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30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech
- SidewaysView 3mo ago[flagged]
- xrd 3mo agoUp until now these crazy cases have been rejected by the courts. But this feels like a crack in the dam. A judge actually sentenced someone to 30 years for hiding zines, zines that had been published for years. This was under the pretense hiding those zines was hiding evidence of criminality. And the criminality was worth 75 years. For someone who was at a protest where a federal agent was shot, but was not the shooter. Does anyone have a link to details on the case because there must have been more details, like these two were accused of planning a murder in advance, because otherwise this seems insane. It seems insane no matter what, but if this was a judge making a bunch of logical leaps while guided by DOJ lawyers, something is really broken
- appreciatorBus 3mo agoI think all of this hinges on whether or not you think it was a protest. If they had been peacefully sitting outside the facility holding signs, I think you'd have a case that the sentencing is insane. But if they were actively planning a break-in & preparing to use deadly force, that's quite another matter. I haven't spent a lot of timing reading about it, but what I have read suggests it was much closer to the latter.
- devmor 3mo agoFrom what I read, the person who was arrested for transporting zines was not even at the protest or part of the group - just the husband of one of the protestors.
- paisawalla 3mo ago[flagged]
- axus 3mo agoIf I were transporting copies of this magazine, am I concealing evidence? What is special about this guy? Is there anything he could have legally transported, or is everything she's written banned? The irony of The Intercept requiring my identity is funny.
- glitch003 3mo agoshe called her husband, from jail, and asked him to move them so they couldn't be used in court against her. she said "do whatever you have to do". the cops listened to the phone call, watched him load them into the car and arrested him on the drive. i think it's pretty straightforward that she was asking for his help in obstructing the investigation by hiding potential evidence against her.
- mindslight 3mo agoLawful investigation and prosecution would of course not hinge upon the contents of political publications. As such, any obstruction was purely aimed at the inevitable two minute hate by the addled autocrat about how antifa is hiding everywhere, making his coffee too cold and his food not taste as good as it used to.
- lobf 3mo agoWell regardless, the obvious answer is that you simply turn your zines in to slurry in a bucket or sink, you don’t drive them anywhere.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
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- ipython 3mo agoUnfortunately, the administration wants it both ways- if you were on the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021, you were simply part of a "peaceful tour group". If you stand to the side of an ICE agent in Minneapolis, you are a "domestic terrorist", deserve to be murdered in cold blood, and any attempts to investigate further will be stonewalled. So it's hard to take their characterization seriously when they have demonstrated that there is a clear double standard, depending on whether you are a FoT (Friend of Trump).
- wmf 3mo ago[flagged]
- platevoltage 3mo agoImagine having to pardon an anti-fascist in the USA.
- compass_copium 3mo agoImagine a Democratic president with a spine like that.
- ipython 3mo agoCan anyone seriously define “antifa”? What would the pardon read? “Anyone who is anti-fascism is hereby pardoned…”? Edit: downvoting me doesn’t answer the question. If you have a definition please reply! If nobody can define “antifa” how the heck can you prosecute someone for being a member of it?
- wmf 3mo agoIt wouldn't be a blanket pardon.
- incompatible 3mo agoWikipedia uses "a left-wing anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement." Until recently, there was nothing controversial or illegal about being any of those things.
- lelandfe 3mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Prairieland_ICE_detention_center_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Prairieland_ICE_detention...
- appreciatorBus 3mo ago[flagged]
- stronglikedan 3mo ago[flagged]
- j16sdiz 3mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- snvzz 3mo agoDo not just link some Wikipedia article. Express your point.
- reverius42 3mo agoThe parent comment has a lot of "if this" and "if that", but the linked Wikipedia article has a thorough sequence of events. The point is clearly: we don't need to surmise.
- felixgallo 3mo ago'they' is doing a lot of work. This guy wasn't even there.
- shimman 3mo agoWhat hogwash. Resistance is as American as the founding of the country, acting like there is a "right way" to protest is deeply antihuman.
- Manuel_D 3mo agoThe "protestors" shot someone, if that's not the wrong way to protest then what is?
- mulmen 3mo ago[flagged]
- thunderfork 3mo agoAn individual shot someone, unless you think multiple people were helping pull the trigger.
- Manuel_D 3mo agoThis was a coordinated group of people who procured body armor, radios, and firearms, and planned to break into a Federal facility. Responsibility for this incident doesn't rest exclusively on the hands of the shooter. An analogy is Enrique Tarrio's arrest in the wake of January 6th. Right wingers complained that he wasn't even in the capital during the riot. But of course that's not evidence his innocence. Even though he didn't personally participate in the putsch, he was still held responsible for organizing it (not for long on account of his pardon, unfortunately, but he was still rightfully convicted).
