891: The Test Case

25:44What if I own a copy of Das Kapital? Does that make me a communist? Not unless it's consistent with your other behavior. What about a copy of The Vantage Point by Lyndon Johnson? Does that make me a Democrat? No, sir. Not unless it's consistent with your other behavior. If I own Antifa literature, that doesn't make me an anti-fascist necessarily, does it? I hope not, sir. I have quite a bit of it myself. The judge's impatience made Scheidler's testimony play sort of ridiculous in the room sometimes, I thought. Every so often, I look at the jury. It's a pretty mixed group. Old and young, white and Hispanic, men and women, mostly expressionless, sometimes sleepy.

26:28One day, one of them came in in a Darth Vader sweatshirt. Why? Who knows? I never can read them.

26:42Outside this courtroom, the Trump administration is making all sorts of big claims about Antifa. The national security memo that instructs government agencies to treat Antifa as a domestic terror group, a major national security priority, claims Antifa is this big organized network with institutional funders. This violence, it says, does not emerge organically. Presidential aide Stephen Miller has said it is structured. It is sophisticated. It is well funded. It is well planned. So it's fascinating to see that once they got to court, they dropped all that. Scheidler and the government never tried to present any evidence showing some kind of national coordination or structure or planning or funding.

27:28Scheidler did point to a crowdfunding link tree at one point. Instead, what the government argues is that the defendants all do things that come from a sort of anarchist playbook. wearing dark clothes, reading anarchist literature, and that's what makes them Antifa. The people within the group don't have to join a group, or say they're in a group, or maybe even know that they're in a group at all, to be in Antifa.

28:00I walked outside. It was a beautiful Texas spring day, and people are in a good mood. Across from the courthouse, there's a little demonstration in support of the defendants every day. Mostly sympathetic activists and friends. A hand-painted banner that says show trial is draped across the trees. And there are little tables of zines and free vegan food. When court's over, the families spill across the street to talk about what happened inside. Sometimes they feel like talking to us. Sometimes they don't. Today, Antifa Expert Day, they feel great. Some lawyers also felt great. They'd actually been on a high for a few days now.

28:41We have half the government's case in, and we've been basically kicking their ass. This is Brian Brufard. He's co-counseled to Patrick McLean on this case. You guys are pretty confident right now. I can't even say we're confident, because nobody knows what a jury's going to do, right? But my feeling is the government has made a lot of mistakes. Their witnesses have made a lot of mistakes. And the way that that has come out, I think, is pretty favorable. Brian Bouffard's a former Navy JAG. He defended someone accused of terrorism before, a prisoner at Guantanamo, who'd been tortured for years at CIA black sites.

29:18He is deeply suspicious of the government. And this trial really bothers him. It's a prime example to him of the DOJ becoming a tool for punishing people who disagree with the president. I've got a lot tied up in this for me. I find the corruption of the justice system to be just horribly psychologically painful to see going on. You're so freaked out by what's happening to the Justice Department. Freaked out is not the word. Furious is the word. What is going on right now with the Justice Department is unspeakable in my view. That's why he wants to win this case so badly. Now, the Antifa expert, that part went well, he thought, for his side.

30:08So well, in fact, that they end up not calling up their own expert at all. They never put their terrorism scholar and Speckhardt from the bar on the stand. But the government had another, maybe more powerful argument for the existence of Antifa, which I'll tell you about when we come back.

30:36It's Zoe Chase. Coming up after the break, we hear from an alleged member of this alleged terror cell, and she seems very different from what the government says she is. That's in a minute, Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. Support for This American Life comes from Squarespace. Build a fully custom website in just a few steps, using Squarespace's AI-enhanced website builder, Blueprint AI. Simply provide basic details about your industry, goals, and personality, and Blueprint AI will generate high-quality content, along with personalized design suggestions. Highlight your offerings with a website tailored to help your business grow.

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31:56with tax-smart tools that help grow your after-tax returns year-round. Get started today at Betterment.com. That's B-E-T-T-E-R-M-E-N-T dot com. Investing involves risk, performance not guaranteed. Betterment is not a tax advisor, nor should any information herein be considered tax advice. Please consult a qualified tax professional. This message comes from Scholastic with Sleepless, a mysterious coming-of-age story about five kids who are up all night every night and desperate to find out why. Sleepless by Gordon Corman is available wherever books are sold. It's American Life from Ira Glass. Today's program, The Test Case.

