Why the DOJ's Antifa Terrorism Convictions Threaten the First Amendment
U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors performed a magic trick on Friday in a federal courtroom in Fort Worth, Texas. Before the jury’s eyes, they transformed a group of young protesters who were present when shots were fired last summer at an immigration building, into a domestic terrorist organization that DOJ insisted on calling “Antifa.”
Eight of the nine defendants were convicted on charges of material support to terrorism – the first successful use of such charges against the nebulous cloud of Antifa that the Trump administration has confabulated into an ominous threat.
The DOJ’s case rested on a statute that was historically used to prosecute members of carefully designated international terrorist groups against an ill-defined, broad hodgepodge of politically left-of-center American activists. But doing so — even against those who engage in clearly criminal conduct — put us on a slippery slope toward labeling any president’s ideological opponents as organized terrorists
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