- thunderfork 3mo agoResponsibility is a separate question from correctly reporting on the events that occurred. "A protestor shot someone" is correct, "a protestor shot someone and the group is culpable" could be argued, but "the protestors shot someone" is simply untrue.
- daedrdev 3mo agoIf you think that this was a protest then yeah it's worrying. The feds case, which they did win convictions based on, was that they were terrorists who set off fireworks to lure police into an ambush, and there weren't more casualties because one of the members shot early and only injured one cop. An accessory to this who hid evidence is also part of the crime in the Feds case Is this embellished by the Feds? I think so, it seems some of the group did not think this was the plan. But there did seem to be a plan and it did involve bringing guns, setting off fireworks, opening the gate and trying to break out the prisoners, and "not going quietly"
- tkel 3mo ago"Lure police into an ambush" is quite a stretch. It's quite normal to do noise demonstrations outside jails/prisons to show solidarity with the captives, the captives will often times knock on the windows to communicate back. In fact there were noise demonstrations outside the Delaney Hall ICE jail in New Jersey just this month, which you may have heard about. The mischaracterization of fireworks as "explosives" is also a huge stretch by the government in order to pursue their antifa conspiracy.
- snvzz 3mo ago[flagged]
- Aeolun 3mo ago> Or are you saying you'd be happy to have one of these shot at your face? Given the choice between the fireworks and an actual grenade? Yeah, absolutely.
- simianparrot 3mo ago[flagged]
- goatlover 3mo ago
- throwawayffffas 3mo ago> ... like these two were accused of planning a murder in advance, ... The 30 years is for evidence tampering. The rest have been convicted of various terrorist charges. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Prairieland_ICE_detention_center_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Prairieland_ICE_detention... It's really funny because all of this has played out in the past with people that actually conspired to do all that and more and walked away free. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Smith_sedition_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Smith_sedition_trial That case, the incredibly bad handling of Ruby Ridge and Waco put a real freeze on the FBI dealing with domestic terrorism, and then the focus moved outward with 9/11. But now "domestic terrorism" is priority number 1. Enjoy your choices folks.
- panny 3mo ago[flagged]
- totetsu 3mo agoAll the best discussion of this is on sites that I wouldn’t want to link to on HN incase It puts me on a list in line for a 30 year prison sentence
- vrganj 3mo agoWill you look at that, the authoritarian suppression of opposition speech is already working!
- sourcecodeplz 3mo agoprob zerohedge, i can say it. no need to link it.
- totetsu 3mo agoNo I wasn’t thinking far-right libertarian I was thinking far-left anarchistic, haha
- nylonstrung 3mo agoInsane to think they'd have gotten a small fraction of the sentence had they been distributing CSAM they produced instead Apparently Marxist film reviews and gardening tips are more criminal than child pornography
- jmyeet 3mo agoThis isn't even a theoretical comparison. Consider the case of popular far-right influencer Dom Lucre. In 2023, he uploaded screenshots from what is apparently a "known" CSAM video. Not only that but he watermarked the screenshots, showing he had the screenshots on a computer he had access to and likely had access to the source video itself. Mere possession of this should land you in jail. One side of the story is that Elon Musk personally intervened to unban him for this [1], which is a whole other aspect to this. But the Feds, as far as we know, never charged him. This leads many (including myself) to believe Dom Lucre is an asset to the FBI already. Jeffrey Epstein was charged for his pedophile ring. Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted but is now sitting in a Work camp she should never be in for her crimes. And she was charged with trafficking. To whom exactly? Nobody has ever been charged or even named as being who minors were trafficked to. At least 4 presidents have sat on a mountain of evidence of this and done precisely nothing. The last president (Biden) and his AG (Garland) even sat on these files when the current president was credibly implicated. And of course there are the January 6 ringleaders who were convicted of seditious conspiracy (22, 18 and 18 years) for attempting to overthrow the government and storming the Capitol. All pardoned now of course. But sure, 30 years for moving a box of zines. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/07/27/twitter-suspends-then-unsuspends-popular-right-wing-user-who-tweeted-image-of-child-sexual-abuse/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/07/27/twitter-...