32:39We're devoting the whole hour to this first-of-its-kind trial of people that the government says are part of an Antifa cell on charges that could send them to prison for decades. We've arrived at Act 3 of our show, Act 3, The Cooperator. Okay, so originally 16 people were charged in this case. Nine of them went on trial. And the other seven, they pled guilty to material support to terrorists. They admitted this. In the documents that are part of their plea agreements, some of them signed statements agreeing that what happened outside the detention center was an act of terrorism carried out by an Antifa cell, and the people involved that night adhered to an anarchist Antifa ideology.

33:21That, of course, seemed good for the government's case. Also, five of them appeared in court to testify for the prosecution. One of the five in particular stood out to Zoe. This was a woman named Lynette Sharp. She was older than a lot of the others, 57 years old. And just to say what her involvement was in all this, she was not at the detention center that night. She had planned to go, but then she couldn't make it. But remember how the guy who shot the cop hid in a sunflower field the whole night and then eventually got snuck out by a couple friends? That was Lynette. She fished him out of the field and then hit him from the cops.

33:58The authorities tracked her down a few days later, arrested her. She's been locked up since. And she agreed to talk to Zoe. Again, here's Zoe Chase. When the cooperators appeared in court, they were brought in in prison stripes. They mostly seemed to be in some degree of anguish over what they were doing, testifying against their friends. It was hard to sit through. There was something about Lynette, though. She was chatty. It seemed like she couldn't help it, kind of. She knew so much about these people's lives. At one point, she had said that three of the defendants were in a thruple. Not a word I expected to hear in the Northern District of Texas, I guess.

34:37But then also, when the prosecutor had her ID the defendants one by one, she broke down in tears. They were lined up right in front of her. I loved them, she said to the prosecutor. So I went to talk to her. I wanted to know what this group might have looked like on the inside. And I wanted to know how she'd gotten to this point in her life, pleading guilty to a terrorism charge. I drove out there with her lawyer, Aaron. You go through a bunch of nothing, and then there's the jail. Long, low buildings, barbed wire around, a couple Texas flags flying. And Erin takes me inside. Hello. Can I help you all?

35:16I am here for an attorney visit. It's the nice Lynette Sharp, and she's with me. They lead us into a small room. There's a big, clear plastic divider cutting it down the middle. A guard opens the door on the other side of the divider and brings Lynette in. She's in the orange and white prison stripes. There was a small speaker stuck into the plastic that we talked through. Hey. Hi. I want to ask how you are. You know, I can't complain. If I did, who would listen? Well, I'm asking. I'm okay. Yeah. I had my mic pointed at the wrong part of the speaker. It'll get better later. Sorry about that. When Lynette was arrested, she had spiky pink hair.

36:02Now it's a gray ponytail. She has glasses and hearing aids. I have to say, I talk to people a lot about their politics for my job. Why do you believe the things you do? It's never simple. It's built over their lifetime. There's not one thing that leads you to it. I feel like I need to do something a little unusual here, which is tell you Lynette's story from the beginning. So I want to start this part of the story here. Alleged Antifa cell terrorist at age five. Lynette grew up outside Fort Worth in the early 70s. She was a tomboy, played dirt clod wars in the streets. She rode bikes and the neighbor's horses.

36:45She liked being out of the house because the situation in the house wasn't good. Her parents fought a lot, drank a lot. They even tried to kill each other a couple of times. Her mom shot her dad. Twice. He survived. She tried to poison him several times, too. My parents were fighters, and that's where I get my fighting spirit, I think. Wow. And so... How did she try to poison him, and how did you even know that happened? My mother never hid anything from us. She used Miracle-Gro and put it in a spear. It didn't work, and I don't remember what she used the other time. Lynette didn't want to stick around.

