All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
You can also sign up for the podcast feed.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
Okay, guys, on the line, I've got Trevor Aronson from The Intercept and of course, author of the book The Terror Factory, which is obviously about the FBI and about how they like to entrap stupid people into fake terrorism plots to keep themselves in business and you afraid, which is the same thing.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Trevor?
I'm great.
Thanks for having me back.
I really appreciate you joining us.
So I thought this one was funny just from the original headline and then your follow-up makes it even better.
Hamas objects to being used sort of in a sting operation against a couple of members of the Bujahideen.
So tell us, how could these different groups all have anything to do with each other?
Yeah, so the only reason they are connected is because of the FBI's creativity, I guess.
You know, in this case, it was two guys, one 30, I think the other was 22 or 23, who were involved in the so-called Boogaloo movement, which is this, you know, some people argue it's not even a movement, but more of like an internet meme.
But basically it's this very loose ideology that is pro-Second Amendment and anti-police.
And so these two guys had formed this group called, you know, unironically, the Bujahideen and you know, were apparently patrolling the streets of Minneapolis following the George Floyd protests.
And an FBI informant then approached them and claimed to be from Hamas, the Palestinian militant and political group that the U.S. State Department designates as an international terrorist organization or foreign terrorist organization.
And through conversations as part of an FBI sting, this informant introduces them to an undercover agent, also posing as a member of Hamas.
And they basically cut a deal with these two Boogaloo members to create parts that allow for the modification of firearms, to basically turn a semi-automatic firing rifle into fully automatic.
And, you know, they basically tell them these parts are going to be used against Israeli soldiers and we need your help with this.
And these two guys do it.
And, you know, they also offered themselves up as so-called mercenaries to Hamas in order to raise money to buy a parcel of land that they would then use to train Boogaloo boy members.
How old are these guys again?
I mean, old enough to know better.
I mean, the one is 30 years old and the other, I believe, is 22 or 23.
Here, I can check that just a second.
Yeah.
And the other is 22.
And, you know, I mean, what's incredible about it, I guess I'm kind of burying the lead, which is that, you know, the FBI basically posed as Hamas.
And then after this thing was announced, connecting the Boogaloo boys, generally believed far right kind of ideology with Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization.
I then interviewed a Hamas official who, you know, was under no uncertain terms saying like, look, you know, we are shocked to be, you know, associating with people like this.
We had nothing to do with people like this.
And also we had no intention of carrying out any sort of attack in the United States.
And so we disavow this completely.
And you know, as you know, Scott, there have been hundreds of these counterterrorism stings since 9-11 in which the FBI poses as members of a terrorist organization, whether it's ISIS or al-Qaeda or another, and then goads people along in the plots.
You know, this was actually the first time that, you know, one of the so-called terrorist organizations then comes out and says like, hey, we would never do this.
Like, that's not what we do.
And what's incredible about it is that the FBI's defense of these types of tactics is to say like, hey, we're going to go out there and pretend to be these terrorists in order to catch the bad guys before the real terrorists do.
And you know, that argument and that defense falls apart when you have the actual organization then saying like, hey, look, we don't do that.
We don't plan attacks in the United States.
And it's true.
I mean, Hamas is not an organization that is known to, you know, facilitate or plan attacks in the United States.
Right.
That's really the punchline to the whole thing.
The real victims here, Hamas, who got, you know, smeared, their name brought up, but not because the actual Hamas had anything to do with the story at all.
Just that's what the FBI called it.
And I guess, you know, it raises a question why the FBI used Hamas as the group instead of Al-Qaeda or ISIS or something.
Maybe they just thought that would be more believable somehow or.
I wish we could get some of the FBI to answer that question because it is like a curious one.
Right.
Like, why would they choose Hamas over ISIS or Al-Qaeda?
I mean, certainly ISIS and Al-Qaeda have a much more significant track record of trying to attack the United States than Hamas does.
So it's really strange that they would choose that.
You know, maybe, you know, it's possible that these two guys, you know, were not the brightest and really didn't know what Hamas was and what they stood for.
And maybe they felt like.
Yeah.
And that's kind of what I meant by more credible, just in the sense that because Al-Qaeda and ISIS at this point in time would maybe sound too fanciful, whereas Hamas, maybe they would be less familiar with it.
You know, not not that it would be more believable because of their record, but more believable because of the the entrapies, ignorance of it.
That's all I meant.
Right.
Yeah.
No, I think that's probably a pretty good theory.
I mean, it's the only one that really explains why they would choose Hamas over another group.