- WalterGR 3mo ago5 days ago, 90 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649884
- rationalist 3mo agoThank you, at least that article doesn't require an email address to read it. > One fired an AR-15 at the police, which goes beyond legitimate protest into inciting violence (and maybe even deliberate provocation). Uh, I think firing a gun at someone is a bit more than "inciting violence", more like attempted murder? The article doesn't say what the actual charges were. Was it tampering with evidence? Although 30 years for just tampering with evidence doesn't seem right either. Maybe there's more that they're leaving out? Another comment in another HN thread shared this quote and link: > "Prosecutors said that the group launched a premeditated terror attack on the detention facility inspired by antifa ideology, by setting off fireworks, vandalizing property, and shooting at police officers who responded. One officer was struck in the neck with a bullet and survived." https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/ice-detention-attack-defendants-sentencing-6-23-2026/ https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/ice-detention-attack-defe... Perhaps the cop getting shot in the neck is why they're throwing the book at them.
- topgrain2 3mo ago> Uh, I think firing a gun at someone is a bit more than "inciting violence", more like attempted murder? The shot cop had drawn a gun on someone who was running away. The judge didn’t even permit the defense to argue “defense of self or others” as a justification.
- pc86 3mo agoIs it legal to shoot a uniformed police officer pulling a gun on someone?
- protocolture 3mo agoJust moral, not legal.
- arjie 3mo agoIt's pretty straightforward that if someone tells you to hide something because they've been arrested and they think it ties them to some criminal act, and then you hide it, you're an accessory to the crime. 30 years for that seems harsh though I anticipate they will be pardoned by the next Democratic Party President. Describing such an act without the obvious context is a pretty good way to point out that it's partisan text and likely misrepresents other things. Listen, we've all been on the Internet a few decades. This kind of understatement of things is not new to any of us. "Oh so just because your country thinks it's not a big deal for someone to go to America to fly a plane means it should get bombed?" No, champ, it's the flying of the plane into the WTC and subsequent sheltering of the guy who planned it that does that.
- jrflowers 3mo ago> No, champ, it's the flying of the plane into the WTC Sir, a second zine has struck the south tower
- lovich 3mo agoWas the speech illegal? Not giving my email to this site so I can’t read the rest but it seems odd that any sort of speech gets multi year sentences much less multi decade unless it was direct calls to violence.
- ndriscoll 3mo agoI don't think there's even a claim the speech is illegal. Rather, it's that "transporting zines" when your spouse gets arrested on suspicion of crimes related to a designated terrorist organization is about as legal as "arts and crafts" (i.e. shredding documents) when your spouse is arrested for fraud. It's the obstruction of justice part that's illegal, not the possession. As far as I know she could be fully acquitted and he'd still be on the hook for trying to conceal evidence.
- lovich 3mo agothat's a plausible and convincing argument to me other than that its 30 years. Murderers can get less than that. I don't see how that's anything other than trying to chill the idea these people had based on the connection to speech. I am also not a proponent of absolutist free speech if you check my comment history, but I cannot imagine a realm where the details linked in the small part of the article that's not walled off and the details in this thread don't align to the government trying to prevent bad thought. I am open to more detail if anyone has some to provide
- ChrisArchitect 3mo agoMore discussion: Texas man sentenced to 30 years for transporting pamphlets https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48659703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48659703 Signs you're a dangerous terrorist: using Signal, moving zines https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649884
- Xorakios 3mo agoHere's the case: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/antifa-cell-members-convicted-prairieland-ice-detention-center-shooting https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/antifa-cell-members-con... The 30 year sentence was for hiding documentation being sought under a federal warrant after being called by his wife and asking him to do so. The warrant was for documentation after the protesters shot fireworks to bring out first responders from the ICE facility, and allegedly one of the group shot a responder in the neck instead of the head. A lot of stuff to scrutinize and complain about in the sentence, but it wasn't just "transporting Zines"
- Ukv 3mo ago> The 30 year sentence was for hiding documentation [...] it wasn't just "transporting Zines" As far as I can tell, the moving of zines (he was pulled over and had a box in his car) is what's being presented as "hiding documentation" - not something beyond that. > being sought under a federal warrant Timeline seems to be that a warrant was obtained after pulling him over ("Sanchez-Estrada was then arrested on state traffic offenses, and officers obtained a search warrant [...]"). Can't find a source saying there was a warrant prior to this. > The warrant was for documentation after the protesters shot fireworks to bring out first responders from the ICE facility, and allegedly one of the group shot a responder in the neck instead of the head. It's true that demonstrators were setting off fireworks, and it's true that Benjamin Song later shot at a police officer who had drawn his gun. But it's just the government's narrative/speculation that the intent of the fireworks was to draw out first responders to ambush, and that Sanchez-Estrada's zines were in some way documentation of this despite him not being at the protest and his wife not being the shooter.