37:22She got together with this guy and moved out of state, and they had a kid together. But it was a similar relationship to her mom and dad's, as much as she thought she was nothing like them. She was feeling sort of Miracle-Gro in his beer herself. It scared her. She moved back with her parents, moved out again, and eventually left that guy. At this point, she gets really into church. Something about it really appealed to her, being part of a group. Maybe because, she says, she just never felt a part of her family at all. And Lynette is a people person. This is the first big group that she dives into, the church.

38:01I went to church constantly. I found a church and was there every time the doors were open. And just really immersed myself in that. It was Pentecostal, but women could wear pants, which she liked. Things calmed. She met another guy, a clean, non-abusive, nice guy named Marshall. Nerdy, played Dungeons and Dragons and video games. They got married. And at first, she says it was great. But slowly, even though this was a really different relationship from her first one, it also began to feel like a trap to Lynette. She already had one kid. Then her husband's kids came to live with them. And she got pregnant.

38:42And right then, her husband kind of disappeared into his computer. And that's when it got to be too much. I started really having a hard time with everything. She called the pastor's wife for advice. She did tell me when I told her what was going on, she said, why are you doing all of this? Because I was doing everything. And she said, why aren't they doing this and that? They can do their own laundry, they can make their own lunches. And I'm like, I just thought that's what I was supposed to be doing. And she said, no. Like that's what the housewife does kind of thing. Yes. And so she kind of gave me permission to say, hey, I'm not doing this anymore.

39:15After that, she says, they started living separate lives side by side. There are many more dramatic chapters of Lynette's life, lived in these bright, intense strokes. Her daughter gets pregnant at 16. She figures out that one of her stepkids is abusing her daughters. Eventually, her stepson is arrested. She ends up taking in a kid who's severely autistic and raising them. And Lynette and her husband come together to deal with these crises and then grow apart again. They get close for a while when they join a new group. Of all things, it's a motorcycle club. This is another turning point. Lynette gets really into the motorcycle club.

39:57It was a motorcycle club of Marines. Her husband served in the Marines. And he got really into it, too. Kind of got him out of his depression. And it helped him a lot. Made him want to be a more functioning person for them and for me. Mm-hmm. And then, for the X-rated portion of our show, we found out that we liked different sex than we'd been having. You found that out together? It was kind of a weird thing. A lady in the club posted something on Facebook about something about a sexual thing, and I commented on it. And Marshall texted me immediately and said, did you mean that? And I said, yes.

40:36And so we started talking, and that made us realize we'd been having sex wrong the whole time. I mean, I want to ask what you mean, but you don't have to get into it. We liked sex that wasn't vanilla. Uh-huh. Right. You like more hardcore things. Yeah. And you found that out because this woman posted something, and you commented, and he texted you. Yes. Wow, Facebook. Yes. Lynette was still going to church, but now in her Sons of Anarchy t-shirt. They didn't know what to make of her. And Lynette's next chapter of self-realization, maybe you saw this coming, she's watching Amber Heard in this movie The Rum Diary and realizes, actually, she's always liked girls.

41:21And she gives Marshall an ultimatum. Either I can smoke weed in the garage or we're having an open relationship, one of those, because I'm losing my mind here. I need relief. I need, like, fun. He wasn't happy with either option at first, but then he got what she was asking. Really, I want to explore having sex with women. I've never been able to explore my sexuality in that way. And he said, well, that's fine. Because men. Because men. Yeah. And so then we would go out on dates and look at women together. That was a high point. Lynette is a person who goes all the way when she's into something.

41:58But however hot Amber Heard is in the Rum Diary, in Lynette's mind, Lynette is still a church lady in suburban Texas. She's a conservative. At this point, Lynette's story, it's 2011, 2012, and she's paying more attention to the news now, more than she used to. And Barack Obama is running for office again. I remember when Obama was elected for the second time, I cried. I thought we were all going to be under Sharia law any time. Like, that's what our, that's so many people in my life, I felt that way. And the Pizzagate stuff was going on then. Did you believe in that? I did. Lynette didn't like Trump either, though.

