because it affected the case itself and its outcome in

0:32:26 Matt: So I understand what kind of discovery motion do you have to file to get a fine? What was that about?

0:32:32 Xavier: Federal criminal cases state criminal cases defendants have really really large rights to discovery I mean essentially they get everything the state has and more one of the defense attorneys attorneys, one of the defendants argued that they hadn't received everything. One of the things that stands up the most is that to date, there have been no medical records for the officer that was shot.

0:32:55 Matt: That's incredible.

0:32:56 Xavier: The basic evidence wasn't even provided.

0:32:59 Matt: You're saying assault to murder and you don't have evidence that there was even an injury.

0:33:03 Xavier: Yeah. And the evidence they use was the pictures, you know, the tissue on the bulletproof vest, but otherwise all the descriptions of the bullet and its trajectory was all based on their perception and the EMTs basically. The motion was essentially pointing that there's more. And what the judge determined is that, nope, the government said there's not more.

0:33:26 Xavier: You need to withdraw this motion or I'm going to fine you because it's frivolous. From a legal perspective, when motions are withdrawn, right, when the motions are taken away, you might give up appeal arguments. The risk, right, of filing motions and getting fined might have prevented many other motions and objections to be filed in this case. That's really awful because it might mean that if we ever get to appeals, the court of appeals might say, well, you didn't complain about this, so you waived it.

0:34:01 Matt: Right, right. You didn't raise it. I mean, I'm still trying to get my head around that because the officer did go to the hospital. I don't think it was very long, right? But there would be records of some kind.

0:34:09 Xavier: There should be a lot of records, as I mentioned before, even in these Times report that there is these FBI reports that were not turned over from years ago. Who knows how much wasn't given over?

0:34:18 Matt: This is the 2018 reports that essentially said that they didn't consider Antifa, quote unquote, to be any kind of threat to Dallas.

0:34:27 Xavier: Yes, and perhaps the discussions of the trial itself can clarify that, but my understanding is that DFW Antifa, whatever that was, was connected by the agents to presently existing organizations and proof that Antifa is real.

0:34:44 Thomas: So is any of that like Brady violation type stuff, Matt, potentially?

0:34:48 Matt: It sounds Sounds like it could be if they know that they're holding on to information that says that they know that Antifa, at least as of some period of time, was not a threat.

0:34:55 Thomas: Well, in the officer records, is that anything?

0:34:58 Matt: Right. Oh, yeah. Right, it seems like that on the case, but that sounds like a Brady argument. It just sounds really strange all around.

0:35:04 Xavier: Yes. And I think part of the challenge of this case too, is that for a federal defense attorney in Fort Worth, Texas, a lot of these concepts and and ideologies and allegations are very foreign. People who have been in activist spaces or in movement organizations might be a bit more familiar, right, like with Antifa and what it means and what It doesn't mean and how it's an ideology and there's no group. But when you present to a, you know, a regular run of the mill criminal defense attorney with these accusations, they might accept them as true, or at least like arguably true. And that's something that is very very dangerous with this government that truths are being presented that are not based in reality at all. We know this and we remember the fake news, first Trump administration. But now for some reason, when the Department of Justice says it, a lot of people across the political spectrum give it some kind of belief or that that must be true. You have federal agents lying about everything on the stand across the country. So this is a very important moment to have critical analysis, I would say.

0:36:17 Matt: Yeah. Small a, Antifa. It's just that we're all talking about the same thing here, of course. I think we can agree as an ideology, a set of strategies and tactics, mostly community defense oriented. It is just incredible to see the way that that has been twisted around and used this way. The simple concept of opposing fascism in the United States are anywhere in the world. And I want to ask about that. The prosecution expert, I think it was Schibler, that was brought in. The more I read about this guy and where he was coming from, I just couldn't believe that this was somebody that the government was relying on to tell the jury about capital A Antifa. If either of you want to talk about that,

0:36:47 Ron: I mean, I would love to hear Javi's take on some of his legal analysis. But what I can say from hearing his testimony is he is someone who graduated with a bachelor's degree in literature, and that's the extent of his education. He works for a think tank that's been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

0:37:10 Thomas: What?