- expedition32 3mo agoChilling effect on demonstrations. If you attend one were someone starts shooting you become an accomplice. And ofcourse this also leaves the door open for a "false flag" incident.
- mvdtnz 3mo ago
- gos9 3mo ago[flagged]
- Rebelgecko 3mo agoMy understanding is that aiding and abetting has to be causal and happen before the alleged crime. That doesn't seem to line up with the timeline of this case (barring the existence of secret Antifa time machines)
- gos9 3mo agoIncorrect
- emdash 3mo agoPlease review the legal definition of aiding and abetting before giving bad legal advice
- gos9 3mo agoThat’s exactly what the convicted did. Not sure why anyone thinks common law just doesn’t exist if you read an article that gives them a softball
- type0 3mo agoIs there a functional Samizdat in US? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat
- AuthAuth 3mo ago[flagged]
- tumetab1 3mo ago[flagged]
- ipython 3mo agowow, I feel like the overton window hasn't just shifted, it's off the page. Back in the 90s we would openly share the Anarchist's Cookbook, CIA field manual for sabotage, etc. then lace our emails intentionally with "trigger words" when it was theorized that the NSA was reading all Internet traffic, so as to emphasize our free speech absolutism. Now, an article comes out about sentences handed down for ... free speech ... and the reaction is to close the tab because they ... made some speech that you didn't like? Free speech for me, not for thee?
- baublet 3mo agoThese free speech warriors didn’t actually care about free speech. They just wanted to be able to say horrible things without consequences.
- platevoltage 3mo agoThese people are actively hostile towards free speech. The fact that we let these people call themselves patriots is embarrassing.
- OkayPhysicist 3mo agoYou're talking about a different group of people. Back then, the only people who were online were relatively technical, which for whatever reason correlates with leaning libertarian (left or right). My theory is that the experience of identifying a solution to a problem, then being told it can't be implemented because someone with authority says "no" shakes one's belief in authority fundamentally. Regardless, nowadays online, even in tech circles like this one, you have a much broader sample of the general population. In the case of HN, it's split more evenly than you'd expect from the general population between software developers, and tech entrepreneur types (or at least wannabes). The latter group is perfectly happy with oppressive power structures as long as they help them make money, and aspire to be the authority that says "no".
- poplarsol 3mo ago[flagged]
- synoptik 3mo agoMore exactly: If your roommate attended a protest where someone got shot, and you transported their zines that indicate your roommate shares political ideology with the shooter, is anyone really under the impression this is not criminal in nature? And yes, that’s not criminal.
- j_walter 3mo agoIf his wife who is being charged in a crime asks her husband to destroy evidence, then yes that is a crime. Transporting may be what he was doing when he was caught, but they clearly had enough evidence to support that he was doing more than that. 30 years is absolutely excessive, but that doesn't mean the guy is not guilty.
- will4274 3mo agoIn this case, the roommate conspired to setup an ambush of police officers, an ambush which resulted in one of the police officers being shot in the neck. The roommate didn't "attend a protest" except by the broadest possible definition.
- emdash 3mo agoExcept that's not even remotely similar to what happened in this case.
- platevoltage 3mo agoWhat an incredibly lazy and dishonest interpretation of what happened here.
- londons_explore 3mo ago[flagged]
- omnimus 3mo agoWhat? That's pretty bad guarantee. The fact that Trump releases his friends has nothing to do with what should his opposition do. If anything respecting acts of former governments should be the norm.
- londons_explore 3mo ago[flagged]
- bikezen 3mo agoSorry what now, what equivalent pardons did Biden issue compared to anything like this or the J6ers, to the many who suddenly became pardoned before/after donating money to trump affiliated projects/PACs?
- anigbrowl 3mo agoPlease give me a few examples of the most egregious crimes Biden pardoned, for context. I want to make sure we're comparing apples with apples, and I don't want to make assumptions about what you might have had in mind.
- baublet 3mo ago[flagged]
- actionfromafar 3mo ago... but also, you probably want the Trump clan to rule, forever.
- myko 3mo agoI can't imagine "both side'sing" the situation in the United States right now. The country has been taken over by a criminally corrupt, sick individual, who given his responsibility w.r.t Jan 6th isn't even eligible for the office he holds - the country is collapsing.