42:40Things like the grab-them-by-the-pussy-team. No thank you. And it wasn't long before, basically, presidential politics kind of caught up to her personal politics. Which is true for a lot of people, right? National politics became intertwined with people's actual identities. The Me Too movement was a thing for her. Oh, and also around then... I went to college. Forgot that part. Then there's the repeal of Roe v. Wade. That happened. She was fighting with her friends and family over it. Right when Roe v. Wade, they were going to get rid of Roe v. Wade, and I knew it. And I knew it was coming. And then I'm like, this is bad.

43:17And people were like, you're just blowing it all up out of proportion. But you were starting to find yourself on a little bit of a different planet than the people around you. Yes. In 2022, she started going to protests for the first time. There's something very only in America about Lynette's life, I think. How fast it moved, how many eras she went through, embodying each one. I kept thinking of this old article from Ms. Magazine from 1972 by Jane O 'Reilly. It was called Click, The Housewife's Moment of Truth, about all these realizations women were having about things they didn't actually have to do.

43:58We were all housewives. We'd prefer to be persons, the article said, a year before Roe. Lynette was that housewife. Click. Decades later, here she is on her own motorcycle, checking out girls with her husband. And then Roe is struck down, and it feels personal. Lynette has come to truly hate the idea of men controlling women. That's how she saw it. It's around this time when she finds her last club. It's a group of people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She meets them through a local LGBT center. They do self-defense classes. Some of them are in a book club, the Emma Goldman Book Club, where they read radical literature and zines.

44:43Many of them are part of a local gun club, the Socialist Rifle Association, where they do target practice and learn about gun safety. Soon she was spending most of her time with them. how did that happen that they became your closest friends um well they were the ones that you know in in person life i mean i didn't have a job a lot of these people didn't have jobs uh we don't love capitalism and a lot of them are so very neurodivergent that they just couldn't work a lot of them were younger um and uh yeah it felt like it felt amazing to know that there were other people that actually cared about something other than themselves, that were willing to, you know, help other people for free.

45:31I mean, they gave their time. We met the homeless. We helped disabled people. I would lead meditations because I love meditation. And they taught me how to eat vegan food that wasn't horrible. This, of course, is the alleged Antifa cell that's on trial. There were so many ways to be in a group in this group. And Lynette loves groups. Like that gun club, for instance. A few people in the group were transgender. There was a sort of ethos around, like, if people who hate us have guns, we're going to have guns. Lynette got super into that, joined the Member Welfare Committee. Lynette also joined a writing group.

46:09They called themselves the Resistance Writers. They had a lot of potlucks, obviously, and karaoke nights. What did you sing? Those were the best times we had. I sang everything. I sang so many things. I love Pink. Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken. I told them that used to be, I think a lot of people think that, and I used to as a song from like, in a personal relationship, but to me it was like my love song to the world. That we are going to, we're not going to be broken, that we're going to keep fighting. And if you look at the lyrics, it's just, it's a great song. It was like she was having a sort of love affair, but with a bunch of ideas.

46:57One person in particular she grew really close to was Ben Song, whom everyone called Champagne. Song, Champagne, went by any all pronouns with this group of people. During the trial, most people used he, him, including his lawyer, and I'll do the same. In this group, a lot of people looked up to him. He was really into self-defense. He taught martial arts to many of them. He taught gun safety to many of them with the Socialist Rifle Association. He went to a lot of protests. He'd been in the Marines. He was soft-spoken, but very confident. Song was the one, that night, who would fire the shot that hit the police officer.

47:38What was your relationship like with Ben, with Champaign? It was very close. I remember telling him that, you know, he was my best friend and all this shit that we were going through. Really? I know that I wasn't his best friend, but I don't know. I just felt very close to him. I admired him. I respected him a lot. It wasn't a perfect person. Going to their house, it was a mess. You know, these kids are, and I do think of those kids a lot. I don't mean to, you know, denigrate them or anything, but they were, I learned so much from them. But at the same time, they're so young, and sometimes their lives weren't working very well.

48:24And so it just, you know, it's a lot easier sometimes to focus on the world's problems than your own. Yeah. And so I did that a lot, and I think a lot of us did. Lynette was investing so much in this group of people And pulling away from the family stuff that frustrated her Like finding services for her autistic kid, for instance She tried and tried and it kept not working She stopped trying She and her husband were back to living separate lives I remember I was on the way home from something like at 2 in the morning one night And I was thinking about what I was doing the next day Some other thing we were going to do And I'm like, I, for the first time in my life, I'm doing what I want to do with my time.

