Prairieland - 30 Years for Moving Magazines. These Are Real Human Lives, Ruined.

Transcript

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

0:00:03 Matt: January 6th really gives the lie to this about what happens when you have a government that gets to decide who's a terrorist and who's not. Benjamin Song is doing 100 years.

0:00:17 Matt: It is not an exaggeration to say that they got to the terrorism charges using $4,800 worth of damage between eight people, calling it terrorism.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1273. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is real life attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing, Matt?

0:00:35 Matt: Hey there, it's Supreme Court season, so, you know, I'm feeling pretty good about that. Something to do.

0:00:40 Thomas: Well, I, oh shoot. I just moved a little bit of leftist literature from my desk over to the floor and now I'm under arrest and I'm doing 30 years.

0:00:50 Matt: That's going to be a problem.

0:00:50 Thomas: So, uh, yeah, they're going to let me finish this episode though. So we can do that. But then I'm, then I'm booked. I'm in jail.

0:00:57 Matt: Yeah. Unbelievably true. Not even jokes.

0:01:01 Thomas: Yeah, it's insane.

0:01:02 Matt: It really is. Yeah!

0:01:02 Thomas: I don't get it.

0:01:03 Matt: You can go back and listen into OA-1252 most recently with our interview with the Prairieland Defense Committee and lawyer. I was still thinking about that conversation this week, and then we just heard about sentencing this Wednesday. And we've got to talk about the Prairland case. We've got to actually go deep on it because I have not been able to think about anything else since I saw this sentence, since I Saw the Injustice of this, the combined 450 years that these eight people are facing for attending a protest.

0:01:30 Thomas: Unreal.

0:01:31 Matt: It is. And we'll take the facts head on, but I really want to dig into the law because it is beyond what I thought. When we were talking with Javier Dejan, he's a movement lawyer who's been working on this case and others like it. He really got me thinking about the nature of the law here, which is the real problem. The judge is certainly a problem, as we'll talk about, but the law really is what did them in, and it's something we have to address. And the government's case is so shoddy and so poorly constructed that it's worth just taking it apart right now. And that's what I want to do because I'm angry about this.

0:02:02 Thomas: Well, yeah. We did that episode and I was asking you, I was like, what is happening?

0:02:06 Matt: Yeah, no.

0:02:06 Thomas: I didn't understand. I still don't get it. It was tricky because, like, obviously, when you're interviewing the lawyer from one side or whatever, obviously you might get a little bit of a skewed view. And so, you know, I kept asking, like what are we missing something? What's going on?

0:02:20 Matt: Yeah.

0:02:20 Thomas: You know, and I'm glad that now we're finally getting to the bottom of this so we can see where are we messing something that.

0:02:28 Matt: No, yeah. And it may not make any more sense to you when we're done, but at least we'll have really gone through it. And we did kind of the surface level review with Javier because we were more interested in just getting the whole picture of the trial and what was going on at the time. But now that we can see the whole thing in the review and we can see what's happened and I really had them to think about it, we have to talk about this because this is the future of criminalization of dissent in this country. We can't put anything past these people. But on the other side of that, I promise we have an actual classic platonic footnote, note, a fun classic. This is going to be a good one. I'm not even going to tell you anything about it. It's one of those where I just want to have you read it.

0:02:54 Thomas: Man, did I get friend zoned by the footnote or? Oh, no, it's like is in the platonic ideal of that. OK, thank God, because

0:03:03 Matt: Platonic foot. Well, it does just want to be friends.

0:03:07 Thomas: I am sleeping with a footnote. I don't know. That was going to be news to me.

0:03:11 Matt: I get it. I got it. You know me. I've got my footnote fetish.

0:03:14 Thomas: Good.

0:03:15 Matt: Yeah, this is a classic. It is one of the ones I just wanted to put in front of you, have you to read it and enjoy it.

0:03:18 Thomas: We're going to need it, I suspect.

0:03:20 Matt: Yes, we will. It's one of these rare ones where it s funny and entertaining and educating. We can actually learn something about the law.

0:03:27 Thomas: There is a lot of Supreme Court to talk about, but I just really like when I saw the Prairieland thing, I actually think people online online are getting a little too galaxy brain about this because if you go online anywhere and I you know I know we're only supposed to read into that so much but it's pretty ubiquitous everywhere I see is like yeah it's you know they're mad about it but they're like oh well yeah that's an appeal they'll get out maybe it might be possible but do you have any idea how ruined their lives

0:03:56 Matt: And where that appeal is going, because that's relevant too. It's a Fifth Circuit appeal. It is not the easiest circuit.

0:04:00 Thomas: Are yeah oh but you have the supreme court yeah I'm

0:04:04 Matt: Oh, yeah. Although there might be some stuff in here they can't ignore, as we'll talk about.

0:04:09 Thomas: Hoping so but still I Even, like, let's just pretend the rosiest view is true and all they have to do is, what, be in prison for some period of time while they appeal, right? I mean, like that's life ruining. There isn't, like the amount that people, in my view, maybe I'm just seeing a bad selection, but the amount of people seem to be just like, oh, yeah, no, that's an appalling misconduct by the judge. They'll be out of there.

0:04:36 Thomas: And it's like, first off, maybe, but even on the rosiest view, your life is ruined.

0:04:42 Matt: These are people with kids and jobs and lives that they were living and a lot of communities that depend on them. That's very real too. We did have a chance in that last interview to talk about the defendants. I'm going to bring this out a little bit more as we're talking. I just can't emphasize enough how ordinary these people are.

0:04:56 Matt: I mean, they're heroes in their own own way, but they are just regular community members who are trying to help out. There's a lot to cover here. And as you said, I want to get to the Supreme Court cases, especially from this week. I think a few of them are going to go under the radar. There was an immigration case that I think needs a much better explanation than the media has been giving it. There were a pair of cases from Tuesday morning that were so weirdly timed that I think that they're actually trolling us. You know how they kind of do the playlist thing where they release themed sets of cases?

0:05:17 Thomas: Oh God. They made us the world's worst mixtape.

0:05:21 Matt: Yeah. My joke was this is an oops, Elliot Smith playlist. I'm a fan. No, I'm I'm a fan.

0:05:25 Thomas: Oh, shut up. My favorite artist. No, I can't even, I Can't. That's just good. I can'T, I'm so sorry. That's like my religion. Like that's like any comparison to the Supreme Court is a little tough. That's full.

0:05:29 Matt: He's just very, it's very sad. I know. And he's a great songwriter, but okay. Hey, if that's fair. Okay.

0:05:40 Thomas: You're drawing pictures of the prophet, my friend. I can't. That's that's a tough one. I'm trying to keep my chill, man. I've tried to keep my chill.

0:05:43 Matt: Take your point. I'm not a fan of him. I'm just a fan, absolutely. But he doesn't have a lot of happy songs, though. I think you can give me that.

0:05:52 Thomas: Oh, I love it so much. God, I love it. The brilliance of the music makes me happy.

0:05:57 Matt: Absolutely. No. Beautiful songs. Yeah.

0:05:57 Thomas: It doesn't really doesn't really matter. But no, I take your point. It's yeah, it is the the world's saddest playlist for sure.

0:06:02 Matt: I mean, the closest thing that you can squeeze onto good news in a foreclosure case, we'll get there. We'll talk about it. We also got to catch up on the weed and guns case that we covered a couple months ago because that had an interesting outcome, pretty much as I predicted, but still great to talk about. And of course, we got the big ones, the big marquee cases coming up. We've got 12 left as of the time we're recording right now. There's going to be another drop on Thursday and then another one on Monday. And I think that's it. That's the game. So we're going to have to do a couple episodes probably to catchup with all this.

