891: The Test Case

Yes, we need the police to come out to Paralympic,

to send out on the bus going on outside. They just told me to call. Okay, you don't know what's going on. No, sir. I think they're doing fireworks.

There's a 911 call on the Fourth of July a year ago. Round of 11 p.m., Alvarado, Texas. About an hour outside of Dallas. The woman calling works at the Prairie Land Detention Center. She had the front desk there.

And she's calling 'cause a bunch of people have suddenly shown about side wearing black seven masks. Mind up on the other side of this long, barbed wire fence. They're setting off fireworks. It's really loud.

This facility is a detention center for ICE. Full of people being held in immigration charges. So many in the crowd outside is a megaphone. It starts calling out to the detainees inside.

As Peranza, hope, you are not forgotten.

More fireworks go up. Also, I'm out of trying to get in. Can you hear me up the sense of somebody?

“Can you hear me up the sense of somebody trying to get in?”

They asked me to walk in the perimeter. I don't know, sir. Okay, all right, we got 'em in, Rao, don't go. Call us back if anything changes. Okay, bye-bye.

I believe the officer rushes out to the facility. We're turning Thomas Gross from the Alvarado PD. As soon as he switches on his side run, the dash cam activates in his car and his body cam turns on. He turns into the Prairie Land Parking Lot.

And in the car headlight, you can see somebody sprayed buck ice on a guard shack. Then as he pulls up, he sees somebody running in front of his car. He jumps out of the car, dragging his gun in one hand, walkie-talkie in the other.

And this next thing happens almost immediately. Just six seconds after he gets out of the car. (guns firing) I'm hit, he else. He shot me up a shoulder by his neck.

He fires back, he be times. Shooter runs off and hides in the field. Sunfire field, actually. They're all around the detention center. Think cops of all sorts arrive.

Local police, sheriff's office, Texas Rangers, and they start arresting people. Some are on the streets, walking nonchalantly away, as if they just happen to be here, they are not involved. They're backpacks, which the cops try to search.

(guns firing)

“If you move, you will be shot, do you understand me?”

I am taking off your backpacks, search. Everybody's on edge, 'cause an officer's been shot. Police officer, it turned out he was not barely hurt. The bullet entered his shoulder, came out his back, just below his neck.

He was released in the hospital, later that night. The guy who shot the cop, had disappeared into the sunflower field. He had there for a whole day. Eventually some friends snuck him out.

They were all caught. But happened that night on the 4th of July, one year ago. It all ended up in court. It became this major trial. We're two very different stories were told.

The defendant say, "This is a protest gone wrong. Nobody was supposed to get shot." In other words, this was like tons of other anti-Is protests that had been happening all over the country, outside of his facilities.

People gather and make noise to communicate with detainees. The FBI director, Cash Patel, at a different view. Here he is talking to Fox News host, Larry Cudlow. This was a coordinated, planned attack

“by dozens of individuals to murder police officers”

and Larry, a police officer was actually shot in the neck. These guys came and staged a scene at a detention center using fireworks that brought in long guns and rifles. They were kidded out and bulletproof vests and masks and opened fire at law enforcement.

Patel was confident who's behind this. This is breaking news, Larry, just hours ago, a grand jury indicted two members of an antifa affiliated cell. 20 individuals have been charged so far,

but the key here is for the first time.

We have charged these two individuals with material support to terrorism for their involvement in antifa. And yes, antifa exists. It's a terrorist organization.

Did I call it the Fox host interview again? That means a lot of sense. So let's just one more moment on that. People on the left and the far left say that antifa doesn't exist.

It's a state of mind, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, if they're not real, then how come two people were invited, they have to be real. It's not a state of mind. Soon 13 more people were charged

with the material support to terrorists. (upbeat music) The indictment in this case, saying this was the work of a North Texas antifa cell. This came out a month after Charlie Kirk's assassination.

You may remember in that shooting, a bullet casing was etched with the words, "Hey fascist, catch." And a big part of the administration's response back then was to target antifa as an domestic terror group

and a national security memo, setting policy for the entire federal government. This Texas case, with these defendants,

their best argument that antifa is in fact a terror group

“operating here and now in the United States.”