But it's pretty bizarre, you know, and also what's really, you know, to me, like the emperor has no clothes moment of all of this is the fact that they charge these two guys with material support for Hamas, so essentially an international terrorism charge.
And you know, the only reason that they are charged with international terrorism is because Hamas was, you know, the FBI was posing as Hamas, even though there wasn't any clear link to Hamas.
So these guys had never left the country.
They weren't planning to leave the country.
They weren't even really dealing with Hamas.
And yet they're being charged with with with international terrorism.
And it's just it's just farcical when you when you deconstruct the case.
And I know this is sort of a gray scale here between people who are completely entrapped or people who were pretty darn easy to entrap and sort of deserve whatever they get, apparently kind of a thing.
But where do you rank this on that scale, you think?
You know, I don't I'm not going to defend what these two guys have done.
You know, I mean, I think, you know, the after my article came out, one of the one of the older man, Michael Solomon, one of one of his former friends had contacted me and told me that he was like a really troubled guy and, you know, was really into guns and would kind of advocated violence in a number of different ways.
And, you know, he was concerned that he might do something.
So I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that Michael Solomon and Ben Teter, the guys that were involved in this would have done something terrible.
I think they might have.
But I know what they would not have done is get involved in international terrorism.
Right.
And so I think that, you know, I, I don't think it's problematic necessarily, given what the FBI knew about these guys, that that they were monitoring them, they were gathering more information and they were concerned that they could be potentially dangerous.
I think the FBI had the right to think that.
And I think in doing its job, had the right to pursue them.
I just don't think, you know, you know, trumping up international terrorism charges against them using this kind of like bizarre and farcical sting operation in which you pose as Hamas is the way to do it.
And I think that's where they really crossed the line.
Well, maybe not to give the cops any credit or whatever, but maybe they thought that it would make these guys really more guilty that they were willing to cross the line and side with Islamist terrorists, the enemy, rather than just because they could have just as easily sent them, you know, not an Arab, but a white redneck informant and agent to entrap them coming from their own point of view.
Yeah.
Come on, let's do some boogaloo things and call it that and trick them into buying the same part for their rifle or whatever it is.
Right.
Sure.
Yeah.
They could have posed as, as some like right wing domestic actors as well.
I mean, you know, Seamus Hughes with the program on extremists at George Washington University and one of his colleagues had argued in a Washington Post op-ed that the reason they did this was because domestic terrorism laws are not as applicable as international terrorism laws.
And so this was just a way to trigger the international terrorism laws.
And I discard that argument entirely because I think there are laws on the books that allow for the prosecution of domestic terrorists.
And there's a clear case for that.
And so there really was no reason for the government to, you know, pretend to be a foreign terrorist organization when they could have used other means, as you said.
I mean, they could have claimed to be, I don't know, from the Ku Klux Klan or from, you know, any number of like right wing domestic groups.
And they could have then prosecuted them under any number of criminal statutes in the U.S.
I think it was just egregious to put together a sting that then links them to an international terrorist organization.
And I also think the problem with this is the problem that exists with a lot of these international terrorism stings, which is that the headline that's made is that, you know, ISIS was planning some sort of attack or al-Qaeda was planning some sort of attack or in this case, Hamas was planning some sort of attack.
And you know, the general public isn't immediately aware that none of that was true.
In fact, it was the FBI posing as ISIS or al-Qaeda or in this case, Hamas.
And so it just exaggerates the threat of Islamist terrorism from within the United States in a very insidious way.
And I think that's a really problematic side effect of these practices.
Yeah.
And, you know, I have to wonder, and I guess there's no way to know yet.
Maybe you can call around a little bit, but you got it.
I won't say I suspect, OK, but I do wonder whether there was any Israeli influence here at all.
You know, the next time you frame some idiot might really help us if you could call it Hamas instead of the local Bujahedin or whatever it is, you know?
Yeah.
So, I mean, I have no firsthand knowledge of that.
I mean, all I would point out, and this was certainly pointed out by other people on Twitter and elsewhere, was that this did happen just as Trump is signing this peace deal or this normalization of relations deal between Israel and the UAE.
And I think, you know, it's kind of pretty extraordinary coincidence that then there's this Hamas thing right around the same time.
Whether there was any kind of coordination with that, I just don't know.
But I wouldn't be the first to point out that that was all happening simultaneously.
And by the way, we should stipulate here that these facts, as you're relating them, they just come from an indictment, not any kind of conviction, right?
We don't know really what happened here.
For sure.
Yeah.
We should preface that absolutely, that allegedly should be attached to all of this, because this comes from, you know, the government's documents, the government's explanation of what happened.