0:06:28 Thomas: All right. And then they they F off to their flags and jets, their flags, and jets like they got to go off to.

0:06:31 Matt: Yeah. And deal with the consequences of having upheld birthright citizenship. Yeah, we'll see.

0:06:37 Thomas: Yeah. Well, so much to talk about uh but we we have got to talk about Prairieland so we'll take our first break here which you can avoid at patreon.com/law, hey support the show really important to get the word out about this and many other things the other plus side is uh some goodies law awful movies those have been coming out and they're fun every time we got the next one planned so all kinds of good reasons to support at patreon dot com slash law and hey if you can't no worries but please share the show just share it with somebody especially this one because I think people are just not they're not getting it on this one I I think and and obviously we're going to hear from the expert but it's I I think it's safe to say you're with agree with me that people are not getting this one

0:07:17 Matt: There's a lot going on here. And there's also, I think that the media has been dodging this case because of what's at the center of it, as we'll talk about, but I don't think they should. And I think we need to confront this head on for what it is.

0:07:26 Thomas: All right patreon.com/law we'll be right back okay matt where do you want to start I'm handcuffed to my desk because I moved a few magazines but uh you know other than that yeah

0:07:32 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:07:36 Matt: Sure. Before your probation officer gets in, let's just check in here on what happened on July 4th, 2025. We're coming up on the one year anniversary of the protest that set this off. We had a chance to talk, as I said, with the defense committee, incredible group doing great work in their communities, really a model of community organizing around these defendants. And I'm going to tell you by the end here that they need more support than ever right now. They were telling us about these people, about how they're members of book clubs and active in community defense and mutual aid.

0:08:04 Thomas: Well which book clubs though matt you can't just she can't be a member of a book club apparently

0:08:07 Matt: That's true. That is true. I think one of them at least was the Emma Goldman book clubs. That it is very suspect. You read about them and these are people I would expect to run into in Somerville or JP around here in Boston, and just ordinary. And quite a number of these people were trans or queer or otherwise.

0:08:25 Thomas: Yeah I think we're just struggling around is like these are yet ordinary ordinary people in the sense that, and I think it's really important, ordinary people who did pretty ordinary things. And it's important to say that. But also, and I've said this with Preddy and these other mergers, like the people out there doing this work are extraordinary in that way. And they're amazing and a lot of people whose identities are impacted are likely going to be out there on the front lines. It's a duality, like ordinary in a sense that this could be any one of us, but extraordinary in, in thatway, I think.

0:08:55 Matt: That's right. That's a good way to put it. These people were used to organizing. They're from overlapping groups of organizing, as we were told by the committee of people who were talking to us. They were planning what's called a noise protest on July 4th, which, again, show up with fireworks at an ICE detention facility, make some noise, support the people in there, let them know, and let them see some fireworks. This was supposed to be a way to support the People there. It was also, of course, a protest. But it's pretty clear, even from the government's case, and I've looked at the government case, I've seen the texts that that they're using to support all of this. And I'm reading this obviously a bit biased, but the way that I'm read this, it is a number of people getting together, agreeing to meet up for a noise protest and being prepared for the worst and being prepared to defend themselves and doing some surveillance ahead of time to make sure that they would know how to safely assemble and how to make where they know where people are going to be coming out of this facility potentially or how many people might be there. Not because there's any talk whatsoever about assaulting the facility or taking any strike or any kind of action against them. That was not the purpose. That's not what happened. I want to stress that. But we do have to confront head on the fact that Benjamin Song also goes by Champagne, was a trained Marine. He brought a rifle to protest. He observed something that he considered to be a situation that required him to defend another person from a police officer. So he took a shot, maybe. It's really hard to tell from this record. There's one read of this by which there was a ricochet that struck the officer in the neck. Otherwise, it was just a close graze. We'll hear from Benjamin Song at the end. I want to make sure we get his words in here. He did not intend to hurt the officer, to kill the officer. He was just trying to warn him and to to protect somebody that he thought was going to be shot in the back running away. He was concerned about police violence.

0:10:23 Thomas: I do think that's going to be really important that we don't feel like we're skipping over that.

0:10:25 Matt: It is. That's right.

0:10:28 Thomas: It's a totally sane reaction to have to be like, there's got to be something more here. What's the worst of the facts? Like, give me, give it to me. Like, what is it? Yeah, yeah.

0:10:32 Matt: That is what we are doing. That's what we're doing. And the worst of the facts is that they were talking about the fact that they're going to defend themselves and that they are going to bring – Song was the only person who was armed at the protest. This group had access to weapons. It's in Texas, Second Amendment rights. Obviously, we got a lot of people carrying.

0:10:50 Thomas: So does everybody.

0:10:50 Matt: That s right. And these are people who are, as you said, they are people on the front lines of identities that are under the most threat right now and have every right to defend themselves and have unpopular political opinions in Central and North Texas. So it's not at all surprised they would be showing up armed and conservatives have gotten angry about the idea of people getting mad about people showing up armed. Kyle Rittenhouse obviously was acquitted after showing up armed and killing two people.

0:11:13 Thomas: But he killed the right people, though, so that's fine. Yeah.

0:11:16 Matt: That's right. Yeah. And then that's certainly a point of comparison as we go here that is worth thinking about. That is sort of the worst of it is there was one person there. Now, this was not by agreement. Nobody wanted any violence. Nobody want any harm. It's pretty clear from their chats. Even if you look at the chats from the light, most favorable to the government. They are planning in the way that organizers do. They're looking for contingencies, they're looking at possibilities, they want to keep people safe, they wanna know what they're getting into. Benjamin Song, again, trained Marine, is thinking at it differently. He's thinking of it as somebody who's used to weapons, is used to having to defend himself potentially.

0:11:41 Thomas: But no smoking gun, like, as it were, like texts where they're like, hey, yeah, if shit gets real, let's all, you know, wait till you see the whites of their eyes or whatever, you you know, none of that.

0:11:49 Matt: That's right. No, no, no. And the government was kind of initially trying to go with the idea that this was some sort of organized ambush or assault. The word ambush was used in the initial reporting from what I remember, and that's just not true. That is not what happened. They were setting off fireworks outside the facility, safely outside the facility. Nothing got in. I mean, they have pictures in the indictment, and you can see that the fireworks are outside the fence. A local officer showed up. This was not the ICE officers or the contract employees who were working at this detention center. And this is, I want to be very clear, a very large detention center in Texas, in Prairieland, which is the thing they were there to protest. Local officer shows up from Alvarado. He's the one that ends up getting grazed in the neck. Now, one thing that we noted when we were talking to the committee last time was that there was no medical evidence put in in a trial about what happened. That's astonishing. Right.

0:12:36 Thomas: How is that possible? Did he get grazed in the neck? They must have had to have something. Did they just have to take his word for it?

0:12:41 Matt: The charge was attempted murder. So I guess they don't really have to show what happened when the bullet got there. They just have to show he's shot or he's alleged to have shot in the direction of a person. But it does seem like if that was in their favor, they'd want to introduce it because the report is that he was maybe in the hospital for a couple of hours, which doesn't sound like somebody who was seriously harmed. I'm sure it's scary to have a bullet graze your neck, but that's very different. And that's why I think this is really important to emphasize that no one actually is alleged to have gotten hurt here. I's going to tell you my theory after reading all of this, What this comes down to, I'm not even really exaggerating, is these people are doing a combined 450 years in federal prison for $4,408.95 in property damage and restitution. I'll show you the chain of events by which I'm saying this because this is an actual legal hook. This is how they got to these sentences was through this property damage allegedly.