And, okay, just to bring back for a second.

Right now in America, whether you believe or not that antifa even exists is tied to a whole other set of beliefs. And just to generalize here for a second, blue America says antifa does not exist

as an actual functioning organization. Lots of reporting backs us up. And going into this trial, the administration has not been able to point to any leaders or infrastructure or any of the normal things that a terror group has.

Meanwhile, Red America, and right wing media, say, of course antifa exists. Just look at all these activists around the country dressed in black, band-rising stuff, wreaking havoc. How could that not be a thing?

This trial in Texas, this was gonna be the place where we're gonna finally fight this one out in public and figure out, is antifa real? So, other government make the case? Was it convincing?

The trial was not recorded.

“But, that did not stop our producers over chase.”

There's never one to shy away from a fool's errand.

She was there for three weeks in the courtroom, writing down everything that happened in notebooks. As government tried to prove its case, beyond a reasonable doubt. Also, she got to know one of these supposed terrorists.

It was a hard to describe mix of being a longtime church lady, married to a guy who got dungeon in the dragons. Her nome to gear was Candid Dynamite. Here are the arguments, here are the counter-arguments,

here are the verdicts, all this hour, stay with us. (upbeat music) This week on NewsMakers, the far-right pastor with growing influence in the Republican Party and the administration.

- What I would do right now is outlaw abortion, overturned a vertical. Those are the fish that I would want to fry now. - Doug Wilson, a self-described Christian Nationalist on his vision for a Christian America,

this week on NPR's NewsMakers. Wherever you get your podcasts. - Support for this American life comes from Nisha Gulati, David Vanderpool, and Rebecca Reed. If those sound like people, not companies sponsoring the show,

that's because they are, they are people who support our show monthly or annually as this American life partners. They make it possible for us to continue making this American life.

If that's something you support, this show existing, please join them, join us. We have all sorts of goodies for you as thanks, including exclusive episodes. This American life.org/lifepartners.

That link is also in the show notes. Thanks so much. - It's this American life, act one, the trial. Okay, so from this start, this trial was pretty unusual. For starters, they had a hard time convening a jury.

A lot's of potential drawers either had strong opinions about ice, or about protesters, or about antifa. And on day one, the judge, who's a bit of an intense character, called a mistrial, because of a shirt, that one of the defense attorneys was wearing.

So they had to start the entire thing over. This time without giving attorneys a chance to question potential drawers. We did a little story about this one I showed a couple months ago. The judge also decided to move the trial upstairs,

in the his courtroom, the courtroom is a custom too. How much smaller room? Now let's only take things from here. Here's only chase. - The courtroom was packed.

Nine defendants, each with like two lawyers, so a lot of lawyers. Plus the prosecution, plus everyone else. Reporters and family members and law students and interested observers, all jaceling, a little fighting.

The court's sketch artist set basically on my right knee

on the first day, with his huge easel spread out in front of us like a sail. Judge Pittman likes to open trial days with little homilies.

“He says, "I urge you all to remember the saying”

from general patent. This will be our watchword for the trial. You cannot be disciplined in the great things and undisciplined in the small things." The judge wants things done a certain way.

Once you find your seat, he says, "Stay in it." So we begin. The prosecutors make their opening statement, saying this was an antifa attack. They are career government prosecutors

in the northern district of Texas. They are matter of fact in colorless. And then the defense gets to make their opening arguments and they're all showmen to one degree or another. They make their case over and over

because nine defendants. This was just a protest, they said, that went off the rails. The prosecution starts rolling out its evidence the next day in pretty dramatic fashion.

The boxes were tall and skinny,

“looked like someone in order to bunch of curtains.”

I didn't know what was in them. They bring in a parade of law enforcement to walk through everything they found that night, each item entered into evidence. The officers walked through body camera footage

and dash camera footage of the defendants being arrested and searched in the cops finding a lot on them. Take this one mini van. They'd stop this van not long after the shooting. The side windows down.

Go on the ground. There's a pistol on the floor of the car. The driver, Megan Morris, has her hand on the steering wheel. She looks miserable. She's dressed all in black, long gray hair and glasses.