49:07I'd never really been free like that before. And it didn't last long to do it.

49:14Now we're at that night, July 4th, 2025, when everything happened. Lynette had been in some of the signal chats where people were making plans. But that night, her husband and her daughter were fighting. Some kind of a breakdown. Felt like she needed to be at home. She was awake when people started messaging, trying to figure out what had happened. She heard people had gotten arrested. She heard a cop had been shot. On one hand, I must have known, but I didn't know. Like, I think I'd already read the reports that were out saying there'd been a... But I just didn't believe it. An officer-involved shooting?

49:51Yeah, I just thought, and I didn't know. I just knew I needed to go, so if I could help anyone, I wanted to go help. I guess I just have a hard time understanding why it was so unbelievable if, like, he did have a gun there. Like, isn't that sort of like it is believable that he would shoot someone if he had a gun, right? If he did, it was because something had happened. Either it was, like, unavoidable, you know, I didn't know. I just knew that I couldn't imagine that happening for no reason. Like, there had to have been something that went wrong. Then, the next day, Lynette gets a message from Song.

50:29He was still hiding in the sunflower fields near the detention facility. Could she help get him out? He had his phone in a Faraday bag, which blocks your cell phone signal so you can't be tracked. A lot of defendants brought those that night, which was more evidence the prosecution pointed to that they were a terrorist cell. Ben kept taking his phone out to message Lynette, which, I have to say, does defeat the point of the bag. And he told me, I've done a very dangerous thing. And I said, I know. I love you, friend. Why do you think he messaged you in particular? I don't know. I think because he knew that I would be there for him.

51:09That I felt kind of unanchored in my own line. That I was, you know, pretty much lived for the cause or for my friends and that I would help him. Lynette and this other guy pick up Song at the side of the road. He's dirty, he's hungry, dehydrated, freaked out, doesn't know where to go. Lynette and some others helped get him set up in an apartment someone was cat-sitting in. I mean, of course, at that point, we knew we were doing something very, very dangerous and very wrong. I don't know why we thought we could get away with it. But then I went home after that, and for the next four days, I don't think I did much of anything.

51:48I just laid in bed and I don't remember. Did you know in those four days, like, oh, my time, this community, this chapter, this era is over? I don't know. I really, really wasn't thinking. I know that sounds crazy, but I just think I disassociated for most of the four days. Eventually they came. Law enforcement raided her house, arrested her. It was dramatic. She says they rolled a big tank-like thing up onto her lawn. Lynette was charged with providing material support to terrorists. In jail, she faced a big decision. Should she cooperate, plead guilty, and help the government? That would give her the best chance of a shorter sentence.

52:35Of course, that would go against everything she and her activist friends were all about, to talk to the feds. But, of course, there was another huge consideration. one that actually surprised her after she got arrested.

53:00Lynette's family both needed and wanted her back. Her husband Marshall was devastated. Her daughter was suicidal. Her autistic kid was moved to Austin to live with her other daughter. They were fighting, and it was just really chaos at home. She was despondent over what to do. And I just was in my cell just going over, I can't do this. I can't talk. I can't plead. I can't like that. I'd be a snitch. I'd be a traitor. My family was begging me to do it. She tried to channel in her head what Song would say. Where she finally ended up is that she thought he would understand what she had to do. She had to get out of as much trouble as she could.

53:44So Lynette's lawyer started to talk with the government about a plea deal. And Lynette was fine with talking about all the details of that night, everything she had done. But there was one sticking point. At what point did they start talking to you about Antifa? And what did you make of that? Right away. And I'm like, I am anti-fascist. I said, there's no group called Antifa. I said, but I am anti-fascist. I said, I don't like fascists. And if you do, well, I think that's when Erin interrupted me. I was about to call him a fashion. Erin, Lynette's lawyer, was there during all these little talks.