0:13:34 Matt: Yeah. And it's really disgusting, like the shoddiness of this and just how little it is built on that you can get to these senses. Sentences, but I'm going to tell you, this is not, now Judge Reed O 'Connor is a very well -known Trump judge who sentenced them. We'll get to the sentencing. Certainly the trial judge Pittman had his own issues. I certainly think they could have handled a lot better. There's a lot of other things that could have been done pre -trial and during the trial to make this a more fair proceeding and that could've led to an acquittal, but it is the law itself. And that's something that Javier emphasized to us. And it really, that was his closing thought in the interview. And I've really been thinking about it. So I just want to play that part, what he said here. It's just a couple of seconds.

0:14:08 Thomas: Oh, we're doing OA-ception again?

0:14:10 Matt: Yeah. You know, it's fun to listen to ourselves once in a while.

0:14:12 Thomas: Sure isn't.

0:14:14 Matt: Well, I like it.

0:14:15 Thomas: Speak for yourself.

0:15:05 Matt: That comment from Javier really made me think about going deep on this in a way that I hadn't before. We had kind of gone through the surface level, and the surface level is bad enough, but I want to actually step you through the charges here because this is a little complex. There are eight people that are involved in the sentencing here and a number of charges. Now, the most serious of them, the thing that ratcheted this up and that almost made this conviction and these sentences inevitable was a material support to terrorist charge in the the superseding indictments. They'd originally charged this as just kind of a regular riot case with the use of explosives and other things, but with the supersedy indictments added all of the stuff about terrorism. As we talked about in that episode, I want to be very clear that this statute is the problem in this case. The case is the problema with the case, to be clear.

0:15:45 Matt: This case shouldn't have ever been brought. The way that this was brought is what got to the sentences that are so astonishing now. This goes back to the Clinton crime bill in 94, the biggest crime legislation ever signed. Joe Biden helped get this through. Unfortunately, it opened up the idea of domestic terrorism, which I'm going to argue in this episode, I think at this point, I've always kind of believed this, but there should not actually be such a thing as domestic terrorism as a designation. It's a very, very dangerous thing to let the government do. We have plenty of other federal statutes that cover all the things that terrorists do.

0:16:13 Thomas: Think the first response would be, okay, what does Tim McVeigh get? What do you do with him?

0:16:18 Matt: He killed a lot of people and blew up a federal building. He's not kind of getting out of prison. And I don't believe in the death penalty anyway. So, right.

0:16:24 Thomas: I mean he's dead right but but yeah but in a hypothetical yeah yeah

0:16:26 Matt: But I'm just saying like that kind of person, you know, somebody who carries out an act of terror, who's motivated by the things the terrorists are are motivated by, is still going to be facing massive amounts of federal time. And you can bring in his disgusting beliefs at trial, and you can bring in the statements about why he's doing it and let the jury decide, obviously. But I just don't think it should be its own separate charge of domestic terrorism.

0:16:45 Matt: And as I'll get to at the end here, January 6th really gives the lie to this about what happens when you have a government like this one that gets to decide who's a terrorist and who's not, because Benjamin Song is doing 100 years for this conviction. 100 years. That's right. Yeah. And he was arguably the most culpable. The others got 50 to 70, most of them. And And as you said, Sanchez, who moved a box of documents, got 30. Well, we'll get there, but I just want to make sure people understand how serious this really is and why I'm so upset about it. Material support for terrorists. I just wanna focus on this for a second because it is such a dangerous statute and I had not appreciated it because it's hardly ever charged. When people think about material support, as I do as an immigration lawyer, we think about Section 2339B, which is about foreign terrorist organizations, which are designated by Congress and the Department of State. That's an easy one to explain. If you're just sending money to Hamas, then you're gonna be obviously supporting a foreign terrorist organization. It's 2339A that has barely ever been used, and really only in the most severe cases, and it has never in American history been used like this. And I'm very concerned about seeing it used this way. 2339 A requires that you're providing support in a way that you are knowing or intending is going to be used to commit one of a list of possible predicate crimes, so federal crimes of terrorism. There's no such thing as being a domestic terrorist, even though Donald Trump is trying to designate that. That's not going to happen. That is not allowed for by statute. What he has done, as we'll talk about, is designate a made -up group called Antifa for extra scrutiny and extra law enforcement. And that's just as bad. That's what it works out to. This is a proximity crime. We're talking about people that are supplying money and safe houses and supplies to terrorism, and they're not doing the terrorism themselves. That supposed to be what this is. It is very important under 2339A that we look at the distinction between the principal who actually commits the predicate offense and the person who resources that offense. And one of the really absurd things, just to start with, there are so many absurdities in these indictments when you really break them down. But one of these absurdities and count too, for all the defendants is that they have provided personnel, and that includes themselves. It says personnel, parentheses, including themselves. Think about that.

0:16:57 Thomas: 100 years for nothing Boy, that sure seems like it shouldn't be like an additional thing if

0:18:50 Matt: Right. That's just collapsing supporter and principal.

0:18:53 Thomas: I rob a bank okay I robbed the bank and they're like and he brought his meat suit to rob it yeah it's like yeah no that's that is what I did I feel like that's the crime yeah

0:18:55 Matt: Right, right. He made himself do it. Right? Yeah, that was me. That has been touched on in a Supreme Court case called Holder of a Humanitarian Law Project in 2010. I was kind of going back and seeing how this personnel thing has been treated, and they did acknowledge in passing it could be one or more individuals who may be or include oneself if if you're supplying or providing personnel.

0:19:21 Matt: It's just a very strange thing, though, to have all of these people who had nothing to do with guns, that were not bringing guns or did not want guns used, were just showing up to do a protest and shoot off some fireworks, to have them charged with attempted murder because they were there and they were providing material support for themselves. That's kind of how it works out. The predicates themselves are the thing that really got to me when I started digging into this. So let's just talk about the three possible predicates. Now, remember, when you're doing something like this, you're presenting to a jury and you're saying, this is material support for terror, there are three ways you can get there. And of course, as a prosecution, you're going to say that you've nailed it in all three and that they could find any one of them. But the fact is, under the Yates precedent from 1957, Supreme Court has required that when there is a predicate like this, and it's not clear what the jury is convicting on, if any oneof those predicates is legally invalid, then the conviction can't stand. That's how it works here.

0:20:07 Thomas: Is is this at all like the uh trump trial like that kind of

0:20:12 Matt: It's a little like that, right, where they had alternative theories of how he can get their to falsifying a business record. And that was a weird kind of that was ultimately legal. And this is too, but I do think that at least one of these is completely invalid. And I think the other ones are really strong arguments here. So I want to take you through it. Kind of most serious to least serious. Section 1114, attempted murder of a federal officer is the most serious charge here, but those were acquitted.

0:20:35 Matt: Everyone was acquitted of attempted murder of federal officer.