She also has a loaded mag in her pocket. Is there any other guns in the car? There's something in the back seat. In the back seat?

In the back seat, we see an AR15.

They're clearing the guns of ammo and piling them up on the hood of the car, one on top of the other. Those body armor, loaded magazines, another AR15 in the trunk.

I just hang out right here.

“This is just like a straight coordinated terror attack”

on the ice detention facility. We got like six people, trauma kids, planes, ARs, all sorts of stuff. So this hang out, bro, what the fuck? This is fucking crazy, dude. Right, this is like a straight coordinated terror attack

on the hood of the car. I know, dude. This recording, where the officers are like, bro, this is a terrorist attack. There's a point of contention in the trial.

The defense tried to get it excluded, arguing the officer's comments could bias the jury.

That's just their random opinion

that this was terrorism. The judge was like, well, what they genuinely thought in the moment, seeing what they were seeing is relevant, I'll allow it. So this is what the boxes were.

Every time the officers had to introduce a new piece of evidence, they shook a gun out of a cardboard box. Guns started to pile up around the small courtroom. semi-automatic rifles and pistols and glocks

alongside body armor, trauma kits and mags. In the top margin above my notes, I just have a star and the words, all these guns. It looks bad for the defense. I also have notes on family members,

looking freaked out and upset. One of the sisters of a defendant keeps whispering, what's going on? Like, why isn't the defense doing more to object to all this stuff?

A few stickers make it into evidence, too. Make America not exist again. One of them says, the defense gets up. And the way one of the lawyers explains the guns is like, come on, this is Texas.

We all have these. These are all legal guns. And these people have guns for a reason. When out protesting, the lawyers argue, these guys encounter counter protestors on the right

who are armed. So they're armed. They often bring them. Most importantly, they point out the guns in that van. They never left the van.

Now, they are forced to see this while standing in a courtroom sort of ridiculously filled with firearms and ammunition. Even in Texas, this has got to be a little much. It's like an armory.

One of the defense attorneys later said to me, yeah, would it have been better if they just had bells and whistles? If their intent was just to make noise? Would it have been better if they weren't dressed?

Like, they were storming the best steel? Yes, it would have. This brings me to act too. I'm going to call act too the expert. So one of the main ways the prosecution

was going to try to show this was an antifa terrorist cell. It was by calling an antifa expert to the stand.

“There's going to be a key moment in the trial.”

I reached out to the antifa expert to talk in the prosecutors bringing him on and neither got back to me. But some of the defense attorneys did. They love to talk about this case,

especially as it turns out, the guy who was going to lead the cross-examination of the antifa expert, Patrick McLean. McLean and I meet up most days after court at the hotel bar.

The day he was going over his prep for the antifa expert, we read a nicer place. The Fort Worth Club, downtown. It's members only. We have to ring a doorbell to get in.

McLean's not a member. He just has a friend who is. I find them in the back corner. You only need the help? No, I'm a key pick-in, but no, I don't need the help.

You know what? I have no good. You know what? I'll have another Guinness, he says. Patrick McLean is as Irish Chicago and looking as his name.

Big and Burley's 67 years old.

His text messages are set to auto sign off,

Semper-5 Patrick, he's a former Republican and about Catholic, his 10 kids. He's a regular at the March for a life of a year. Tonight, he's also brought along his own terrorism expert, so when he plans to bring his witness,

a woman named Anne Speckard. He and Speckard are going to hammer out

“the best way to discredit the government's antifa guy.”

Anne Speckard stands out here a bit. She's definitely the only person in the Fort Worth Club with a flowery hair clip. Almost counter-cultural looking. She's a terrorism scholar.

She's studied ISIS and Al Qaeda and other groups. She's worked with the UN in NATO and other international organizations. So are you going to take the stands or are you just helping him prep our time?

OK. There's a 95% chance I'll take this stand. Only reason she wouldn't take this stand is that he was just horribly so horrible that, yeah, we'll need you.

If the government's antifa expert is so terrible that he needs no rebuttal, they'll be no need for Anne to take the stand. They don't expect that. Just while we wait for our drinks here,

I'll explain who the government antifa expert is.