- randomNumber7 3mo ago[flagged]
- wnevets 3mo ago[flagged]
- randomNumber7 3mo ago[flagged]
- protocolture 3mo ago>Political violence can obviously not be tolerated in a democracy. Political violence is mandatory in a democracy, or you get what you have.
- tkel 3mo agoPrisons are political violence. War is political violence. Policing is political violence. Pretty rich to hear moralizing about "poticial violence" from US citizens, the country which has the largest military, largest prison system, and spends the most on policing out of any country on the planet.
- magenta4 3mo agoFreedom of speech is absolute. It doesn't matter what the government thinks of the situation. It isn't a "crime" to move publications, even if the police think that. It's sickening how this could even possibly happen.
- will4274 3mo agoIt's a crime to deliberately conceal another crime, whether you do it by raking leaves, deleting Internet posts, or setting your car on fire. It's called accessory after the fact.
- Aeolun 3mo agoThat’s only the case if the zines are evidence of anything. What were they evidence of?
- microgpt 3mo ago[flagged]
- polski-g 3mo agoIt is absolutely a crime to conceal evidence in an ongoing criminal trial. The contents of the publications is absolutely irrelevant: the individual was asked to conceal evidence and agreed to do it.
- vrganj 3mo agoWhat are zines evidence of?
- khalic 3mo agoHow does that boot taste?
- jmyeet 3mo agoThe leaders of January 6 got 22, 18 and 18 years for seditious conspiracy in an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States. This guy got 30 years for not being at an event where an officer was shot (and it was unclear who shot first, according to the FBI) when one of the arrested asked him to move a box of zines. Now if I murder someone then ask you to dispose of the murder weapon, I've only committed a crime if I am knowingly conceling or destroying evidence. Like, maybe I'm helping you hide possession of an illegal firearm. That may still be a felony but it's in no way as serious as if I knew you killed someone with it. so, what did the zine mover know, exactly? Did they know there was going to be a protest? Graffitti at an ICE facility? It's unclear to me that there was any plan to shoot a police officer so it's hard to argue that they should've known that was the crime at hand. Were they moving the zines so they wouldn't get confiscated and they still wanted to distribute them? Nothing about this amounts to "domestic terrorism" under the most generous interpretation of the prosecution's theory of the case. They invented a domestic terrorist organization out of whole cloth and then used it to justify conspiracy charges. There is no "Antifa" like there is/was al-Aqeda or the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers. Who are the leaders? How do you identify members? What are there communications? It's all completely made up to justify excessive prosecution.
- newaccount670 3mo ago[flagged]
- croes 3mo agoSo do you > https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-capitol-rioters-jailed-sentences-january-6-1826075 https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-capitol-rioters-jailed-se... The longest sentence of an actual rioter was 22 years. Compare that to this and explain why he got more for less
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- nightsd01 3mo ago[flagged]
- dghlsakjg 3mo agoThis judge has a very high rate of overturned rulings, and reliably rules for conservative causes. Prosecutors openly acknowledge strategically filing cases in his court for conservative causes. It isn't a mistake that he was the judge here, and there is a very good chance the sentences will be overturned if not entire cases. Of course, that doesn't matter to these defendants, some of whom probably do deserve punishment for what they did, and all of whom will suffer through years of appeals, stress, etc. because some prosecutor wanted to make their career on a big case, and will have moved on years before this is all resolved. In short, the case was made for headlines, and after putting the defendants through hell, appeals will invalidate most of those headlines after incurring great expense on behalf of the taxpayers and defendants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_O%27Connor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_O%27Connor
- exmadscientist 3mo agoAnd following on from that, this has all the hallmarks of a successful appeal for unreasonable sentences. However, it's going to go to the Fifth Circuit, who are, ah, not known for their friendliness to criminal defendants.
- kpennell 3mo agoHere's him speaking at the Federalist Society - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMTt9pxWBhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMTt9pxWBhA
- SE5pc3JhY2lzdA 3mo ago[flagged]
- RIMR 3mo agoThere's an ocean of difference between "moved some magazines" and "helped organize the event and explicitly called for violence". You know that, though; you're just intentionally missing the point.
- try_the_bass 3mo agoSimilarly, you know that "moved some magazines" doesn't accurately portray what this person was sentenced for. It was evidence tampering, and intentionally trying to frame it as "just moved some magazines" is disingenuous. You don't even have the plausible excuse of "missing the point". You know what they say about glass houses and stones, right?
- Aeolun 3mo ago> helped organize the event and explicitly called for violence I know some other guy that did this after he was beaten in some sort of contest. Don’t think he was ever punished for it. Landed on his feet, building a new ballroom now.