0:20:35 Thomas: Challenge wow and they still got a hundred effing

0:20:40 Matt: Well, because there was a state officer involved. I'll tell you how they got there. They were trying to say there was some kind of planned attack on IS or CBP or the people that were in the federal contractors that were In the building, but they never came out and and they never were in danger. It was just this one unfortunate state person who showed up, a police lieutenant. In count seven, they referred to him as a person assisting a federal officer, because the statute 1114 does allow for that. Even if it's not a federal office, it can be someone who steps in to help a federal official, and they get treated the same way as a federal officer. Which makes sense. But it still makes for an unusual thing here, because seven people were convicted of supporting an attempted murder, and the jury found there was no attempted murder.

0:21:15 Matt: There was attempted murder of somebody who was assisting, but there's no attempted murder of a federal employee. A little bit of a quudge to get it there. Starting with that, I think that's probably the strongest one because you have somebody looking at the government's view of the evidence who took a shot in the direction of a police officer who was assisting federal agents. And I think that that's harder to argue. The second one, explosives. This is, as we talked about with Javier, mystifying that they were charged with possession of explosives and use of explosives in terrorism. These were consumer grade fireworks, the kind of stuff you can buy in Texas all over the place at the 4th of July, I'm sure.

0:21:14 Thomas: Years yeah yeah like if they had had some mentos and a pepsi that can explode matt so

0:21:54 Matt: That's got to be ready. Yeah. Yeah. Liability here does turn on how it's used, not the chemistry itself. So you can take a household firework thing and then obviously it really hurts somebody with it.

0:22:03 Thomas: Yeah I think I said that at the time they obviously there's yeah there could be a real version of that you throw a bunch of fireworks in a cop car I can expect you're gonna do some

0:22:11 Matt: Yeah, absolutely. But they were doing it in the direction of, I think there was testimony that it wasn't even within 50 feet of the fence. There was no question the government agreed that these were consumer fireworks, which are expressly exempted from federal explosives.

0:22:16 Thomas: Time wow

0:22:23 Matt: So they're charging them as federal explosives, under 27 CFR 555 .141A7, just to be complete about it. That is not considered to be federal explosives?

0:22:23 Thomas: Wow but then how did that happen

0:22:34 Matt: Well, because again, it kind of the liability liability itself in terms of if you're criminally liable. So like they're not automatically explosives, but you can say that if you'RE using a device that isn't otherwise an explosive as explosive, you can be charged that way. But I just thought it was worth mentioning. No injuries, no damage, no allegation that they're even, anybody was afraid of the fireworks. Like they're pretty normal fireworks.

0:22:50 Thomas: Well and speaking as an american 50 feet from fireworks is safer than anyone ever is that's like if you're 50 feet from the fireworks you're actually not participating in the fourth of july at all

0:23:02 Matt: Yeah, what are you even doing? How could you possibly lose a hand? What's the fun? That's right. So we've got the fireworks and then we've got the one I think is the absolutely most absurd thing. And this is section 1361, 1361, depredation of government property, which is basically destruction or damage to government property. This is the one that is such a reach because as far as I can tell from what I've seen, this has not been used to try to support a terrorism charge before, pretty obviously, right? We're talking about spray painting. We're Talking about dents in cars or whatever, right? This is graffiti at most. 1361 is a predicate that unlocks the charge and it is a federal crime of terrorism. It's considered to be, and that allows for a massive sentencing enhancement. The restitution, as I said, in this case was about $4 ,800. That doesn't mean that The damage isn't necessarily $4 ,800, but that's what the government proposed as restitution, and that's What They're Paying. It is not an exaggeration to say that they got to the terrorism charges, that they were – they got the predicate that they needed using $4800 worth of damage between eight people and

0:23:05 Thomas: You're a dirty commie

0:23:57 Matt: Calling it terrorism. And that, to me, is the absolute injustice at the heart of this, the stretch that they went to, the massive reach that it took to call this terrorism, that They had to reach back to graffiti when nobody was in danger. This is a statute that was written for bombings, you know, for saboteurs. This is not for protest. But as Javier pointed out, there's no way that they didn't know it was going to be used this way. And there's a strong argument this is what it was for originally, was to strengthen this kind of thing and give the government these kinds of options, and they shouldn't have them. That's the material support, and that is why these sentencing enhancements, automatic 15 years of sentencing on top of everything else, automatic 17 in other cases, that's part of why these sentences were so harsh, because they were governed under this way, there would have had to be a downward departure. But the other reason that the sentences were så harsh is because O 'Connor chose to run them consecutively.

0:24:46 Matt: Yeah, it's really bad. He did not have to do that.

0:24:45 Thomas: What now which judge is that because I was actually going to comment that I you know it's one it's one thing to get one awful trump judge but it was a different judge that did the sentencing jesus

0:24:58 Matt: A worse one. Yeah." We've talked about Reed O'Connor as recently as the Rhode Island trans kids case. He's the one who was setting up that ridiculous fight with Rhode Island district court and basically making a crime to communicate with anybody about the case, about strategy for appealing.

0:25:12 Thomas: Oh these poor people wow there's rolling snake eyes and then there's just rolling like a pile of snakes Indiana Jones-esque pile of

0:25:21 Matt: It's really unfortunate that they got Reed O'Connor for sentencing, but the law gave him these tools and he is a hard right conservative. He is a Trump guy and he was going for the most. He said at sentencing, and this brings up the Tina Peters issue, he actually specifically said that he wanted to send a message here, that this was an ideology thing. He wanted to show people with this kind of ideology what happens to them, which is even worse than what the judge said to Tina Peters, who was, of course, the election clerk where the judge, right, right. Exactly. Because he was saying to her, you have these beliefs and you've continued to act on them. And no person would think this is reasonably true about this election. But this is a judge saying, everything you represent is giving you this extra sentence. And everybody who agrees with you, including me, needs to look at the sentence and understand what's facing here.

0:25:43 Thomas: Snacks yeah quite a bit worse

0:26:05 Matt: I think that's got to be an appeal issue. And I think it really goes to the unfairness throughout the entire trial, the bias that was shown here. The other thing about this material support for terror is they don't have to show any particular terror group was being supported. They only have to Show that there was a crime that is a predicate for terrorism, which means as we discussed with Javier that the entire testimony that there's so much evidence testimony that was brought out about Antifa, that was all just icing. That was just the government getting its extra piece in prejudicing the defendants in a way they absolutely didn't have to. But this was and the reason that I'm so intent on covering this, this was the first terrorism prosecution in US history that cited Antifa as the terror group or as the Terror Association. And of course, it's just, in this case, a loosely organized ideology opposing a lot of the things that we oppose. Speaking of Antifa, we have to talk about Daniel Sanchez Estrada. This is the one you referenced in the beginning. This is The Single Cleanest Miscarriage of Justice. When you tell anybody about this case it's the most obvious problem. You have a man who was a partner of one of the people who was arrested. He knows that she's been arrested and he's also responsible for taking care of it. I believe there are pets and plants that need to be looked after. He moved a box of literature, allegedly Antifa literature. Some of it was fairly mainstream. Stream. Some of it was more anarchist. As far as I know, there was nothing in there that was actually talking about overthrowing the government by force. That was not something that they were preaching or talking about. None of this stuff was used as evidence at trial. Something to know about this. So he's charged with concealing potential evidence, things

0:27:28 Matt: We could use against you at trial? Yep. He's doing 30 years for moving something that could have been evidence, but they decided not to use. He didn't hide it really. He just moved it, I think, to a different house.

0:27:39 Thomas: Where do you draw the line on that if it's like well it could have been used I mean if somebody does their laundry after a crime is like, well, there might've been stuff on there.