“His name is Kyle Scheidler, bald and quite literally eggheaded.”

He sits with the prosecution every day. He works for the Center for Security Policy, a think tank and D.C. that truthfully is most known for advocating conspiracy theories about Muslims. I guess if you believe those theories

then as brave truth tellers. Scheidler has advocated for the government to treat antifa as a terrorist group. And in the last six years, Scheidler's trained cops all over the country.

And what he calls the antifa threat. He's also testified before Congress. So the question is, how are they going to deal with this guy when he takes the stand? So where are we going with this?

- Inspecored has a bunch of questions they can ask him on the stand, which he's written now. Like, how does one join antifa? Is there a membership list? Are there dooms?

Is there a leadership structure in oath? The basic stuff terrorist groups have.

“- Because if you join ISIS back in the time”

of when they had their caliphate, then even now, you hold your hand up and you give your by eye, your pledge of allegiance to whoever the caliphate is. - If you're joining a group, she says, you probably know you're joining a group.

There's no group here. - Can you show me the antifa groups? I mean, if he asked me about Hamas, I can tell him how you get into Hamas, what you do when you're in Hamas,

where the Hamas website is that actually says Hamas, but with Antifa, he just talks amorphously like these autonomous groups. But there's all kinds of autonomous groups. - The U.S. government disagrees, of course,

that Antifa does not meet the definition of a terrorist group. Patrick McLean announces he's gonna mulch on all this and go get some shut eye. He says he's been sleeping in his Dallas office lately.

As though they're building the hype, the government saves their antifa expert for the last few days of trial. Everyone watching has been waiting for him to take the stand.

Finally, Kyle Scheidler takes his place

in the witness box. So what is Antifa, the prosecutor asks? Scheidler really begins at the beginning. The word Antifa is actually a contraction of sorts. He says, in abbreviated contraction,

which is a common German phenomenon, stands for anti-fascist action. And it stems from the Vimar Republic in Germany. This goes on for quite a while. In the middle of a section about the history

of fighting with the police over the autonomous squats of West Germany, the judge tries to hurry him along. No offense to the professor, he says, but this isn't the place for a lecture. Scheidler, who's not a professor,

seems incapable of following the judge's instruction not to lecture.

I feel a notebook with Antifa's post-war rise, basically.

Finally, we get into the present day and these defendants. Scheidler takes through the classic hallmarks that show this group is what he calls Antifa. He talks about how, before that night,

everyone communicated over signal. An example of operational security, op-sec. In that night, they all went out dressed in black. Another common tactic of Antifa. He says, called black black.

Originally known as Dersvarts of Black, he says. The idea is, if everyone dresses in black,

After an operation, the Antifa tactic

is to take off the black clothing and blend back in, he says. The prosecutor mentions that one defendant had tied his long-sleeved black shirt around his waist when he was arrested a few miles away. And that's an example of D blocking, if you will.

“He asks, yes, so Scheidler, that's what I would expect to see.”

Then there's the book club. Scheidler spends some time on this book club that some of the defendants were in. The Emma Goldman Book Club. Emma Goldman was a famous anarchist from the early 1900s.

He says, this is sort of in Antifa front. The above ground, part of the organization. Scheidler says, anytime you're a clan destined organization, that is, an organization that cannot recruit openly, like, maybe they don't admit they exist.

You have to find a way to recruit other people, with which you have a shared ideology. Scheidler lists off some of these zines the book club was reading. Classics of an anarchist library, like,

I don't bash back a shoot first

and destroying white nationalism. And what about these red and black flags found rolled up in one of the garages, the prosecutor asks? When they introduce the flags as evidence, an FBI agent stood up with the flags

to demonstrate how they'd be hung if they'd been hung, which they weren't. He waved them wildly at the jury, like it was the finish line at NASCAR. Scheidler explains, yes, that's an Antifa flag.

The red and black is iconography related to the Spanish Civil War. When the anarchists were engaged in direct action against the fascists. Finally, it's Patrick McLean's moment, time for cross-examination. McLean approaches,

asks some questions about Scheidler's credentials for this,

pointing out he's never held a position at a college

or a university. He's never published a peer-reviewed paper. Then he gets to this, McLean. There is no national leadership of Antifa. Is there Scheidler?