0:37:11 Ron: Yeah, it's called Center for security policy, I believe. He outlined his career during the trial. He's done a lot of Islamophobic fear -mongering before he fell into the Antifa lane, and that seems to be his bread and butter. That's how he makes money, is researching leftists of all different stripes, trying to frame anything they're doing as anti -government terrorism. Of course, Of course, there are a lot of leftists who are very critical of the U .S. government for a lot of legitimate reasons and would love to see a different form of social organization. And I think his role is to describe any of that activity as terrorism. To his credit, he seems to have read a lot anarchist and leftist, communist or socialist materials, although he certainly is no know, like historical expert, and he kind of said some things that were untrue about the history and development of leftist politics in the US throughout the 20th century. But largely, when people are talking about some of the ways that these defendants were organizing themselves into affinity groups, or some ofthe ways they were talking about taking action and together, he was with it with that type of language. And some of many of the zines that were seized from people's houses as evidence of criminality. In this case, he had read a lot of those zines. He was not fairly or accurately portraying them in his testimony, but he does seem like more literate than the average right winger about like leftist politics. I guess that's the best, most generous thing I can say about him.

0:38:57 Matt: Interesting though, that his background is in Islamophobia, basically. I'd looked into that center before, and that is really something that says a lot about where we're at right now, that you change gears that way. Javier, I wanted to ask you, what is the purpose of that testimony from the government's perspective, if you don't have to prove connection, why would you spend hours having this man on the stand?

0:39:10 Thomas: That's what I was just going to ask.

0:39:15 Xavier: From my perspective, this was a pure political theater. Part of the judge's orders and rulings prevented the defense from objecting to this testimony because the judge set very strict deadlines that if you want to object to an expert, you need to do it within this amount of days before the trial. Once you get to the trial and they do put the so -called expert on the stand, I mean, usually that's when the defense objects and, you know, you question them and you question their credentials. But the judge was basically like, nope, I already said you can't, you could do it this time. And so now you can.

0:39:27 Thomas: What? What? I thought you'd do the voir dire of the expert, Matt. Matt, what isn't, isn't that how it goes?

0:39:57 Matt: What was up with that?

0:39:58 Xavier: The judge said that the defense had opportunity to voir dire before the trial, and we're not going to spend any more minutes on this objection overruled, because I already gave you an opportunity and nobody objected. I mean, this is the summary of how the judge ran the trial. Very strict deadlines before they usually are due right, in normal practice that would prevent the defense from objecting because how can you object to what you don't know?

0:40:25 Matt: You haven't seen the guy.

0:40:26 Xavier: And if you object to what, you don t know you get sanctioned for filing a frivolous objection, right? This is the setup of the case. The purpose of this expert was to essentially convince the jury that Antifa exists and that these people are all part of an organization. And therefore, they all shared plan, intent, motive, purpose, which was required for all of these charges. To provide material support for terrorism, even though you don't need a terrorist organization, you do need the mental state that you were providing support, the knowledge that you're going to get an outcome.

0:41:04 Matt: They were going with a Pinkerton conspiracy legal theory as well.

0:41:08 Thomas: Sorry, is that, is that illegal?

0:41:10 Matt: Yeah, I was going to elaborate on that in a minute, but I think I remember that correctly. I'm not looking at it right now.

0:41:15 Xavier: Yes, all counts have accomplished Pinkerton conspiracy liability. And the government was really clear, too, on the law that if there's a foreseeable likelihood that you're doing something and you know that the outcome is going to be crime, then everyone is guilty. So if the jury was convinced that Antifa exists and that they're part of a terror cell, then of course, yes, everything anyone does in a terror cell could foreseeably lead to crime.

0:41:44 Matt: And the Pinkerton liability from, I think it's 1946, it's like the broadest kind of conspiracy. It's the federal standard, I don't think it was the Pinkertons. I think think it was a guy named Pickerton, but I'm sure the Pickertons did plenty of crimes too. But yeah, it's a pretty extreme form of, maybe not extreme, but it's the federal version of conspiracy. And it really does hold people liable way down the train. I remember my law professor talking about it like a train. You can go pretty far down the chain tracks. That kind of brings me to another point here about what Ron had mentioned about the literature and about this sort of this talk about tactics and organizing. The fact that there are a couple of obstruction charges here of her husband and wife who essentially, as I understand it, moved a box of so -called Antifa leftist literature. Is that really what happened?

0:41:50 Thomas: Is it like from the Pinkertons? Like, okay. Oh, it's like, yeah, yeah.

0:42:31 Ron: Well, it's even a bit more absurd than that. But yes, one of the defendants that was arrested the night of July 4th wasn't able to call her partner until the 6th of July so not even the next day or the first day that she was incarcerated. Proactively she had bunnies at her house you know they didn't live in the same house her partner had gone to her house and fed her animals and allegedly had taken some zines or some literature and some artwork. He's a tattoo artist and some of his artwork out of the house. This seems like very reasonable behavior. If you're have found out that your friend or your partner is just accused of illicit behavior. I mean, these aren't illegal things, but it's like, yeah, I, my, my drawing of a possum that says all cops are bastards. Maybe I don't want this hanging in the wall when the police come.