- juleiie 3mo ago[flagged]
- Chinjut 3mo agoA lot of people in these Hacker News comments are accepting the framing that moving the zines is evidence tampering and therefore deserves a 30 year sentence. What crime are zines evidence of?
- bawolff 3mo agoI don't think that is the relavent question. Did he move the items because he believed that they were evidence being sought by the police? I don't really care if they are actually evidence of something or not. I care if the accused believed they were and moved them for that purpose.
- vel0city 3mo agoLet's say someone is driving 35MPH. They think "oh snap, I think the speed limit is 30MPH here!". The posted speed limit is actually 40MPH. Was this person speeding or not? Should a cop ticket them for thinking they're doing something wrong, even if everything they were doing was legal? Did they even think the zines were implicated as evidence? Were the zines implicated as evidence? What crimes were being committed by ownership of these zines? If there's a warrant issued to search a house, and a resident of that house eats a ham sandwich for lunch while the cops are on their way, did they destroy evidence?
- BobbyJo 3mo agoIt's not illegal "because you think its illegal", it's illegal because "you had a court order to provide things that are relevant and you instead hid things you thought were relevant". If I hide someone who I think did a crime to help them escape police, I've now implicated myself in the crime, whether or not my trying to hide them actually caused them to get away with it.
- vel0city 3mo ago> it's illegal because "you had a court order to provide things that are relevant and you instead hid things you thought were relevant" And yet when Trump does it with classified documents its not a problem. Where's his 30 years? Did he even have a warrant issued to him related to these documents? Are these zines even relevant evidence? Is everyone who has these magazines also now a criminal? What about other radical anti-government political pamphlets like Common Sense? > If I hide someone who I think did a crime to help them escape police Seems like quite a different thing than moving some political pamphlets. If they were shredding financial documents while being charged with financial crimes I'd agree. If they were hiding guns with a gun trafficking charge, I'd understand. Flushing drugs down the drain, sure. Moving political zines though? Really? What's the relevance again for the ownership of political pamphlets to committing crimes?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- smsm42 3mo ago[flagged]
- thunderfork 3mo agoInsane charges, insane justifications, and judging by the comments in this thread, I feel insane for having ever believed in the myth of the "decent conservative".
- Chinjut 3mo agoHacker News is for people who believe in the hacker ethos "It is immoral to do anything the government takes issue with and you deserve whatever punishment you get for doing so, unless it was breaking regulations to make money, the highest calling".
- tkel 3mo agoAlso, "It's okay for the government to shoot people, use explosives, kidnap people and put them in cages for their entire lives. But if you try to stop them, you are bad and deserve to be in a cage for your entire life."
- reubenswartz 3mo agoIf only he had deliberately hidden top secret documents with national security implications, he could be eligible to be president...
- jrexilius 3mo agoThe wonderful thing about our current culture is that each side thinks that further empowering the federal government is the solution. And it will only be used by their side against their enemies (other american citizens). No thought at all to the fact that the other side will take power in 4 years. No, no.. short term power is all that matters. The Biden administration started targeting "right-wing terrorists", now its Trumps turn to take it up a notch. Can't wait to see what the left does when they take power in a couple years. I think the technical term for this is death spiral...
- paulryanrogers 3mo ago> The Biden administration started targeting "right-wing terrorists" Where can I read more about this?
- cobbzilla 3mo agohttps://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/splc-financial-infrastructure/ https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/splc-financia...
- paulryanrogers 3mo agoThe first few examples aren't every sympathetic (SBF, some pedo, and George Santos), and their argument doesn't appear to be reinforced by the evidence. Though the source is quite long so perhaps they decided to bury the lede.
- focusgroup0 3mo ago[dead]
- slackfan 3mo ago[flagged]
- hahahaa 3mo ago?
- Aeolun 3mo agoLet me get this right… all these people got from 70-100 years in prison for spray painting slogans on the side of some ICE infrastructure, and setting off fireworks. Then fair enough, one of them shot a police officer, but the officer survived, and even the FBI employee described in the trial that he’s not sure who shot first. The US is insane. What’s to stop any future antifa group from immediately opening up on all the personel involved? They were carrying the guns for it, and apparently it doesn’t make a hoot of difference to the sentencing…
- N_Lens 3mo agoIt's naked fascism and about sending a message. A lot of HN visitors align right wing because capital usually aligns with the right wing, and people here are better off than most. In my opinion capital will no longer serve as the reliable survival signal that it has upto now, and we're in a transitional era. Optimizing purely for capital is not likely to ensure the survival of the human race, neither collective nor individual. Infact it is the very drive to maximize capital which is threatening our survival.