It would be inconsistent with their ideology. Is that a no? It would be inconsistent with their ideology, so they do not. No.

Okay, they don't have membership rules. It would be inconsistent with their ideology, so no. Just for the sake of efficiency, if there is a yes or no answer, could you lead with that? Sure.

Okay, thank you. And no Jews or hierarchy in anything that you would call Antifa, right? No, they're opposed to it. If I were to summarize how Scheidler's seeing this, I think he's saying Antifa is not a typical terrorist

organization with leaders or membership lists or headquarters, because it's anarchist. They don't like organizations. They operate as affinity groups. McLean points out, however,

that none of the defendants ever refer to themselves as Antifa and their own private signal chats. Scheidler says they don't think about groups and organizations.

“That's what's counter to their ideology.”

From McLean's point of view, that's crazy. Scheidler saying the fact that they don't say their Antifa is the proof that they're Antifa. And if there really was a plan to shoot police officers as the government says,

a plan to destroy government property with fireworks. If this plan really existed, why isn't that in the signal chats? Did anybody talk about harming another person, McLean asks? Scheidler says, I would expect the discussions

of that type to take place person to person, and not necessarily appear in an encrypted chat. Then another defense attorney comes up and circles back to some of the other scenes and stickers that have come up like,

"Be gay, do crime, and acab all cops or bastards." Typical Antifa, Scheidler says. There was also a scene on a horticulture that attorney points out. Foraging in horticulture, yes, says Scheidler.

So what gardening is part of the Antifa platform? Not as such Scheidler says, but it's consistent with a community defense approach. The judge speaks up, he sounds mad again. Just because I own a copy of mine comp

doesn't make me a fascist or a Nazi does it? Not unless it's consistent with your other behavior.

“Scheidler says, what 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.

an anti-fascist necessarily does it, I hope not, sir. I've 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. One day, one of them came in in a Darth Vader sweatshirt. Why? Who knows? I never can read them. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Outside 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.

Cleanse antifa is this big organized network with institutional funders. This violence, it says, does not emerge organically. Presidential aid 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. Scheidler 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 the 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.

I walked outside, there's a beautiful Texas spring day, 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 courts over, the family 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.

We have half the government's case in,

and we've been basically kicking their ass.

This is Brian Buffard. He's co-counciled at Patrick McLean on this case. Do you guys are pretty confident right now?

“I can't even say, 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 Buffard's a former Navy Jag.

He defended someone accused of terrorism before, a prisoner at Guantanamo, who'd been tortured for years at CA Blacksites. He is deeply suspicious of the government. And this trial really bothers him.

It's a prime example to him, 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.

They are so freaked out by what's happening to the justice department. The 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. So well, in fact, that they end up not calling up their own expert at all.

They never put their terrorism scholar and spec card

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. (upbeat music)

- It's over, Chase. Coming up after the break, we hear from an alleged member of this alleged terror cell. And she's in very different from what the government says she is. That's in a minute, which is called Google Bubble Gridio,

when our program continues. It's a American life from my request. Today's program, the test case, we're devoting the whole hour to this, first of its kind trial. People at the government says are part of an Antifa cell

We've arrived at Act 3 of our show, Act 3, the cooperator.

Okay, so originally, 16 people were charging in this case. Nine of them went on trial. And the other seven, they played 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 would happen 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 and Teva ideology. That, 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 Glenette Sharp.

She was older than a lot of the others, 57 years old. And just to say what her involvement was and 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”

hidden a sunflower field the whole night, and then eventually got snuck out by a couple of friends. And that was Glenette. She fished him out of the field and then hit him from the cops. The authorities tracked her down a few days later.

The rest of 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 and against their friends. It was hard to sit through. There was something about Glenette 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 thrupple, not a word I expected to hear in the northern district of Texas, I guess.