We haven't heard a defense from either of these two men, and certainly they haven't been convicted.
Hold on just one second.
I'll be right back.
So you're constantly buying things from amazon.com.
Well, that makes sense.
They bring it right to your house.
So what you do, though, is click through from the link in the right hand margin at scotthorton.org, and I'll get a little bit of a kickback from Amazon's end of the sale.
Won't cost you a thing.
Nice little way to help support the show.
Again, that's right there in the margin at scotthorton.org.
Hey guys, Scott here for photoIQ at photoIQ.co.
Gus Cantuvaro is a long-time professional photographer with years of experience specializing in teaching homeschool students.
PhotoIQ is now offering online courses for those age 13 and up.
Public school kids are welcome, too.
There are 32 lessons, a full curriculum, which include unique feedback and direction from the instructor.
Gus will take you from knowing nothing to mastering the controls.
Take a couple of free lessons on the site to try it out.
They're offering a discount of 20% off through September.
And use the promo code SCOTT to save another 10%.
That's photoIQ.co.
Hey, you want to know what industry is recession proof?
Yes, you're right, of course, pot.
Scott Horton here to tell you about Green Mill Super Critical Extractors.
The SFE Pro and Super Producing Parallel Pro can be calibrated to produce all different types and qualities of cannabis crude oils for all different purposes.
These extractors are the most important part of your cannabis oil business for precision, versatility, and efficiency.
GreenMillSuperCritical.com.
And now, how carefully did you read this indictment, and does it seem pretty solid, or it raises a lot of questions of its own, or what do you think?
I think based on what I read in the indictment and the FBI's affidavit, and based on what I know about the record of conviction in very similar cases, I mean, these guys are likely facing a plea deal of 8 to 12 years, and I would guess that both of them will take it.
If they take it to trial, I think they're facing up to 30 years in prison.
And so what we see in a lot of these cases is that the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, if it goes to trial, are so draconian that defendants just end up taking a plea deal for anywhere from 8 to 12 years.
And I would be surprised if these two men take it to trial because the evidence is pretty clear that they did this, and what we know is that juries have been unwilling to agree that this type of behavior by the government amounts to entrapment.
Right.
And that goes for every single one of these?
Are there any cases where the court has said, you know, you really put words in this guy's mouth beyond reason here?
So there was a case out of Miami called the Liberty City Seven, where they only got convictions of five of the seven.
So there were jurors that did the right thing there?
There were jurors that did the right thing in that particular case.
The other one that a lot of people point to is Noor Salman, the wife of Omar Mateen, who committed the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
They charged her with material support, although it wasn't a sting operation.
She ultimately was found not guilty because the government really wasn't able to make its case that she had knowledge of the attack and provided any sort of assistance.
But those are really the two exceptions in most international or really the two exceptions in international terrorism cases.
I mean, the record of conviction on the federal level, just for about any case, I believe is 96 percent.
And it's significantly higher, you know, getting close to 99 percent when it comes to terrorism cases.
So, you know, the government has an enormous advantage when bringing cases like this.
Yeah.
By the way, you know, really should take opportunity to mention here that on the occasion of the trial of Omar Mateen's wife there that you mentioned, it really only came out then.
They had buried this and buried this as much as they could.
But it came out at that point that homosexuality and repressed homosexuality and Islamic repression and all this stuff had absolutely zero to do with the targeting of that nightclub by that terrorist.
And just like he had told the 9-1-1 operator and written in his Facebook post, that was 100 percent an attack based on blowback from American foreign policy.
And he said it explicitly, it was for the war in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
And it was only at the trial, though, that it came out that that entire propaganda line that he had targeted this club because it was a gay club was completely fake, that all the rumors about his sexual identity problems and whatever were completely fake.
And all that had happened was he Googled nightclub after deciding that the security of Disney World was too tough.
He Googled nightclub and it was the first result.
And that was it.
And that entire narrative about, you know, how this was all wrapped up in gay politics and Islam and all these things was absolute subterfuge from this was plain and simple revenge against Bush and Obama's foreign policies in the Middle East.
Yeah.
In his in his 9-1-1 call in particular, he he mentions a particular person who was killed in a drone strike.
He's a member of ISIS and, you know, says he was avenging that person as well as others.
So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, not to make excuses for any people.
Oh, no, it absolutely does not justify whatsoever.
Just pointing out that they really lied about that one big time and made it see these terrible Muslim terrorists there.
You know, I guess the gay community is all supposed to join the war party now because otherwise the Muslims are going to come and get you.
And all of this stuff was just totally a lie.