0:43:30 Ron: It was things like that. He packed some of them up in a box on the 5th of July. And we know this because he was already being tracked by the FBI the very next day.

0:43:42 Thomas: Jesus.

0:43:42 Ron: And we got to see where his phone was going from their FBI phone. They call it a cast monitoring or mapping. They were staking out his house. And then on the 6th of July, the next day, they had their first conversation. And of course, she asked basic life things that you would ask if you're incarcerated, facing very serious charges, insurmountable bail, and you're scared, you're asking to like, look after things in the house, take care of the house. It was like a 20 minute long phone call and the states cherry picked a few seconds here and there to play for the jury, where they made it seem like they were intentionally using innuendo to ask the husband to destroy evidence of some kind or another or hide materials that led to the criminality they're alleging on the night of July 4th. The FBI that was staking out saw that this person, Daniel Sanchez, Dez, known by his friends as Dez had arrived with this box and they eventually pulled him over. He delivered that box to a friend's house. That friend said she got a call like, hey, I've got a bunch of zines. I'm just trying to donate. Can I give them to your archive? She said, yes. He dropped off the zines and after that he was arrested. That person's house was was raided, the zines were seized as evidence, but not one single thing in that box was actually used as evidence in trial.

0:45:20 Ron: The accusation is because he moved documents, not actually evidence, just documents that a crime was committed. And then they got him on two charges, the second being conspiracy because they had planned. But like I said, the actual conversation happened happened the day after the box got moved. So they're applying a conspiracy kind of after the fact that he'd already done something. They talked about it later. He said, no, no. Don't worry. I already fed your animals. I already took care of your house. It's fine. But still the jury convicted on a conspiracy to move those documents for both of them.

0:45:57 Matt: I'm looking at the indictment and the superseding indictments, page 21. It refers to, it is incriminating evidence, this box, Antifa materials, anti -law enforcement, anti government, anti immigration enforcement documents and propaganda. I would not, as even as a lawyer, consider the possibility that might be incriminated evidence from what I understand about what was in that box. Things like a flyer that included somebody tossing a swastika into the trash or something, right? Just like pretty standard leftist materials, right, is it?

0:46:24 Ron: Yeah.

0:46:24 Matt: Nothing about how to overthrow the government by force?

0:46:27 Ron: And the state was clear that they were asked and several witnesses were asked if anything of those those particular scenes in that box or from any of the other houses that were searched were illegal or like suggestive of terrorist intentions. The lead FBI agent on the case was like, no, none of this is illegal. It's freedom of speech. Having all these materials is totally legal and fine. It is confusing to a lot of us.

0:46:53 Thomas: Yeah, I don't get it. Yeah.

0:46:54 Ron: If it was not used as evidence against them and they moved it the day before the phone call at all, how could it possibly be a criminal act?

0:47:04 Thomas: Why don't Matt, What is happening here?

0:47:07 Matt: Sure.

0:47:07 Thomas: I don't understand how any of this could happen.

0:47:08 Matt: I got no answers here, Xavier.

0:47:11 Xavier: It's a fascist government doing fascist prosecutions based on ideology and beliefs. And I think part of the wake -up call for people across the country is that the court systems and the legal institutions are being used by the federal government to stop opposition, pro -immigrant activism, pro trans activism, and so on, just as countries around the world do it all the time when authoritarians take over in many ways right this is people are like well that's just discourse that's ideology that's theory but we look at these investigations these indictments these trials and it's hard to pretend that that's not what's happening especially when you follow the case since july 2025 and you see how it evolved These are frontline political defendants for this administration.

0:48:09 Matt: Political prisoners. I mean, when that superseding indictment came down, I was aware of the case before. I honestly hadn't really been following it, I'll admit. Basically, I saw the government narrative. I thought there got to be something else going on here. But then when I saw that superseding entitlement, I knew that we were were in a different territory. This is something else going on.

0:48:27 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:48:28 Matt: So I wanted to ask you what this means for the future of essentially political prosecution and for how leftist organizations can expect. I mean, I've seen people saying things like, you know, now it's going to be a crime to wear black clothing and have Antifa tattoos. I hope it doesn't go that far. It seems like it's more about these signal chats and sort of the other things that were surrounding this. But you know what can we draw from this? What kind of precedent is this going to to be, do you think?