0:27:50 Matt: The Arthur Anderson case from the Supreme Court basically says, as long as it's foreseeable that there's going to be a proceeding that might involve these documents, you have an obligation, basically. It's borderline.

0:27:58 Thomas: Boy, that sure wasn't foreseeable, but yeah.

0:28:00 Matt: Sure. Well, and he also did it the day before his partner was able to reach him. So he didn't even really know what was going on. He just wanted to clean up her house. I don't know what he was moving these things for. But again, I don't even think that you would necessarily believe that this is going to be evidence of a crime at all, because it's First Amendment-protected pamphlets and zines, stuff that is definitely First Amendment protected. No question about that. They didn't say it was evidence of anything until they charged him with hiding it. That's just so obviously a travesty of justice, 30 years. And I'm going to to say this probably more than once in this episode, but the pardons in these cases have to be a day one priority for any future Democratic president. I want to promise.

0:28:33 Thomas: So are they all federal?

0:28:35 Matt: These are all federal. They are also facing state charges that will be resolved.

0:28:38 Thomas: Oh, that's right. Yeah. But the ones that they've actually gotten sentenced on now.

0:28:42 Matt: Yeah, these are tough.

0:28:42 Thomas: Okay. Yeah, 1 million percent. Instant pardon. Hmm.

0:28:46 Matt: Yeah. I understand the point of, you know, I'd rather see a commutation because I don't want them to accept any responsibility, but these are serious federal felonies. You don't want them on your record. If you can take a pardon, take it. Those are the kinds of easiest to explain things material for support of terror and the concealment of evidence allegedly, but there's also the riot count. We hadn't really talked about this with our guests. I hadn't really covered it yet, But it comes under Section 2101, the Anti -Riot Act, which has a long racist history passed after the Civil Rights Movement for obvious reasons. It's already been held partly unconstitutional by the Fourth Circuit and by the Ninth Circuit because it can reach speech that encourages, promotes, or urges a riot, basically. So they took those words out. Things that basically might be First Amendment protected speech that you could kind of cobble into that kind of a charge. What's kind of survived from the Anti‑Riot Act, arguably, is that you're talking about an imminent riot. You have to really prove that this is something that these people showed up wanting to do or encourage each other to do. And I don't see it from the texts. I don'T see it from the account of that night. They've got signal chats that they're using for all of this and I think as we discussed before one of these people is charged with obstruction for deleting signal chats just the act of just a regular thing that anybody would do with signal just deleting your chats every so often that's only good to do. There's no collective violence and anything that happened was done independently. Part of what they have to proceed here on is Pinkerton liability which is the idea that once this conspiracy gets going everybody who knows about it is going to be involved is going be swept up into it. The train has left the station and everybody is still on that train as responsible for anything anything that happens after that, including taking a shot with a gun you didn't know was there. I think that this is just really overbroad. I think that from what I understand about what happened that night and the testimony that was provided, there were five people that ended up having to testify against their comrades. It sounds like from what I've read of their sworn testimony, they were not able to help the government at all because

0:30:23 Matt: They said under oath these are non-violent people, that this was not a violent group, that they were doing community aid, they were engaged in lawful first amendment protected protest, and I believe that's what happened here. The Sovereign Count, I think, has something going for it as well for an appeal. Deal.

0:30:36 Thomas: I guess I want to, again, devil's advocate, just to make sure I'm understanding it it does seem like if you're charged with a crime and you delete messages that could be something but did I catch in there that this also would have to be deleting it for somebody else otherwise it's just because these are the federal crimes is that what you're saying like you would have to delete it in furtherance of like this stupid fake conspiracy

0:31:02 Matt: Doing it just on your own could be enough. If you knew that it's foreseeable there's going to be a proceeding. I'm not sure exactly on the timing and all of this, but I believe some of it happened before there were charges or before there was talks of charges. A number of these things that were in the lead up to the protest that are being charged for. Just looking at the signal chats from the perspective of the government, I just don't see an organized group that's ready to assault people. That's just not what they're there for.

0:31:24 Thomas: Well then how did they get convicted? Is it really just the case of the worst judge and the worst jury?

0:31:31 Matt: So I'll read you some of the chats, just again, to make sure that we are honest about this, about the things that they're concerned about. Benjamin Song said specifically that bringing rifles would intimidate law enforcement. And this is a quote, cops are not trained or equipped for more than one rifle, so it tends to make them back off. And then at the point at which a cop pulls a gun, he yelled, get to the rifles, not necessarily to attack, but as a defensive thing, because they're feeling under threat. We did note at the time that he was not allowed to present a self-defense argument, even though his statement, which we'll read at the end here, is that he was acting in defense of another, that he believed that a cop was about to shoot a protester in the the back. If it were you or me taking a shot at somebody in the back and someone tried to shoot us, that would be justified. But for law enforcement, there's a special rule about that. As long as it's in the course of somebody showing up to do their job, even if you at the time believe there might be something unlawful happening, it has to be pretty extreme. Or you have to not know that they're a police officer and this was a uniformed officer.

0:32:21 Thomas: Right. And police shooting people in the back is completely normal. Yeah.

0:32:25 Matt: Totally lawful. Just wait and see what happens. Maybe he'll be okay.

0:32:27 Thomas: Well, I mean, it is ordinary for our police, so they've got us there.

0:32:30 Matt: Totally expected. Yeah.

0:32:33 Thomas: So yeah, I meantime, that doesn't sound great, taking the worst interpretation of that. If you're planning on bringing guns and maybe intimidating, getting law enforcement to maybe back off, this might be a stupid question, but is that a crime? That doesn't seem like in and of itself. Again, in our gun -toting country, it's always good to have guns until you're not a mega.

0:32:47 Matt: No, that's right. No?

0:32:57 Thomas: Is that really a crime?"

0:32:59 Matt: But material support for terror is a very, very broad statute. And it's so broad that as soon as I read it, I realized that it could be pretty easy for a jury to get there. That anybody who takes any kind of affirmative action in the direction of possibly helping somebody get guns or bring guns or talk about guns. Also, there was surveillance recon that was done that day where they scouted the facility. They were looking at the timing of the gates to see how long it would take ICE to get out. They had a map of local police department locations because it calculated basically how long it would takes for local cops to show up. These are things you probably want to know when you're organizing a protest. I can't really say that necessarily goes to an evil motive, but they put it that way. And they did a gear check as a standard with these kinds of things. Some of them wearing body armor and ready to protect themselves. That's about it. Rationally, though, looking at it from the perspective of the government, you can see how they got there with Song. I just don't see how the others got there. I don't.

0:33:42 Thomas: That's what I was going to say. Like, okay, maybe, maybe that guy was the only one who brought a gun, right?

0:33:48 Matt: That is right.

0:33:49 Thomas: Why is the conversation even relevant to the other people at all?

0:33:52 Matt: It is material support. It's material support for attempting to kill someone who wasn't even a federal employee. Again, material support. The reason it was charged this way and the reason that I am going to tell you that I think the statute needs to go is because it is so broad. Let me just read it actually just so you know what we are talking about. DOJ is going to make me wait 60 seconds to look at a statute?

0:34:10 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:34:11 Matt: That is really strange. The material support statute specifically, It's doing a little countdown before it's going to let me refresh and see the statute.

0:34:18 Thomas: Boy, a lot of people want to see how bullshit this is. We can't, this is killing the server.