- Mickelby 3mo ago[flagged]
- mindslight 3mo ago> tampering with evidence in a terrorist-related crime that involved an officer shooting. Talk about an "emotional-based framing" meant to "radicalize the less-literate" ! For starters, terrorists attack civilians rather than de facto militaries. These are like the opposite of terrorists, however misguided we might think they are. Regardless of framing, the core argument here is that the contents of political publications (ie protected speech) are not appropriately evidence in a criminal proceeding, therefore attempting to hide them is not tampering with evidence. Anybody who believes in the first amendment to the US Constitution should be receptive to this argument.
- Mickelby 3mo agoShooting a policeman is the "opposite of terrorists"? Nobody is going to agree with you on that, except Reddit-type people.
- mindslight 3mo agoYou started off bemoaning "emotional-based framing" and "populism", but now you don't want to accept that a word has a specific meaning beyond its popular emotional usage? Perhaps try being consistent.
- vrganj 3mo agoShooting a policeman in defence of innocent others said policeman was about to shoot. I thought the second amendment was all about stopping the bad guy with the gun?
- Mickelby 3mo agoAgain, I don't understand who you guys are trying to convince here? You're justifying the shooting of a policeman by a group being charged as a terrorist organization. Who on Hacker News is going to agree with you, except those on the extreme-left fring of politics? Hacker News is a rational fact-based website. There are lots of other populist websites where people react more emotionally to things. Surely you'd have more success posting this on Reddit or TikTok?
- green_wheel 3mo agoEven if he did exactly what they said he did, no way that's worth 30 years. But people really need to realize that the justice system has been and never will be "blind" or "fair" or whatever you may think it is. It is wielded by those in power largely as they see fit, so keep that in mind if you're thinking about messing with the feds.
- pnt12 3mo agoIt seems especially bad now. This relativistic mindset is really bad for critical thought: "oh, it was never 100% fair". Well, if it was 80% earlier, it seems approaching 20% now. It's a whole new level.
- cmrdporcupine 3mo agoI think you need to do some research on how the policing and legal system was used against left wing agitators, thought, and organization for most of the 20th century. From COINTELPRO to Eugene Debs being jailed (for speech), it's a pretty clear and consistent pattern and consistent with what was done here and it was done under both Democrat and Republican administrations. It's just out of people's recent memories because the bogeyman in the last 25 years became Islamic fundamentalist radicals, not communist ones. And because far left politics fell markedly in size and impact after the collapse of the USSR.
- green_wheel 3mo agoEverything seems worse now because you have access to the Internet. And it doesn't really matter when it was worse. It's bad now and you should be aware of what the government is capable of if you're thinking about fucking with them.
- andyjohnson0 3mo agohttps://archive.ph/tm1pg https://archive.ph/tm1pg
- zombot 3mo agoHoly Fuck. If anybody still needed proof that It Can Always Get Worse™, this should serve the purpose.
- arh5451 3mo agohttps://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-antifa-cell-members-north-texas-sentenced-100-years-prison-terrorist-attack-ice https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-antifa-cell-members-no... One or two defendents were likely over prosecuted, the others it seems like a rather straight forward case. The issue is they were bombing/shooting at a federal facility which carries a higher sentence. I find the sentences agregiously long, but that's a different discussion.
- kubafu 3mo agoUSA is such a weird place these days. Is there a way back to sanity once this administration ends?
- birdsongs 3mo agoIMO the DNC needs to grow a spine and perform hard correction and repair. Which is to say, I don't think that will happen, and some form of collapse is inevitable. But I'm far from a political scientist. Just an engineer with a history hobby, pattern matching.