0:48:54 Xavier: We can talk about legal precedent, which, as I mentioned, this is a very narrow, specific case in the Northern District of Texas. So many lawyers and legal scholars will kind of scoff and they'll say, well, this just happened there and there was a shooting, right? Like very specific set of facts to translate that to the rest of the country. You can't really do that right from like the legal scholar mentality. But from a political analysis and from a realist approach to the law, this is a warning sign of protesting ICE. We can't forget history, too. This happened July 2025. So this predated Renee Nicole Goode getting killed, Alex Pready getting killed. This predated Chicago Broadview facility protests, the CBP operations across the country. So the anti -ice sentiment hadn't really exploded as it is in this moment. And so the government seized the earliest possible opportunity in its campaign to quash dissent, really, and it really took it as far as possible. So what I think people can and should do is recognize that a lot of people didn't show up for the Prairieland defendants in time. The fight still continues for their cases. They have a long way ahead of them. And maybe one day, all the cases get dropped or reversed. But for me what society civil society should do in a moment like this is to continue organizing and standing up against the fascist government because the moment that people say gosh well they've got them over there we can't do this over here the goal of a political prosecution wins It's not about the convictions. It's about quashing resistance, opposition, a movement, and dissent. The long -term history of this country, this society, I mean, it will be depending on what happens now, what happens with the people supporting or opposing the Prairieland defendants, and what people get more support in this moment. Something that I think many people have been saying, and they've been saying since last July is, well, I'm not like them, right? I'm not wearing all black.

0:51:19 Xavier: I'm NOT bringing fireworks. And I'm NOT a part of groups that bring guns to protest. My answer is like, many of them were not like him either. They showed up to a noise demo, and this could have happened anywhere in the country, but it is because it happened in North Texas that we see this enormous example making.

0:51:39 Matt: And that's actually, I wanted to mention before we close here, you know, I mentioned the national security memo that we're all very concerned about. And I just want to tie that in because it's just what you just said. Common threads animating this violent conduct, referring to what they call the anti-fascist lie. This is straight from the NPS M7, because I really want to hammer that point that you just made about how this really could be any of us. Common threads animates this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the U .S. government, extremism on migration, race, and gender, extremism, on migration race and gender which I think we know what that means in this context, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality. And this is essentially giving the FBI, as I understand it, carte blanche to start investigating people who hold these views. And that's quite a lot of us and I think pretty much everybody listening to this has some version of something they could call those views. It's chilling.

0:52:29 Xavier: It is. And I mean, these are things that a lot of us just do even jokingly, right? Criticizing capitalism, criticizing Christianity, criticizing the patriarchy, especially younger generations take for granted that this is just culture. We criticize it. We laugh about it. We put it on social media. And now you have a federal directive to surveil and silence such things. I mean, yeah, it's on our face. Like we can't hide from it.

0:52:57 Matt: And this indictment, the superseding indictment came down I think maybe not even two months after that national security memo came down. I think it's hard not to see the connection there.

0:53:05 Thomas: Hold on. Can I, I'm most concerned about these actual people. Like how many people, what, how many people, What's the sentences that they They got, like, what are we talking about here? Because this is just insane to me.

0:53:17 Xavier: The nine defendants that didn't plead guilty that took it to trial will have sentencing later in June. And many of them are facing decades in prison because of the extreme nature of the charges. Defendant Song might be facing the equivalent of life in prison. I mean, it's an attempted murder of a government agent. An attempted murder of a government agent could carry enough decades that essentially you're in life in prison. The support these folks need will be long-term, and they will have post-trial motions, appeals, and so on. Unfortunately, being quite frank, they have not received support from the legal organizations that be that you would think would usually represent defendants like this, political defendants. The legal organizations that usually show up and provide free representation for decades are nowhere to be seen. So these defendants and their families and communities are basically depending on their own resources and fundraising to support them for the years to come.

0:54:21 Thomas: That baffles me. I can't believe that they wouldn't receive support from legal organizations. I was going to ask if they were able to have adequate counsel, because I don't know. You know, they sound like just kind of ordinary people who might not have, like a ton of resources. Is that, does that factor in? I mean, I don't want to besmirch anybody, but like, did that factor into how this went? It just strikes me that, yes, I agree that we are under a fascist government and they're going to try to do that. But so many things had to go wrong for this. I mean, the judge sounds insane. The jury sounds, frankly, insane. I don't how did that all come together? And do you think with better legal resources at their disposal, maybe this wouldn't have happened?