0:34:22 Matt: Yeah, I guess it's very carefully recording my IP right now as I'm looking at the material support statute. Whoever provides material support or resources or conceals or disguises the nature, location, source, or ownership of material support resources, knowing or intending that they are to be used in preparation for or in carrying out a violation of a long list of predicate offenses, including the ones that we talked about, or in preparation of or in preparing for or carrying out the concealment of an escape. Keep. And this was part of it too, is that Song was on the run for a little while. Attempts are conspired to do such an act shall be fined, imprisoned not more than 15 years, et cetera, et cetera. Think about how broad that is, that you're providing material support is already under the international standard that I'm familiar with. When you're talking about support for terrorist organizations, there's no exception for duress. You can have a gun to your head and give terrorists money, and you can still be found to have engaged in material support for terrorism. That's not even a joke. I've had that happen in my cases. There's a waiver you have to go through, there is an exemption process you can go through. But material support possible, to catch as many people as possible. I think this would be a very different case if they had not brought these charges. Most of the answer to that is this needs to go. The deadly combination in this case is the 2339A material support for terrorism with this extremely reaching effort to bring in whatever predicates they can possibly do here. The Pinkerton liability, which basically makes everybody present at the protest guilty by association with anything that anybody else does. And then the sentencing enhancement of section Section 318 .4 of the sentencing guidelines, which I was looking at, massive 12-level jump in federal sentencing

0:34:25 Thomas: Probably. Wow.

0:35:50 Matt: And why we ended up with these horrendous sentences, just these absolutely outsized sentences. That whole combination of things, I mean, again, we can blame the judge, and I can. We can blame any number of other factors here for how badly this one came out for the defendants. But it is the law at the end of the day that is the problem and that needs to to go.

0:36:09 Thomas: I hear you, but this law has been in effect for a while, right?

0:36:12 Matt: Right.

0:36:12 Thomas: I mean, it does feel like the specific application of it is the problem.

0:36:18 Matt: It is. No, but it's specific application by this government, because we didn't have a government that was willing to criminalize dissent to the extent that this is now happening.

0:36:30 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:36:31 Matt: Just to make it, you know, I have to go there. I have to tell you about how this exact statute was used on January 6th, because it's going to make you angry. Now, remember, just to start with, the longest January 6 sentence is 22 years. It was Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, and that was wiped out. I think it was Stuart Rhodes, maybe, also. 1 ,500 pardons.

0:36:49 Matt: Obviously, we already know none of these are still actually convictions. But people who showed up knowing that not just people that kind of wandered into the Capitol to have some fun, these are people that showed up with zip ties, showed up with whatever implements they could use, showed up with body armor, knowing something was going to go down. If anybody was providing material support for terrorism, for people who were politically motivated to try to stop an official government proceeding to overturn an election, at this point, I don't think this statute should exist because this exact thing shows why it shouldn't. That you can have a situation where the government can determine that people that try to overthrow the government in a very literal way are not terrorists, are not providing material support for terrorism. And in fact, judges Judges had trouble finding this. Many judges repeatedly declined in these cases, in the January 6th cases, to allow the government to proceed with material support or with terrorism enhancement. Terrorism enhancement of the property destruction, particularly, because there's just no way to know that these people were working together. And you can't just arbitrarily say that some people that destroyed property were terrorists and other people weren't. That's fair. I mean, we have to look at this fairly. But the people responsible have never been held responsible at this point, you know, are not going to be. Same statute, same enhancement theory. It was absolutely welcomed and used with enthusiasm by Trump's prosecution in this case and rejected and not able to be used and pardoned ultimately January 6th. If you have a statute that can be used that arbitrarily, where the government can decide who is a domestic terrorist, I think it's just too dangerous to have on the books. And I think there are plenty of other ways to get there if you want to punish people that are committing mass acts of things that we would call terror.

0:38:14 Matt: This has really kind of steeled my resolve on that point. The previous motions that were denied were post -conviction motions trying to get the case back in front of the court saying that there was something in the interest of justice required a new trial. Now we're moving on to appeal with the Fifth Circuit. And as we know, the Fifth Circuit is not the best place to bring your appeal. But I do think we have this general verdict problem that I was talking about, the AIDS theory here, where you can prove at least that maybe one of these predicates was legally invalid, which invalidates the entire material support allegation. And I think that really has something to it. It has to be not just factually insufficient, though. That's a real hang up that's under the Griffin case. We want to make sure we're talking about things that are just straight up legally invalid. They just should not be charged the way they were. Also on appeal, from what I can see, you've got the Pinkerton issue. The fact fact, you've got people that were just present, that were just loosely associated, that the vandalism itself, which is the major 1361 predicate here, was spontaneous, that it was self -initiated. Nobody was talking about vandalismo in these chats. And then the shooting was completely surprised to most people there.

0:39:04 Thomas: Already forget. What was the $4,000? What even was it?

0:39:08 Matt: Some graffiti mostly.

0:39:09 Thomas: Graffiti.

0:39:10 Matt: Yeah, it's astonishing to think of that as terror.

0:39:13 Thomas: Were there texts about planning a graffiti attack? No? Okay. Wow.

0:39:16 Matt: No, no, nothing like that. And that's the government's own witness that they brought in against to testify against these people to say the vandals were spontaneous and that people just kind of took it upon themselves to do these things. Nobody's showing up to do that. We're talking about independent, unplanned acts. And the prosecution, I was looking at the indictments again just now before we get on, Pinkerton has mentioned every one of these counts. So they're really relying heavily on it. But then you've just got basic Rule 403 prejudice in all of this too that I think deserves a new trial that you've got bias. You've got this ideology. They're trying to bring in all this stuff about Antifa. Even the judge at one point was saying, this is a little much. Maybe this is beside the point. This isn't really even about Antifas, is it? This is not what it's supposed to be.

0:39:53 Matt: But they put on a lot of Antifa evidence. And that was, I think, really what helped to do them men. I think that showing that you're bringing in this stuff that's way more prejudicial than probative, I think it's got to be worth something too. In a rational appeals court, in a good appeal. But the problem with all of this, just apart from these people, and I do feel for these people and I want to support them as best we can, we're going to link to the committee website, is that this is the future of criminalization of dissent in this country. There's no question that Judge O 'Connor is right. He wants to send a message. I'm sure he believes that. And we're going to see this in some of these other cases. We're going talk in the future about, very soon now actually in Gavel Gavel about the Broadview Six and about the sort of conspiracy allegations that went around that before the whole thing was thrown out because of massive grand jury issues. We just very recently this month had the Spokane Three were convicted. These are on far less serious charges, but they involve conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, still a six year maximum. Very similar kind of idea of people that showed up with different intentions, doing different things, not even charged with any kind of violent offenses, but aiding and abetting conspiracies they may not have even known about.

0:40:53 Thomas: Those are the most dangerous kind, Matt.

0:40:54 Matt: That's right. Yeah, the secret ones.

0:40:55 Thomas: They don't even know about them. That's how good they are at keeping tight -lipped.

0:40:59 Matt: Yeah. That That's right.

0:41:01 Thomas: Manchurian Antifa cell. I don't know. Yeah.

0:41:03 Matt: You've forgotten that it was even in there. And then Minneapolis 15, I wanted to mention as well, that is pending right now. That was just indicted on June 16th. It's 15 people of a direct action group in Minnesota that are charged with really serious counts of interstate stalking, threat solicitation. But when it comes down to it, what they're actually alleging is some damage to some vehicles. That's the most serious charge, very minor damage to federal vehicles. We're going to be watching that one.