54:21The government seemed fixated on getting her to say she'd been part of an Antifa cell. They proposed the following language. Lynette Reed Sharp adhered to an Antifa revolutionary anarchist or autonomous Marxist ideology that is anti-law enforcement, anti-immigration enforcement, and calls for the overthrow of the U.S. government law enforcement authorities and system of law. Antifa is a militant enterprise. One cooperator did agree to that and, in fact, read it out loud in the courtroom. Lynette was like, no way. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to perjure myself. We weren't a terrorist group.

55:01It was really just a protest. It was a noise demonstration, which I told them from the very beginning, that there's no Antifa group, that we're just a group of friends that were going to a protest. Yes, they read anarchist zines and philosophy and went to a shooting range, and they were serious about it. But at the same time, Lynette says there was some element of playing dress-up to the whole thing, with all the accoutrement that went along with it. The government proposed new language about Antifa cells. Lynette and her lawyer again said no. Here's the language they finally ended up with. Lynette Sharp adhered to an anti-fascist, anti-ice, anti-government ideology.

55:43She was fine with that part. Quote, which the government classifies as Antifa. So she's not saying there was an Antifa or that she was part of it, but she agrees that the government thinks there is. No other cooperator's plea agreement is so pointed. As part of the deal, she'd get a maximum of 15 years in prison and wouldn't be charged with anything other than material support. She could maybe get a lower sentence recommendation from the government to the judge, depending on how helpful her testimony was to their case. The day she was taken into court to testify, Lynette was completely on her own.

56:25The bailiff let her in with a chain around her waist. What was it like to walk into the courtroom and see them? Oh, it was hard. I mean, I couldn't see them very well when they were seated. Yeah. I could see Song immediately, and I could tell from his face that he just didn't hate me. His face, I felt like he was definitely trying to convey to me that he didn't hate me. he was very open-faced very smiling very you know um and no one else had any emotion and then i get emotional of course and then the prosecutor asked you know you're getting emotional why is that i'm like because i love them and he said they're your friends and i said yes and i if i'd have been quick on my feet i would have said probably not anymore I didn't think about that until after.

57:22But it was emotional. It was hard. Why? What was the hard part about it? Just because I do love them, and I am afraid that they are angry at me for talking. And I guess I had hoped to see a little bit of warmness or something that I didn't see from anyone other than the song. When Lynette spoke, even though she was a witness for the prosecution, I have to say a lot of what she said, it really seemed to support the defense's narrative of what happened. This was just a book club. This was just a protest. She said, quote, they think we are an organization, I guess, called Antifa. We are not. I thought I can't really help Song anymore, but I thought I could help the rest of them.

58:13The other cooperators, all in their own ways to varying degrees, undermined the idea that this was an Antifa plot. They testified they were surprised someone got shot. They testified the plan had been to set off fireworks. One of them testified that right after Ben Song shot the cop, Song raced past him in the dark, holding his rifle, yelling, oh shit, oh fuck, oh shit. Oh, fuck. And then he ditched the rifle and ran off. Which seemed like something you might yell if you had not meant to shoot a cop. None of it seemed great for the prosecution's case. Which brings us to the last act. Act 4, the verdict.

59:01So here we are at the end. And the defense team that I've been hanging out with is psyched. After the cooperators testified and the Antifa expert, who they think maybe isn't an expert, they felt very confident that the government did not prove their case. They were so confident after the prosecution rested, the defense rested too. They didn't put on a case at all. As usual, I was hanging out with Patrick at the end of that day. So what did you think of today, my friend? You all did it. You rested. You didn't call a single witness. Right. That is a factual statement. I was looking for something more analytical and incisive.

59:43I mean, it's either brilliant or it's a colossal mistake. Right. I don't know which it is. By deciding to rest, they were sending a signal to the jury about how weak the government's case was. All the defense lawyers agreed to the move. Things had gone so well for them, it seemed. There was nothing to add. And bringing their own case risked opening the defendants up to new lines of attack from the government. Closing statements happened the next day. The prosecution repeats what they've been saying for weeks. At one point, they put up their own Venn diagram. Antifa, the Emma Goldman Book Club, the Socialist Rifle Association, all overlapping at the words, direct militant action.