0:55:05 Xavier: I 100 % think that if the legal organizations that represented people after Al -Qaeda or after the different bombings in this country or that represent Black Lives Matter protesters or represented George Floyd protesters, the lawyers that have the skills and the knowledge on how to fight a political case, if they would have taken these cases, I think there would have been different outcomes because the way that these prosecutions can be fought is so different. You look at, for example, Luigi Mangione's very political defense, very public legal defense, it's working in his favor. And perhaps if one of those lawyers, again, from the legal organizations that be that are now lamenting the first Antifa veredict the first antifa prosecution if those organizations and lawyers had provided accessible legal representation we would have had a different outcome people say well yeah the context was hard and the jury was set the odds were stacked against the defendants yes but then at least there would have been more support and more arguments and more knowledgeable motions I don't think that many of the federal defense attorneys didn't do their best I think a lot of them did their very best. But again, this was a political case that required political knowledge to fight

0:56:28 Xavier: The federal government's propaganda and all its nasty strategies that many other lawyers are accustomed to in this type of case.

0:56:37 Matt: I completely agree, obviously, with your characterization here. But I was going to ask, it seems like maybe we should take a look at this statute, because it's really pretty vague, and it seems it's pretty easy to convict people on it. There's a lot of words in this statute that are pretty broad. And like I said, it doesn't require any tie to an actual terror organization. You think that something should be revisited?

0:56:56 Xavier: As an attorney who represents political defendants across the South with People's Law Collective as a part of NLG, I know that this type type of statute was written and designed for this type of prosecution. No matter how much we try to rewrite it, there are so many terrorism and political statutes that will be used against political defendants when the administration thinks so. So yes, these type of statutes that are vague and overbroad should be rewritten or thrown out. But from a realist political political perspective, they'll always exist, because the terrorists of today were once the terrorists that were Indigenous people and Black people who were trying to fight for their freedom.

0:57:43 Matt: No, it just struck me, just the history of this. And yeah, no, that's a great point, though. I think we're coming up on time here, but really appreciate both of your time. This has really been an interesting conversation.

0:57:53 Thomas: Yeah, I just it's outrageous. I don't even know how. How is everyone so calm?

0:58:00 Matt: I'm stuck this way.

0:58:00 Thomas: I don'T understand it. This doesn't make any sense to me. Really, people's lives have been ruined over nothing. I don't get it.

0:58:06 Ron: If I could just add one more or a couple quick points to emphasize what Javi is saying about the different stakes. If people are kind of wondering how escalated the situation is compared to recent history, I can say that all the court supporters, family members, support committee members that were not accused of doing anything wrong, but rallying outside of court in a park or attending a public federal trial, we were very visibly surveilled. Federal agents were very visibly recording our license plates, photographing us, things like that, because we are in theory associated or sympathetic to these defendants. To emphasize the point that was made earlier about the discovery documents from the In These Times piece, you know, that was in 2018. The FBI, Trump's first administration, the FBI is researching DFW Antifa. They're investigating specifically that group by name and concluding that there's no evidence of criminal activity and they are not a national terrorist threat and closing that investigation but in this trial they were showing that same group DFW Antifa's twitter all the way back scrolling all the way back to 2016 and showing what was happening using it as evidence against the the defendants, ill will, more or less just to demonize them, but to imply that this is criminal activity. So just from the first Trump administration to this administration, the exact same set of facts and information, which was just a few years ago deemed not a threat to national security, is now being prosecuted for terrorism in open court.

0:59:59 Matt: That's a really important point.

1:00:01 Thomas: Can't believe it. None of this makes any sense. I think we should continue to obviously keep an eye on this. Thanks so much for joining us and trying to explain what I think is inexplicable. But, you know, you did your best. I Don'T understand. It shouldn't have happened. Doesn't make sense. Never will.

1:00:17 Matt: And thank you both for your work in the different places you're doing this work. This is really important. And just really keep it going. Solidarity.

1:00:24 Xavier: Yes, thank you. And you know, as a final thing, I'd say, like I mentioned, these defendants are going to need so much support. So anyone who wants to plug in, you can go to prairielanddefendants .com. There's fundraisers, there's letter writing, there're resources, there are things you can print, there's events support these people and their friends and families will need is much appreciated thank you

1:00:45 Matt: We'll link to it. Thank you.

1:00:47 Ron: And there is one more trial coming up in a couple of weeks for Dario Sanchez, who has just state charges. The accusation against him is for removing someone from a signal chat and that being construed as destroying evidence. He wasn't involved in the federal case. He just has that state charge, but that starts on Monday, April 20th.

1:01:02 Matt: Thank you for that. That. And again, we will link to this information and a number of other things from the trial so people can check it out for themselves. But thanks again to you both. I really appreciate it.