But 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 terrorist in charge." It drove out there with her lawyer Aaron, he'd go through a bunch of nothing, and then there's a jail, long, low buildings, barbed wire around, a couple of Texas flags flying,

and Aaron takes me inside. Hello, come out, girl. Hi, I'm here for an attorney. What's in it? This is Glenette's scarf, 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 Glenette in.

She's in the orange and white prison straits. There was a small speaker stuck into the plastic that we talked through. Hey. Hi.

I want to ask how you are. I can't complain if I did who would listen. Well, I'm asking. Okay, yeah. I had my mic pointed at the wrong part of the speaker.

It'll get better later, sorry about that. When Glenette was arrested, she had spiky pink hair. Now it's a gray ponytail. She has glasses and hearing aids. I have to say, I talked 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. A alleged antifacell terrorist at age five. Lynette grew up outside for a worth in the early 70s.

She was a tomboy, played dirt-clad wars in the streets. She wrote bikes in the neighbor's horses. She likes 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. How 'm I'm shot her dad, twice, he survived. - She tried to poison him several times too. Not dance for 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's never hit anything from us.

- She's a miracle girl and put it in his beer. Didn't work, and I don't remember what she used the other time. - Well, and I didn't want to stick around. She 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 grown as beer herself. It's scarier. She moved back with her parents, moved out again,

and eventually left that guy. At this point, she gets really into church.

being part of a group.

“Maybe because she says she'd 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.

A church. - I went to church constantly. I had a church and was there every time the doors were open. And just really emerged myself in that.

- It was kind of hostile, but women could wear pants. But she liked. Things calmed. She meant another guy. A clean, not abusive, nice guy.

Me Marshall. Nirty played Dungeons and Dragons in video games. They got married. And at first, she says it was great. But slowly, even though this was a really different

relationship from a first one, it also begins 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.

And 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 didn't tell me when I told her what was going on. She said, why are you doing all of this? 'Cause I was doing everything. 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 didn't know. - 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. - After 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 and tense strokes. Her daughter gets pregnant at 16. She figures out that one of her stepkids

is abusing her daughters. Eventually her steps on is arrested. She ends up taking any kid who severely autistic. I'm raising that. 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 that's a motorcycle club. This is another turning point. Lynette gets really into the motorcycle club.

It 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.

He made him want to be a more function person for their man for me and then for the X-ray 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." And so we started talking in that data-surprise. We've been having sex for over the whole time. - I mean, I want to ask like 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.

- Yeah. - How Facebook? - 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 Hood in this movie The Rumb Diary.

And realizes, actually, she's always liked girls.

And she gives Marshall an ultimatum. - Peter, 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, 'cause man has 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 is into something. But however, hot Amber Hood is in the Rumb Diary and Lynette's mind, and 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 gonna be under sure I lied.

“It's time, like, that's what our get so many people in my life”

have felt that way, and the pizza gate stuff was going on, then, and did you believe in that? - I did. - Lynette didn't like Trump either, though. Things like the grab and buy the pussy teeth.

No thank you. And it wasn't long before basically,

to her personal politics.

“Which is true for a lot of people, right?”

National politics became intertwined with people's actual identities. But me too movement was a thing for her. 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, and 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. - Yeah. - In 2022, she started going to protest for the first time.

There's something very only in America about Lynette's life, I think. How fast it moved till many years she went through embodying each one. I kept thinking of this old article for Ms. magazine

from 1972 by Jane O'Riley. 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. We were all housewives, we'd prefer to be persons,

the article said, a year before Roe. Lynette was that housewife. Click, decade 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 heat 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, many 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? Well, they were the ones that, you know, in person life, I mean, I didn't have a job.

A lot of these people didn't have jobs. We don't love capitalism, and a lot of them are so very neurodivergent that they just could work.

A lot of them were younger, and, yeah, 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. I mean, they gave their time, the homeless. We helped disabled people.

I would leave meditations, because I was, I love meditation. And that 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. Unlike that love's groups, like that gun club, for instance.

A few people in the group are transgender. There's 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.

They called themselves the resistance writers. They had a lot of patlox, obviously, and karaoke nights. What did you think?

“The best times we have, I think everything, I think so many things.”

I love pink, while hard to 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 our 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. When a person in particular, she grew really close to, was Ben Song,

never one called Champaign.