1:00:33The delivery is dry and emotionless. The defense is the opposite. They're at a high Atticus Finch inherit the wind level. It was exciting to watch. It was like watching the climactic scene of a movie over and over, written by different authors. Fireworks on the 4th of July, Brian Bouffard begins, McLean's co-counsel, was all this was ever intended to be. Noise, lights, and a message of hope. to the foreigner who resides in our land. One notable moment came from Ben Song's attorney, the shooter's attorney, who made the case that Song did not intend to hit the police officer. He had fired his gun as, quote, Suppressive fire.

1:01:19Song, who served in the Marines, saw Lieutenant Gross jump out of the car with his gun drawn and pointed at someone running away. And so, his attorney said, he fired his gun to force the police officer to take cover. Song's attorney showed a video to the jury of bullets hitting the ground, forcing little puffs of smoke into the air. The bullet that hit the officer, he said, was a ricochet. And then it's over. The defense attorneys are in such a good mood, a handful of them head over to the Fort Worth Club down the street, the exclusive members-only spot. I know my way around there. It's off the record, but I can say the feeling around the club chairs is relief.

1:02:09I happened to be waiting around in the courtroom hallway when the verdict came in. One and a half days later. Remember, there's no recording in there, so I don't have tape of it. I can tell you it was like an icy wind blew down the hall. The verdict is in. All the defendants' families hustled into the courtroom and the reporters. The jurors filed in. One of the jurors was crying. The judge read the verdicts. Eight of the nine defendants had been charged with material support for terrorists. Every single one of them was found guilty. In fact, they were found guilty of almost everything they were charged with.

1:02:47Riot, using explosives, fireworks count as explosives. And then there were the attempted murder and firearms charges that went with that. Only Ben Song, the actual shooter, was found guilty of those. Everyone was facing very long prison sentences. I run out of the courthouse into the street so I could start taping. One of the dads is out here, Ed Kent. A used car salesman from around Dallas. Talked to him a bunch during the trial. His daughter, who was 24 years old, had taken a plea deal. She testified for the prosecution. He'd come to court almost every day. A reporter asked him, what's the reaction in there?

1:03:29It's horrible for the parents. Shaking and trembling and, you know, realizing their child's going to be in jail for a long time. Yeah, it's terrible. It's just terrible for the parents. He'd already been through these emotions of realizing his daughter wasn't coming home for years. I'd be crying if I was in their situation. I've cried over my daughter's situation a number of times, you know, by myself. But, you know, it's like, just say that, you know, it was a travesty of justice is not maybe true either because they all were foolish. Fuck your daughter! Fuck your daughter! That's a friend of the defendant's, screaming at Kent because his daughter was a cooperating witness.

1:04:27Or a snitch, as they saw it. I spotted Brian Bouffard, the defense attorney, headed toward his car. He was carrying a white button-down shirt on a hanger. A shirt he'd brought for his client to wear in court. That was rough. What do you think? I mean, I think they got it wrong. I think that they did not parse through reasonable doubt the way that the law would have them do it.

1:04:59I certainly don't dispute that that is their verdict. But...

1:05:09Yeah, it's just hard to take right now. Yeah. He hangs up the shirt in his car. the sun is blazing down on our heads. God bless America, it's hot out here. What do you think of, you know, everybody's guilty of terrorism? Yeah. Material support. Material support. What does that mean? Well, it means the government is going to be emboldened to continue to use the law in this way. which is a danger to everybody as everybody ought to know. So... How are you?

1:05:53Pretty rough. Not so good.

1:05:59Later, he told me, it was one of the worst days of his life, losing this case. Every defense attorney is appealing this verdict. But they're kind of in a weird situation in a way I didn't fully understand until the end of the trial. The main questions of this trial, is Antifa a terrorist organization? Are these defendants Antifa? Are not actually the questions that were put in front of the jurors. The jury actually had to answer a much simpler set of questions. Providing material support to terrorists. It's 18 U.S. Code Section 2339A. It's a law that expanded dramatically after 9-11. And strictly speaking, you can be charged with it if you do something as simple as do more than$1 ,000 worth of damage to a federal building intending to violate the law.

