The trial of nine defendants involved in an anti-ICE protest centers on the unprecedented use of terrorism charges against alleged antifa members. Prosecutors presented radical pamphlets, artwork, and social media content as evidence of the defendants' militant mindset, while defense attorneys argue the case overcharges protesters and criminalizes dissent.
The government's case includes seizing a printing press used to create anarchist zines, linking the group to a loose-knit local leftist scene. A key contention is whether the defendants' First Amendment-protected materials and "black bloc" attire constitute material support for terrorism.
The main topics covered are the landmark trial, the use of terrorism charges against protesters, the evidence presented (including radical literature and social media), and the debate over criminalizing political dissent.
Federal agents raiding the home of two alleged antifa “operatives” seized a telling piece of evidence, a defense attorney said during closing arguments in a landmark trial Wednesday.
A printing press.
That printing press was never presented to jurors. Still, the government has kept it locked away because it hated the pamphlets and zines it published, lawyer Blake Burns said.
Burns represents Elizabeth Soto, one of nine defendants whose fates were in the hands of jurors as deliberations began Thursday. All are accused of roles during or after a late-night noise demonstration outside Prairieland Detention Center, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Dallas that ended with a local police officer wounded by gunfire.
The case has become a bellwether for the Trump administration’s crackdown on dissent from the left. The government charged people involved with the anti-ICE protest with a slew of charges, including attempted murder and terrorism counts that defense attorneys said are being used to criminalize protest.
“They’re here asking you guys to put protesters in prison as terrorists,” Burns, the defense lawyer, told jurors. “That’s not happened before. And you are literally the only people in the world who can stop it.”
During 10 days of testimony in a packed Fort Worth, Texas, courtroom, prosecutors bombarded jurors with images of radical zines printed on the press, anti-government internet memes, drawings of burning cop cars, and a video of an unidentified street brawl between far-left and far-right protesters.
Prosecutors acknowledged those materials were protected by the First Amendment but said they showed the roughly dozen people who assembled outside the ICE facility were steeped in antifa tactics.
Eight of nine defendants on trial this month face material support for terrorism charges for wearing “black bloc” clothes at the protest. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have hailed the first-ever use of terrorism charges against alleged antifa members.
Defense attorneys argued Wednesday that prosecutors had wildly overcharged a case that should have centered on the alleged shooter, Benjamin Song, instead of the larger group.
Guilt by Zine
Prosecutors presented much of the evidence that might be expected at an attempted murder trial: ballistics and fingerprint experts, eyewitness police officers, and cooperating witnesses.
They also presented lengthy testimony about radical pamphlets and artwork collected from the defendants arrested that night or in raids during the following days.
Despite labeling the defendants “a North Texas antifa cell” in their indictment, prosecutors have acknowledged that they were at most a loose-knit collection of people from the Dallas–Fort Worth’s small leftist scene of anarchists and socialists.
Two of the scene’s fixtures were Elizabeth and Ines Soto, a married couple who operated the printing press and helped run a local reading group called the Emma Goldman Book Club, named for the early 20th-century anarchist revolutionary.
At one point during testimony Tuesday, a prosecutor spent more than half an hour scrolling through a Twitter account allegedly operated by the Sotos. The Twitter feed included a retweet of a December 2016 post with the words “How to handle fash in your hood” that included a shaky video of a street fight between protesters accompanied by the Flatbush Zombies song “Death 2.”
“I crack your fucking skull and use that as a bowl for cereal. I’m so serial. Ted Bundy, give me money, Son of Sam, gun in hand. Jeffrey Dahmer, with two llamas,” the jury heard in the song’s lyrics.
Defense attorneys objected to the introduction of the video as evidence.
“Yes, it is prejudicial,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Shawn Smith told the judge in defense of using the video. “The whole reason we’re putting it into evidence is because it’s prejudicial.”
Though U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, a Donald Trump appointee, allowed the Twitter feed to be presented in court, prosecutors could not definitively establish whether the Sotos had posted the video or what incident it depicted.