Song, Champaign, 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.

“What was your relationship like with Ben with Champaign?”

It was very close. I remember telling them, you know, my best friend and all this shit that we were going through.

I admired him, I respected him a lot.

It was a perfect person, going to their house, it was a mess. These kids are, and I do think of those kids a lot. I don't mean to, I don't mean to, you know, to integrate 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, they're working very well.

And so it's 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.”

When that 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 a two in the morning, one night, and I was thinking about what else to do in 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.

I've never really been free like that before, and I didn't want to fall into it.

Now we're at that night, July 4th, 2025, when everything happened. When that 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 a week when people started messaging, trying to figure out what had happened. She heard people have gotten arrested. She heard a cop had been shot.

“"And what 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, that I just didn't believe it." "I didn't officer involved shooting." "Yeah, 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 of something and happened. Either it was un-avoidable. I didn't know. I just knew that I couldn't imagine that happening for no reason. Like, there had been something that went wrong." Then the next day, Lynette gets a message from song.

He was still hiding in the sunflower fields near the detention facility. Could she help get him out? He had his phone in a fairer day bag, which blocks her cell phone signals who 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 celly. Ben kept taking his phone out to message Lynette, which I have to say does defeat the point of the bag.

"I did. I knew. 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 messages you in particular?”

"I don't know. I think because he knew that I would be there for him. That I felt kind of an anchored in my own line that I was pretty much lived for the cause or for my friends and that I would help them." 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 help get him

set up an apartment so that one was cat sitting in. "I'm going to 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. I 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'd disassociated for most of the four days." Eventually, they came, law enforcement, rated 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. Of 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.

"All of this, if I could, my family, a lot more than I thought it would. We'd all been so distant for so long. I kind of felt like I was, you know, they wouldn't miss me much.

her husband Marshall was devastated. Her daughter was suicidal. Her artistic kid has 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 myself, just going over, I can't do those. I can't, I can't talk, I can't plead, I can't, like that. I'd be a smidge, I'd be a traitor. My family was begging me to do it."

She tried to channel in her head what song would say. And what 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. So when that's lawyer started to talk with the government about a plea deal, and when that 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 about Antifa, and what did you make of that? "Right away, and I'm like, I am anti-passionist. I said,

there's no group called Antifa, but I am anti-passionist, that's that I don't like fascists,

“and if you do, well, I think that's what Aaron wrote to me. He's not about to call him a fascist."”

Aaron, when that's lawyer, was there during all these little talks.

"They're trying to make this." The government seemed fixated, and getting her to say she'd been part of an antifa cell. They proposed the following language. When that reads sharp, it's here 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 purge her myself."

"We weren't a terrorist group that was really just a protest. It was an always demonstration,

which I told them from the very beginning that there's no anti-fogru that were just a group of friends that were going to a protest." Yes, they read anarchist scenes 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 plain dress-up to the whole thing, with all the accouture more 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-government ideology. She 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 cooperators 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. The bailiff

“lettering with the chain around her waist. What was it like to walk into the courtroom and see them?”

Oh, it was hard. I couldn't see them very well when I was seated. I could see a song immediately and I could tell from his face that he just didn't hate me. His face, I felt like he was he was definitely trying to convey to me that he didn't hate me. He was very open face, very smiling, very, you know, and no one else had any emotional, and I get emotional of course, and then the prosecutor asked, you know, you're getting emotional. Why is that? Oh my god, I love them. And he said,

"They're your friends." And I said, "Yes." And if I'd have been quick on my feet, I would have said, probably not anymore. Let me let that go after. But it was emotional, it was hard. Why? What was the hard part about it? Just because I knew love them, and I am afraid that they are angry at me for talking. And I guess I'd hope to see a little bit of warmness or something that I didn't see from any one of them 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 defenses narrative of what happened. This was just a book club. This was just a protest. She said, "They think we are an organization,"

rest of them. The other cooperators all in their own ways to varying degrees,

“undermine 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 met 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.

So here we are at the end, and the defense team that I've been hanging out with is psyched.