1:06:51That's it. That's all you need. The prosecution argued they did that. The graffiti, the slashed tires in the parking lot, the broken security camera. The prosecution also argued two other things that would qualify, but the graffiti, tires, and camera damage on their own would be enough. Which is to say, the entire Antifa portion of the trial, that wasn't necessary to prove their case. The judge actually pointed this out toward the end of the trial, after sitting through day after day of the government's storytelling about Antifa flags and symbols and zines and book clubs and clothing and signal chats.

1:07:32The judge asked the prosecutors a question. Is it necessary to prove this stuff about Antifa, he said? Whether it's Antifa or the Methodist Women's Auxiliary of Weatherford, why does it matter? It doesn't. The jury doesn't have to believe the Antifa part at all in order to convict them of material support to terrorists.

1:07:59So all of that was in March. Sentences in the Prairieland case came down a couple weeks ago. For everyone who was accused of material support to terrorists, six of them got 50 years. One of them got 70 years. The one defendant who wasn't accused of material support, he got 30 years. His crimes? He moved a box of zines and other stuff after the night at Prairieland and was convicted of conspiracy to conceal documents. He was not at the actual night of the fireworks. None of them had a prior criminal record. Ben Song, who shot the officer, got 100 years. The material support to terrorist charge can jump you to pretty large sentencing numbers.

1:08:46One defense attorney at sentencing pointed out that 30 years is what you give murderers or cartel members. For comparison, the highest sentence any of the January 6th rioters got, before they were all pardoned and released, was 22 years. Most of them got a lot less than that. None of them were charged with material support to terrorists or anything terrorism-related. But the severity of these sentences, that was the judge's decision. There were two sentencing judges. At sentencing, they talked about deterrence, sending a message to anyone else with a similar ideology. One former federal prosecutor told me the government probably sees this case as validating their Antifa narrative.

1:09:31It can exist in a courtroom, even if they weren't actually convicted of being Antifa. There's already another case like it in another state. The charging documents are filled with claims the defendants are part of Antifa, using some of the same language that was used in Texas. But if you look closely at this case, the Prairieland case, at what was actually in the charges, at what was said in court, at the way the plea deals were written in the end, and at what the defendants were convicted of, it doesn't prove anything about Antifa at all.

1:10:15Zoe Chase. By the way, Lynette Sharp, who Zoe interviewed in jail, who pled guilty as part of her plea deal, was sentenced a couple weeks ago. She got nine years. At her sentencing, she apologized to Lieutenant Thomas Gross, the police officer who was shot. And she apologized to her family. To be human is to make mistakes, she said. Sometimes terrible ones.

1:11:06We'll be right back. It's time to find the spot.

1:11:36Sauer, Javier DeHanon, Lydia Cosa, Luis AC, the DFW Support Committee, Jung-Yong McLean, Adam Fetterman, Amber Lowry, Kelsey Mittauer, Jose Pagliari, Janet Reitman, David Weiss, Lacey Crisler, Randy Ray, and Dylan Duke. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Thanks today to This American Life partners, Helen Ingram, Scott Young, and Daniel Williams, to hear our many bonus episodes and get lots of other stuff, including lately, this weekly newsletter that I've been writing where I tell you what's happening behind the scenes of the show, and I recommend a movie or TV show to get that stuff, become a This American Life Partner.

1:12:13The main reason we hope you do that, that you become a life partner, is just to support the show and help us keep doing it and keep doing stories like you heard today, which I really think other people have not covered the same way. I hope you agree. You can join at thisamericanlife.org slash lifepartners. That link is also in the show notes. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Tori Malatia. You know, from the start, he has never called our program a radio show. It was a noise demonstration, which I told them from the very beginning. I'm Eric Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

1:12:59Next week on the podcast of This American Life, when a beloved tree was mysteriously cut down in a national park in Britain. People across the country were outraged, called it slaughter. They said things like, this feels like losing a close family member. And RIP, beautiful tree, I wish I'd got to meet you. But the suspect could not care less. My understanding, he said, was that it was just a tree. The very serious and entirely ridiculous criminal trial over a murdered tree. Next week on the podcast, we're on your welcome public radio station.

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