All posts tagged "Antifa"

The federal judge presiding over the trial of nine “antifa” defendants charged with terrorism and attempted murder in relation to a protest at an ICE detention facility in Texas last summer on Tuesday granted a request by the Department of Justice to bar self-defense claims in response to the shooting of a local police officer.

The order by Judge Mark Pittman during a hearing in Fort Worth, Texas — made in light of a ruling arising from the deadly Waco siege of 1993 — forbids defendants from presenting further evidence and argument to claim that one acted in self-defense or in defense of others when he allegedly shot Alvarado Police Lt. Thomas Gross.

The government’s motion asserted that such claims were “legally invalid.”...

Defendants on trial in Texas in the Trump administration’s first “antifa” prosecution are claiming self-defense, in answer to attempted murder and terrorism charges stemming from a chaotic confrontation outside an ICE detention facility that culminated with the shooting of a local police officer.

After defense lawyers cross-examined Alvarado police Lt. Thomas Gross, who suffered minor injuries after allegedly being shot by one of the nine defendants, the government last Friday filed a motion in court in Fort Worth, seeking to bar defendants from making a self-defense claim.

The government argues that because any claim of self-defense or defense of others was “legally unsupportable,” introducing evidence or arguments that raise that defense would amount to “a thinly veiled attempt to encourage the jury to nullify any verdict in this case.”...

The judge overseeing the so-called “Texas Antifa” case of nine defendants accused of attacking an ICE detention facility abruptly declared a mistrial on Tuesday, while scolding a defense lawyer for reportedly wearing a tee-shirt displaying civil rights icons.

But in a case widely seen as a test of the Trump administration strategy of criminalizing the antifascist movement and collectively punishing political opposition, friends and family members on the defendants’ support committee said they see another reason for the action by Judge Mark T. Pittman, who was appointed by President Donald Trump.

The jury pool, such observers say, was unexpectedly cool to the Trump administration generally and more specifically to federal immigration enforcement....

A trial set to begin on Tuesday in Fort Worth, Texas will test whether President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice can use a criminalized notion of “antifa” to convict nine anti-ICE activists of attempted murder and terrorism, after they shot fireworks and vandalized government vehicles.

On July 4 last year, most of the defendants showed up at the Prairieland ICE detention facility 25 miles south of Fort Worth to put on a fireworks display for immigrant detainees. A smaller group used spray paint to graffiti vehicles in the parking lot.

They dressed in black and concealed their faces with masks — a tactic commonly known as “black bloc.” One activist, former Marine Corps reservist Benjamin Song, carried an AR-15 rifle. A wagon nearby was stocked with an additional rifle, body armor and bottled water. One activist had guns in his car. ...

Federal prosecutors will argue that “adherence” to “violent and extremist Antifa ideology” shores up material-support-for-terrorists charges against protesters who shot fireworks, destroyed a surveillance camera, and vandalized vehicles and a guard shed at a Texas ICE facility on July 4.

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice also intends to cite previous cases involving jihadist and white supremacist defendants.

One leading expert told Raw Story “characterizing ‘Antifa ideology’ as necessarily violent,” like such established extremist threats, indicated the weakness of the government’s case....

The Trump State Department officially added a German antifascist group and three other European far-left groups to its list of foreign terrorist organizations last week.

But the action, which freezes U.S. assets and imposes penalties on anyone who offers support to the groups, ignored a transnational neo-Nazi group that has committed acts of violence of its own and is linked to the murder of two men in Florida.

The State Department announcement about plans to apply the terror designation to Antifa Ost accused the group of conducting “numerous attacks against individuals it perceives as ‘fascists,’” specifically citing “a series of attacks in Budapest in mid-February 2023.”...