- jmyeet 3mo agoThere is a persistent narrative that the DNC is incompetent. That they're just trying to be nice and to compromise. And it's simply not true and needs to be disposed of. The DNC have known what works in elections since 2008 when Obama swept and won states like Iowa. They might argue that Obama was generationally charismatic (which is true) but it was the message that won, a message of progressive populism. Here's a 2016 quote from Chuck Schumer [1]: > For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia. And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin. Here's another [2]: > For as long as I live, for as long as I have the privilege of serving in the Senate from New York, I will unflinchingly, unstintingly, and with all my strength, be a Guardian of Israel Substitute "Israel" for any other country and you'll be charged with something between treason and acting as an unregistered foreign agent (eg [3]). Also remember that the contentious Epstein files, which implicate a bunch of powerful people including the current president and will likely all but prove that Jeffrey Epstein was an Israeli agent, sat in a dark room doing nothing for 4 years of Joe Biden and Merrick Garland. And no, "ongoing cases" isn't an excuse, particularly after Maxwell was convicted in 2022. Look at the disastrous Iran war. What was the response from Democrats? How many, particularly in leadership positions, actually opposed the war? Not many. Most of the objections were process objections, namely that Congress wasn't consulted. That's not opposition to a war because most of them don't oppose the war. I really hope people begin to understand that none of what the DNC and establishment Democrats is doing is incompetence. It isn't. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Schumer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Schumer [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh8rpFTVBuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh8rpFTVBuM [3]: https://www.bipc.com/arcadia-mayor-charged-by-doj-as-chinese-foreign-agent https://www.bipc.com/arcadia-mayor-charged-by-doj-as-chinese...
- TripleFFF 3mo agoPaywalled. Irony or just American
- NoImmatureAdHom 3mo agoI'll remind you about 1972: https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/ https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/ “People have completely forgotten that in 1972 we had over nineteen hundred domestic bombings in the United States.” — Max Noel, FBI (ret.) Current times aren't even that spicy.
- JuniperMesos 3mo agoI think there's a reasonable chance that the judge and prosecutors in this case are familiar with _Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence_ by Bryan Burrough; and consider the failure of the criminal justice system of the time to impose extremely severe prison sentences on the domestic bombers of the 1970s to be a mistake that they do not intend to repeat.
- Alien1Being 3mo agoAs someone living in a non-US country, I get the impression that Russians and Chinese seem to be safer from their respective governments, than residents of the US. I hope that your country recovers from it's experiment with dictatorship.
- anthonybsd 3mo ago> I get the impression that Russians and Chinese seem to be safer from their respective governments, than residents of the US. What an utterly misguided conclusion to make from the recent news. While the current US administration is just dipping their toes in the pool of authoritarianism, the aforementioned countries have been on board that train for quite a long time. In Russia teenage girls get prison sentences for reposting anti-war Facebook memes, and LGBTQ+ people get hunted down on the streets. China runs actual concentration camps for their ethnic minorities and has the most locked down Internet in the world. And yet somehow you think a ruling from one activist judge in Texas makes US citizens as a whole less safe than that?
- gverrilla 3mo agoMAGA = nazi.
- xtiansimon 3mo agoCan’t read the article without signing up. On the topic—I’m shocked. Seems like this judge missed the last 40 years of the internet. People organize on all manner of subjects on the net with silly names, and around all subjects. Failure to see this, makes terrorists of us all.
- tokai 3mo agoThe comments here are going so easy on the US. If it had been happening in a European country there would be no end of the comments about how Europe is lost. Americans really need to get it together and save their nation from autocracy.
- micromacrofoot 3mo agoand still no arrests for the epstein files
- csense 3mo agoWas this a jury trial?
- Tadpole9181 3mo agoTechnically. But the judge dismissed the first jury and then hand selected a new one without the defense.
- rixed 3mo agoRecommending this independent journalist's article that pays attention to other colorful characters in this story: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/450-years-in-prison-for-saying-anti https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/450-years-in-prison-for-sa...
- krunck 3mo agoSo I wonder if I go around saying I'm "pro-fascist", it's OK now because I'm not saying I'm "anti-fascist"? But that would be false of me. So maybe I can only declare I'm "fascism-neutral"? That would also be false.
- ornornor 3mo agoGood that Americans have a right to bear arms exactly to prevent this kind of totalitarian overtake of the country. From the outside, it looks like what the stasi was doing, in the oh so vile communist regime (it was also a totalitarian one, and not a regime I’d want to live under). And now the US is doing it to itself. Wait until elections time. Trump has hinted several times publicly that there won’t be a next election or any need to replace him. We assumed it was just more verbal diarrhea like he has a knack for. But in this context and in light of his modus operandi, who knows…
- Sophira 3mo agoObligatory reminder that what the US government considers to be extremist activities includes the obvious crime of being interested in privacy and anonymity[0]. (Hence all the age verification laws cropping up everywhere, most likely. Their primary goal isn't actually about protecting children.) [0] https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extremist-forum-and-its-readers-get-flagged-extra-surveillance https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extre...
- csneeky 3mo agoWonder if those two young authors even know the word objective.
- flossposse 3mo agoSee https://freedes.net https://freedes.net to join the community in support of Des. (That's Mr. Estrada, not Data Encryption Standard)