After the cooperators testified in 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, where'd you think it's today for my friend? You all did it. You rested. You didn't call us single winners. Great. That is a factual statement. I was looking for something more analytical and decisive.

I mean, is either brilliant or colossal mistake? Right. I don't know what you did.

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 most. Things had gone so well for them. It seemed like 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." The delivery is dry and emotionless. The defense is the opposite. They're at a high, adequate, finch, inherit the win 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 Fourth of July, Brian who fart 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 "suppressive fire." Song, 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 Fourth 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. I happen 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 defendant's family's hustled into the courtroom in 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. Riot using explosives,

fireworks, counters, explosives, and then there were the attempted murder and firearms charges that went with that. Only Ben Sahn, 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

talked to him a bunch during the trial. His daughter, who is 24 years old, had taken a plea deal.

“She testified for the prosecution. He'd come to court almost every day. The reporter asked him,”

"What's the reaction in there?" "I'm at horrible for the parents, shaking and trembling and realizing their child's going to be in jail for a long time. 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 it's like just say that, you know, it was that travels to you. Just this is not

maybe true either, because they all were foolish. That's a friend of the defendants screaming at Kent, because his daughter was a cooperating witness or a snitch as they saw it. It spotted Brian Boofard, the defense attorney, headed toward his car, who's carrying a weight button down

“shirt on a hanger. A shirt he'd brought for his client to wear in court. It 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 to do it. I certainly don't dispute that that is their verdict, but

yeah, it's just hard to take right now. 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 them? You know, they, everybody's guilty of terrorism. Yeah, that's a material support. The 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, as everybody ought to know. So how are you? Pretty rough. Not so good.

Later, he told me, is 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 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 US 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 a thousand dollars worth of damage to a federal building, intending to violate the law. That's it. That's all you need.

The prosecution argued they did that, the graffiti, the slash tires and 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 storytelling about antifa flags and symbols and zines and book clubs and clothing and signal chats, the judge asked a prosecutor's 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.

So all of that was in March. Sentences in the Paralympic 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

he moved to box of zines and other stuff after the night at Prairie Land 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 a hundred years. The material support to terrorist charge can jump you to pretty large sentencing numbers. One defense attorney at sentencing pointed out that 30 years is what you give murderers or cartel numbers. For comparison, the highest sentence any of the January 6 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 anti-finarity. It can exist in a courtroom, even if they weren't actually convicted of being”

anti-fa. There's already another case like it in another state. The charging documents are filled with claims that defendants are part of anti-fa, using some of the same language that was used in Texas. But if you look closely at this case, the prairie land case, and what was actually in the charges, and 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 anti-fa at all.

So we chase. By the way, Renette Sharpe, who's all your interviewed in jail, who played guilty as part of her plea deal, was sentenced to a couple weeks ago. She got nine years. At a sentencing she apologized to a 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. ♪ For say the house from hell ♪ ♪ And if they burn us through it ♪ ♪ It's time to blast and burn ♪

For a problem is produced state by silly chase, admittedly by the Kestenbaum. People put together today's show include Adrian Lily Molly Marsello, Captain Ray Mondello, Snow Nelson, with the Tito Naly Arayman, Ryan Rummary-Warsher, Cheski-Pensis, Swanson, Chris Twistler-Pala, Nancy Haptag, Julie Whittaker, and Diane Will, a managing editor, Sarah after all, and executive editors, Maine and Mary.

Special thanks to David Tolalwani, Osi-Bama-Wow, Kim Pasco, Thomas Brzealski, Chris Cofer, James Foster, Marquita Clayton, Brett Sauer, Havier DeHanon, Lydia Cosa, Louise AC, the DFW support committee, Yong-Gang McClain, Adam Fetterman, and Ferrari, Kelsey Mithauer, Jose Pallieri, Janet Raidman, David Weiss, Lisa Chrisler, Randy Rae, and Dylan Duke. This American officer is a group of

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Thanks as always to a Buckham's co-founder, Mr. Tornado Tia,

you know from the start, he has never called on program a radio show. It was a noise demonstration, which I had told them from the very beginning. I'm here at Glass, back next week with more stories of this american life. Next week in 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.

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 in the welcome public radio station.

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