0:41:26 Matt: I think that the conspiracy that they're going continue to use here is really the thing to watch, the Pinkerton liability. Section 372 that's being charged here lets the government charge the agreement, not even the act, but basically that you can say that in the moment you made eye contact and made an agreement essentially that you're going to work together. You don't even have to have met before. And all of this is under the shadow of the national security memo that I've been trying to mention as often as possible, which makes this all possible by saying that Antifa, which is not a thing that exists, capital Antifa is basically just anti -capitalism, anti -patriarchy, all the stuff that we're pretty into ourselves and allows law enforcement to be much harsher on them and encourages prosecutors, basically forces them to charge these things as terrorism as often as possible. So that's kind of the future here, and it has to be reined in. These statutes are just too dangerous. I wanted to close with the voice of Benjamin Song here. We don't have the recording, of course, but he did give a statement to the court, an elocution during his sentencing. Obviously, Judge Reed O 'Connor was going to give him 100 years no matter what, but this is his right to make a statement, and I think it's a very powerful statement. So we're not going to read the whole thing. We'll link to it. But I just wanted to read some of this into the record. So if you want to start at the beginning of it here, we can get that done.

0:41:25 Thomas: Man, a hundred years. That is just, I can't even, yeah.

0:42:34 Matt: And he knows he's facing a but he knows he's going to be in there a long time when he's saying this.

0:42:38 Thomas: All right. This is his statement. Okay. Well, let me see if I can do this justice. I do not hate, I do not hate anyone. I did not hate cops. I didn't hate Trump. I didn't hate Nazis.

0:42:55 Thomas: My beliefs are composed thus. First, that we should help each other. And second, that we should protect one another. I never want to see anyone get hurt. I Never want to seek good people standing up for what they believe in gunned down in the street. What we all saw happen to Renee Good and Alex Preti is my worst nightmare. It was the kind of thing I had feared for a long time after dealing with officers who could be reckless, who could be bullies, who could be violent.

0:43:25 Thomas: But fear is not hate. Sadness is not hate. Wanting people to live is not hate. So when I was standing in the street on July 4th, 2025, in plain view with reflective safety strips and high visibility clothing, what I saw right in front of my eyes was my worst nightmare. When I saw Lieutenant Thomas Gross stop pursuing and point his gun at the back of a running unarmed protester like he testified, I was terrified. As a firearms instructor and as a United States Marine Corps veteran, I understood what I was seeing. I knew what it meant for someone to lean forward into a gun like he testified to prepare for recoil. As the evidence shows, I did not want to hurt anyone. I never had the intent to hurt someone. I tried my best to avoid hurting anyone. It is impossible to say that I was trying to ambush anyone or planning any violence. I was shocked and surprised and saddened. I'm so grateful for what didn't happen. I am so grateful that we are not here mourning another death and tragedy. Another Alex Preti, another Rene Good, another Botham Jean, another Manuel Teran, another Atatiana Jefferson, another Philando Castile. Now, 22 people have been arrested, have been persecuted, have been tortured. For what? For nothing. None of these people really did anything. And none of these have anything to do with what happened with me. This is wrong. Wrong. This is mass punishment. This is collective punishment. This is guilt by association. This is injustice.

0:45:11 Thomas: People are being treated as if their lives do not matter. All of this is bigger than me. I know I'm the person standing here. I know I'm the person being judged but I also know that a case like this can become a warning to everyone else. That if you speak, if you protest, if you try to protect someone, if you are associated with the wrong idea, you can be turned into a symbol instead of treated like a human being. Nothing saddens me more than when I think about all of these different people and their different families and communities and how they have suffered and how unfairly they've been treated, just like me. Whatever is taken from me is taken from you. It may be these 22 strangers now, but it will be you tomorrow. On June 9th of this year, the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center testified that hate has migrated into the government. Into the government. The hate is right here. The government, in its secret motion to give me a life sentence, calls me the embodiment of Antifa. What does that even mean? I'm not a member of a group called Antifa! I'm NOT a part of any terrorist organization! There is no group called Antifaa! Everyone knows that! But this government is so blinded by hate, they've arrested 22 good people for nothing! They want to bury me with an idea. This idea that they hate is the very idea of being against fascism. What kind of people are not against fascismo? What kind of people not against the hate and war and genocide and concentration camps that the Nazis brought upon the world? What kinda people would not agree to no kings and no Führers? The hate has migrated into the government. Now that hate is taking power over me. It's taking power over you, over your words, and your ideas. When will you be called a domestic terrorists too. When they killed Rene Good and Alex Preti, they went on TV and they called them domestic terrorists the same day, within the hour. When will that happen to you? When I was staying in my home city of Dallas for 11 days, I did fear then I might die at any moment from the government that I think is hateful and vindictive. I did not run because I wanted to escape responsibility. I stayed because I want to survive long enough to do the right thing. I don't fear for myself. I fear for all of you. What will you do in this time of great failures and great injustices? What will YOU do? How will YOU help each other? How WILL you help yourselves?

0:48:03 Matt: I wanted to make sure we got that in. I think that's a very powerful statement and I completely agree. This is where we're heading. And it is just so stark to hear it from someone who knows he is going to be facing decades. He doesn't know how many decades at this point, but he is facing a lot of time and this is what he has to say to us.

0:48:19 Thomas: It's just insane. It's unfathomable.

0:48:21 Matt: Very well said.

0:48:22 Thomas: Oh boy. Well, that all sucks, Matt.

0:48:24 Matt: It does.

0:48:24 Thomas: I think the only thing that can help is a recently friend-zoned footnote.

0:48:29 Matt: That is right. I think you want to be more than friends with this one. This is a fun photo now.

0:48:32 Thomas: I do! I was told I was platonic against my will let me have it we need

0:48:40 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:48:36 Matt: Let me send you this link and I'm just going to direct you where to read and it will give you no context. The most fun we can have is no context fun. So this is an appeals court decision out of Arizona, like something that happened in Lake Havasu. This is an appeal reviewing an arraignment hearing. So go down to number two. The defendant's name is Daniel Commons. That's all you need to know. And let's just read paragraph two.

0:49:01 Thomas: It on august 29th

0:49:09 Matt: That the defendant is Daniel Commons.

0:49:10 Thomas: 2024 the lake havasu municipal court held an arraignment hearing for the commons that's the name oh for commons but like with an a interesting on misdemeanor charges for resisting arrest and criminal trespass Commons attended virtually and was not represented by counsel at the outset of the hearing the judge asked commons to provide an email address Commons provided two email addresses stating that he had trouble getting, I already like this, trouble getting emails in the past. He spelled out the second one, Y-A-E-G-R-S-U-X-C-O-X 696969 at gmail .com to confirm the judge read it back letter letter by letter. Yeah.

0:49:31 Matt: You see where this is going? That's my favorite part. He made the judge read it back. YeagerSucksCock696969 at gmail.com, which we will find out from this was an actual working email address. And it's actually And it's extra funny because the prosecutor in the case was named Charles Yeager. That's what it was about. You can read the next paragraph.

0:50:03 Thomas: Oh, really? Oh, is that what it was about? Oh. Okay. All right. Neither the judge nor the prosecutor, Charles Yeager, reacted to the email address on the record and the hearing proceeded uninterrupted. The court appointed an attorney to represent Commons and continued the arraignment to September 12th, 2024. Later that day, the court issued a written order or Notifying Commons that at the September 12th hearing, he would have to show cause why he should not be held in contempt of court for providing the email address. Oh, you asked for it. You asked me my email address, so it doesn't matter that it's, you know, you effing suck, you pieces of crap .gov. I don't know. Yeah, you ask me. Did I bring up email addresses? No. Are we still going here.

