S2 Bonus Episode: Expert Witness

Hi, I'm John Kiryaku, and welcome to a little bonus episode, a mini episode of Dead Drop What Makes Us By Tick.

I wanted to tell you about something that has happened to me over the last two weeks.

“Somehow, and I think it's because I'm out in the the public eye as much as I am,”

I've become a go-to person to serve as an expert witness in trials. I've just returned from a trial in Western Colorado, but I want to tell you about a trial in which I testified a week ago in the federal district court for the Southern District of Florida. That's the federal court in Miami. This story is about a young man 32 years old named Haroon Abdul Malik Yenner. Haroon Yenner lived in coral springs in the Miami area.

He's unhoused as we say these days. He had come to Miami from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, all alone, family's dead, no friends, tried to make a new life, instead he ended up still homeless living in the alley behind a restaurant.

He was able to scrape enough money together to rent a very small storage unit where he kept his personal possessions.

They included a baseball bat in on which he had written with Sharpie something silly. Like, "Vi will be done." I should add that Haroon suffers from mental illness. He also had in this storage unit some childlike drawings of guns and bombs and rockets and missiles.

“Well, an employee of the storage company saw him coming and going.”

Notice that he didn't have a lock on his unit, he couldn't afford a lock. And so the employee helped himself and just went in. I don't know why. Maybe to burglarize it, maybe to snoop. He was just curious who knows. He saw the bat, he saw the drawings, and he called the police. The police went to the unit. They saw the same things. They called the FBI.

And the FBI, without a warrant, took his phone, which he had left in the storage unit, made copies of all the drawings of the guns and the missiles and the rockets and pictures of the baseball bat. Well, writing something on a baseball bat is odd, but it's not a crime to be odd. It's not a crime to draw a picture of a gun or a picture of a rocket flying through the air. So what they did is they had an FBI agent acting as an undercover, reach out to him on Facebook.

And the undercover FBI agent said, "Hey, I was in the restaurant and they told me that you lived behind the restaurant in the alley and that you're Muslim. I'm Muslim too. Aloha Akbar. Salamu alaykum. Hey, let me take you out for a pizza and a beer." The truth was that Haroon was hungry and so he accepted the offer of a pizza and a beer.

He and the FBI agent went out and they started talking and talking and talking and they ended up communicating via Facebook over the course of hundreds and hundreds of pages of chats. They would also go out to restaurants two, three times a week. The FBI agent would buy Haroon cigarettes, pay for his pizza, pay for his beer, call him brother, call him my best friend.

And then the FBI agent said, "Listen, don't tell anybody but I'm working with some guys and we're putting together a militia and we want to attack Washington DC and overthrow the government." And Institute a reset. We don't want to change the form of government. We just want to get rid of all these people that are in now and reset it with new people.

What do you think? Well, on four separate occasions Haroon said, "No, I'm not interested." Then they said, "You know what would be cool?

“It would be cool to blow up a synagogue." You want to do that?”

And he said, "No, I don't want to do that." The FBI started pressuring him. What kind of Muslim are you? I thought we were friends. I've vouched for you.

The guys in the militia which funny enough was called the pineapple militia because it was based in South Florida allegedly. Of course, no such militia ever existed. You're making them angry. They thought you were part of the team.

They thought you were a brother.

Finally he said, "Okay, okay, I'll do it.

Just to get the guy off of his back." As soon as he said, he would help them to blow up the New York Stock Exchange. They grabbed him and arrested him. They charged him with six separate felonies, all of which carried a sense of life without parole. He was charged with two counts of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.

Conspiracy to commit murder by terrorism and conspiracy to murder federal agents. Haroon is homeless and he's broke and he couldn't afford a lawyer. So he was assigned the federal public defender. I have a great deal of respect for federal public defenders.

I've employed a lot of attorneys over the years.

“The federal public defenders work as hard or harder than any other attorneys I've met in my life.”

The federal public defenders reached out to me just two weeks ago and asked if I would read the discovery in the case. And if I felt comfortable, testify as an expert witness on how to recruit an agent, how to carry out a recruitment without the person realizing that he's been recruited. I agreed to testify on behalf of the defense.

Haroon's trial was the last week of June. I testified just a few days before the end of the trial. I did that via Zoom as I was overseas for another event.

I testified for about three hours without stopping.

The government's questioning was brutal. Really all they wanted to talk about was my own whistleblowing and my own conviction of

“violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.”

But I frustrated them because I had an answer. Whistleblowing is a defense and I kept coming back to my whistleblowing. The federal public defender later told me you couldn't see the jury on Zoom, but they were laughing at him, meaning the assistant U.S. attorney. He said, "They loved you. You aced it."

I kind of thought that I had aced it because the last question that the prosecutor had for me was,

and I quote, "At the end of the day, Mr. Kiryaku, you really are just a convicted criminal,

aren't you?" I answered, "Okay." And he said, "Not a yes or a no?" Oh, I'm sorry. I thought the judge said we're not supposed to answer rhetorical questions, and the judge said, "Move on, counselor."

He said, "I have no further questions here, honor." And then the public defender jumped up and said, "Read erect here, honor." And this is exactly how it went. He said, "Mr. Kiryaku, who's idea was it to blow up the New York Stock Exchange?" That was the FBI's idea.

"Who's idea was it to blow up a synagogue?" I said, "That was the FBI's idea." Who built the bomb? The FBI built the bomb. Who provided the explosives?

The FBI provided the explosives. Who provided the timer and the dead court? The FBI provided the timer and the dead court. Who provided the getaway car? The FBI provided the getaway car.

“Mr. Kiryaku, in your expert opinion, who's the criminal in this case?”

I said, "The FBI is the criminal in this case." Well, I'm proud to tell you that yesterday, June 30th, Haroon Yenner was acquitted on all six charges. Funny thing, when he was arrested in November 2024, and compared to Osama bin Laden in the USA today,

his arrest was covered by every major paper in America. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and with banner coverage in the Miami-Herald. His acquittal on all charges was not even noted in a blog. There's not even one word about it on the internet.

And I think that says a lot about our government. In any event, I thought you'd want to hear the story. I'm John Kiryaku, thanks for joining us. We'll talk to you soon. Dead Drop is written by John Kiryaku and Alan Katz. Costart and touched on Productions produces the podcast.

And John Kiryaku, Alan Katz, and Nick McCannick are its executive producers. . And now, I love your new ideas. It's about the people who are very close to each other. Thanks for your time.

Thank you for your time.