The Sotos, however, have not disputed that they were key members of the reading group. In his closing argument, Smith said the group was a front to recruit new antifa members.
“Emma Goldman Book Club,” Smith said. “It sounds very innocuous. It’s camouflage for what it is.”
“Your Body as Camouflage”
To help jurors interpret the book club’s readings and other materials, prosecutors presented a researcher at a far-right think tank as an expert.
Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy once focused his research on the Muslim Brotherhood. After the 2020 George Floyd protests raged, he wrote a book about “black identity extremists.” In recent years he has focused on another right-wing boogeyman: antifa.
Shideler said Monday that he helped write the definition of “antifa” included in the government’s indictment. He walked that testimony back Tuesday, saying that he only conferred on a draft.
Prosecutors also had Shideler read Trump’s September 22 executive order purporting to designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, in an apparent attempt to suggest that the language was borrowed from the order.
Shideler described what he said were common tactics of antifa, including using the messaging app Signal — which Shideler said he also used — and wearing “black bloc” clothes to obscure identities. The phrase refers to instances where groups of left-wing demonstrators dress in all black to make them less individually identifiable.
The point of that testimony came into focus during the prosecution’s closing arguments. Using Signal and wearing black-bloc clothing were “tactics that assisted in the ambush of a cop,” said Smith.
“Material support. It sounds — I don’t know — nefarious. Complicated. It’s actually very simple,” Smith said.
He said that wearing black clothes at the noise demonstration would be enough to convict the eight defendants accused of material support.
“Providing your body as camouflage for others to do the enumerated acts is providing support,” he said. “It’s impossible to tell who is doing what. That’s the point.”
The government used Shideler and the antifa talk to try to distract jurors from the defendants’ actual actions on the night of July 4, said MarQuetta Clayton, an attorney for defendant Maricela Rueda. She also warned that the trial served as a larger proving ground for the government’s attempts to criminalize antifa.
“The government’s expert on antifa said his career may be boosted by the outcome of this case,” she said. “This is an experiment for them. But this courtroom is not a laboratory, and Maricela is not a lab rat.”
Charged for Carrying a Box
Rueda’s husband, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, is the only defendant on trial who is not accused of participating in the July 4 protest. Instead, prosecutors have charged him and his wife with conspiring to obstruct justice by moving a box of zines out of Rueda’s house after her arrest.
Free speech advocates say that Estrada’s arrest sets a dangerous precedent that criminalizes the mere possession of anti-government material.
“He is on trial for two things,” said Sanchez’s public defender, Christopher Weinbel. “Carrying a box, and conspiracy to carry a box, of which they try to call evidence.”
Weinbel said the box contained Sanchez’s own possessions, the timeline of his movements disproved the theory that he was acting at the direction of his wife, and that a government agent had also testified that none of the materials were used in the investigation.
Smith, the prosecutor, argued that moving the boxes was part of a larger cover-up in the hours and days after the demonstration.
“What is important to the group is hiding their material,” he said. “This anarchist, insurrectionist, hating-the-government material.”
Song and the Rest
Defense attorneys chose their words carefully when it came to Song, the person accused of shooting an AR-15 rifle at two detention center guards and the Alvarado, Texas, police officer who was hit.
None of the defense lawyers overtly blamed Song for the bloodshed, but several suggested that the government should have distinguished between Song and the rest of the protesters.
“This should have been a three-day attempted murder trial of one person,” Weinbel said.
Prosecutors painted Song as the ringleader that night. Still, they argued that four defendants who are also on trial for attempted murder — Song, Rueda, Autumn Hill, and Megan Morris — could have reasonably foreseen that Song would use violence based on conversations before the demonstration.
The eight defendants who face material support charges gave aid to the attack by wearing black clothes, prosecutors allege. They include the defendants accused of attempted murder along with the Sotos, Savanna Batten, and Zachary Evetts.
Song’s attorney, Phillip Hayes, said during his closing argument that Song was only trying to shoot “suppressive” fire at the ground after police arrived on the scene. Hayes suggested that a ricocheting bullet wounded the officer.
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