0:50:32 Matt: Yep. That's it. It's a working email address. That's where you can find me, man. That's right. It's incredible. So he's facing sentencing. He's facing up to 180 days for these minor offenses, misdemeanor charges. But the court stated that it had found him in direct contempt. Now, direct contempt is something the judge can do when something happens in front of you, something that's disruptive.

0:51:06 Matt: And the question, of course, is how disruptive it was to provide a funny email address that nobody even noticed, apparently. I think that's very funny. The judge read it back, and Yeager didn't even react. Like, you'd think he would laugh or something, or just have a funny look on your face when you heard that. Yeah, right.

0:51:16 Thomas: Yeah. Like if he starts crying or something, I don't, I dunno what's, what is even disruptive. Like, like, like laughter never happens.

0:51:23 Matt: And nobody laughed, apparently, it's just like later on, at some point, the judge is like spelling it back in his head, and he's like, hold on. I like that image. Yeah, it is like a very Mosbar kind of thing, though, right, of just like spelling it out and making him say it. Yeah yeah so yeah yours sucks anybody yeah anyway so yeah

0:51:28 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I'm disrupted. I am disrupted right now. Yeah so good.

0:51:43 Matt: Uh so check out the last half of paragraph four

0:51:46 Thomas: His attorney argued the punishment should be mitigated because the email address was protected speech under the first amendment to the United States constitution. Yeah Commons himself asserted it was a real email address the court yeah the court imposed the maximum allowable punishment of 180 days for contempt to run consecutive to any other jail time oh my gosh in doing so the court stated there is free speech the court is a little bit different you don't get to say anything you want I was going to say that but you know this was vulgar it was directed at an officer of the court clearly designed for that purpose yeah

0:51:53 Matt: Here the funniest part. It's the funniest point yeah No, he registered that email address because he thought it was funny that's really what happened but also even if he did even if he made up an email address it didn't disrupt the court like you said he's just doing a jape it's immature stupid, but this is an appeal to the Arizona court and I was looking into Mr. Commons. It looks like he's had some run -ins with the law before. He's probably familiar to the court, but this is obviously a miscarriage of justice. And I wanted to end here by looking at a misCarriage of Justice that was actually fixed, since we just talked about one that is going to be a long slog here. Because the appeals court obviously found that this is not contempt. This violated the rules in several different ways, including the fact that at the point at which the judge had read the email address back in the record, he's conflicted out. He has to assign this to another judge because

0:52:31 Thomas: It's a chape, your honor. Chapes. Oh, wow. Wait, why?

0:53:03 Matt: He's part of the disruption now, right? He's like, technically speaking, by the rules, he should have actually referred this out. Right. Because he's like part of the incident that happened.

0:53:09 Thomas: Oh, because he said it. I guess I'm wondering, like, you already said the kind of contempt that the judge can do is when they witness it directly. So what makes this distinct from like a normal good example of that?

0:53:25 Matt: I mean, if it's like more normal, an example would just be a defendant who just starts screaming in the middle of trial, right? And just disrupting everything and making it impossible to have a trial. Do that again, I'll hold you in contempt. You do it again, you're in contempt and that's just, that happens in front of the judge. There is supposed to be still a notice in hearing before you're sentenced specifically for that, but it is a different thing from the kind of contempt that happens when you're outside the presence of the court. Say, if you're a candidate for president, who's constantly slamming on the judge every Oh, because he wasn't actually participating in the alleged disruption, right? Because he's just observing it. That's my understanding.

0:53:48 Thomas: I guess my question is, so in your example, why is the judge not conflicted out of that one?

0:53:58 Thomas: Okay. So once he read it back, back it's like ah you you said it too that okay yeah

0:54:02 Matt: Right. Yeah. He decided he didn't have to read it back. I mean, it seems like you could have just written it down.

0:54:08 Thomas: I don't know about that seems weak because I feel like there's got to be times when someone's like says something that is inarguably kind of disruptive and the judge probably is like did you say that you know repeats it but I can't it feels weird for that to conflict the judge out so I don'T KNOW ABOUT THAT ONE

0:54:24 Matt: And the rule, just to be fair, I did look this up under the Rules of Criminal Procedure in Arizona. I think it's 35.4 I've got here. If the contempt is a disrespect to the judge or conduct the judge took part in is automatically conflicted out, he's got to recuse. And that makes sense. That should exist everywhere. Were.

0:54:38 Thomas: Oh sure that now the judge was that the judge I thought it was the prosecutor

0:54:42 Matt: Well, the judge himself was involved in the... Excuse me. If it's conduct the judge took part in, that was the other part of it. It's not just disrespect to the judge, but if it's anything that he was involved with at all, he's on the record repeating the email address, and I think that's enough. Yeah, I think it works.

0:54:53 Thomas: Huh I guess boy I don't know about that but either way this is very

0:54:58 Matt: It is, but it's not even contempt. This doesn't meet the definition of contempt, and that's what the court found. There's no disruption. There is no harassment or intimidation. He's literally just providing a contact that just happens to be vulgar. The concurrence, which I really appreciated, basically suggested that this was an Eighth Amendment problem. This is cruel and unusual.

0:55:14 Matt: I think that the court could have gone with that too. And I really liked this line from the concurrence where he said, it transforms contempt power from a tool to maintain order into a cudgel for punishing disrespect. It's very true. This is a judge way overstepping and getting slapped down for it, which I always like to see.

0:55:14 Thomas: Funny oh yeah when you see more of that uh especially related to the main story

0:55:33 Matt: That's right. Everything we just talked about over the last 50 minutes, for sure.

0:55:35 Thomas: Oh boy, well that's fun. I like that I mean, I just have so many questions did he did he make couldn't he have just said like oh I was talking about you know Jägermeister something you know like do you really make it right after that that's such a weird thing to do like right after. Yeah. Right. Fair enough. So it may have been a bit, a bit of a premeditated crime. Yeah, that's funny. A man to hug and kiss. I need a man to hug and kiss. Well, that was fun fitting into an episode that was the worst in

0:55:44 Matt: We can all agree on that. Yeah. Well, I think he'd already had dealings with that prosecutor because he'd been in that court enough times. It was a small town, So yeah, thanks for

0:56:13 Thomas: Terms of what's going on. We're going to keep an eye on Prairieland. Really just people are not getting it. These people's lives are ruined for nothing. Please spread the word and we'll keep on this one.

0:56:25 Matt: Going deep on this. It's really important. And we'll link to the committee, but please look up the DFW support committee and see what you can do. These people still need your help more than ever.

0:56:33 Thomas: All right. Thanks so much, Matt. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. And I'll see you on Monday.

0:56:37 Matt: Okay, see you soon.

0:57:13 Thomas: Which one of us is the lawyer, Matt? Holy crap.

0:57:19 Thomas: Did you touch some literature? Touch some zines?

0:57:23 Matt: I was actually reading the zines. I found PDFs of them, so maybe they found out. Did I have my VPN? I did have my vpn on, so...

0:57:25 Thomas: Oh my God. Peter, edit that out. We can't. I mean, confessing through your sentence. It's a jape, your honor. Japes. Boy, poor Peter. That's a rocky one.