Yeah, in general, I think it's to our discredit that we don't have more meaningful conversations about like the drivers, drivers of terrorism.
Right.
I mean, I think we often have these really almost idiotic conversations of like, why do they hate us?
They hate our freedom.
Right.
Like that's not obviously why they are, you know, attacking us.
I mean, this is in many ways, you know, the violence we see from Islamists is very much a response to to U.S. foreign policies and drone strikes and our occupation of their nations.
And, you know, as we know from your work, that when the FBI and trap some idiot, he never, ever, ever, ever, ever says, don't you hate freedom?
Don't you hate it that white girls in miniskirts can vote in primary elections and a bunch of garbage like that?
Don't you hate American R-rated movies?
They always say, are you upset about what America is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Israelis in Palestine?
And now say you love Osama into the open microphone.
I'm dumb.
And that's how they do it every single time, because the FBI knows that they don't hate our freedom.
They hate our aggressive foreign policy course.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
No.
And that's, you know, that's absolutely true.
And any any sorts of attacks on us are based on reactions to what to what we are doing.
And, you know, unfortunately, that's not a conversation that we hear out in the open very much, even though it's the most logical one.
And I don't know why that happens, but we don't really talk about terrorism, you know, in any big way under those terms.
And that's what we need to if we're going to really address, you know, why people are committing attacks in the United States or plotting to commit attacks in the United States.
Yeah.
Well, that's sure one big data point that the FBI agents aren't confused about this at all.
Why would they sabotage their own case by trying to get their entrappee enraged about freedom?
How's that going to work?
Don't you hate that you're part of a what, two or three percent minority in this country and that the other ninety seven, ninety eight percent of the society has no problem whatsoever with you believing in Islam and going to the mosque whenever you want and having a job and owning property and all these things.
Don't that make you mad that you're so free and that these people tolerate your differences so much?
I bet you just want to suicide bomb something, don't you?
Can't you just see the FBI trying that?
Yeah, I don't think that would go very well.
You're not going to get people to do that.
But if you talk about drone strikes and you talk about occupation of Saudi Arabia, you're probably going to have better luck.
There you go.
It works every time.
And that is how many times now I know we're oh, it says right here in front of me three hundred and forty defendants so far in FBI stings.
And we're not talking about actual ass terrorists like Moussaoui or Richard Reid or the guy that did the San Bernardino thing, which he's dead anyway, right?
I forgot what happened to him.
Yeah.
And that number doesn't include people like Omar Mateen or the San Bernardino.
This is just people caught up in sting operations that were plots that never actually went forward.
Just like these Bouja Hedin guys.
And so it's an enormous number.
Forty.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
Sorry.
I just wanted to stop and think about how high a number of individuals that is that have gone through this process.
I mean, that's really something else.
I thought it was two hundred something last time I lost count, I guess.
No, it keeps going up, obviously.
And I mean, the argument I often make about this is that, you know, there have been so many arrests under these circumstances and in reality, so few attacks in the United States that you either have to believe that the FBI is so great at its job that it's like picking all these people up before they're actually going to strike.
Or you have to conclude what I conclude, which is that most of these guys, if not all of them, you know, never would have had a, you know, a chance in hell of moving forward any sort of attack.
It was just made possible through the orchestrations of the FBI.
And then correct me if I'm wrong now, but the way I remember it was and you would have been the only guy who really covered this and got it right at the time is the way I remember it, too, that not just the FBI, but the Boston FBI was in the middle of entrapping some idiot at the time of the actual Boston Marathon plot unfolding right under their nose.
Correct?
Yeah.
So, yeah, I'd reported that.
I guess this would have been back in 2013.
There was a there was a there was a mentally troubled man named Reswan Firdaus.
And the FBI got involved in this really complicated, months long sting of him.
At the same time, they were turning down, pursuing information on the Sarnayev brothers, the ones who committed the Boston Marathon bombing.
And so obviously you can't with any authority say like the Boston Marathon bombing wouldn't have happened if the FBI hadn't been pursuing this sting.
But at the same time, you can argue that as with any organization, the FBI has finite resources.
And if you start pulling a bunch of those resources in one direction, you're not going to have the resources to pursue other things.
And I think that's exactly what happened in Boston, that they were so consumed by this questionable terrorism sting that they were focusing on that when they when they should have been focusing on the Sarnayev brothers.
So you can at least make a pretty solid argument that, you know, not only are these sting operations not necessarily catching people who would pursue attacks, but that they may be distracting the FBI from catching the actual bad guys.
And you've been doing this journalism long enough, starting with, I think, that Mother Jones piece back when.
And I've been talking with you long enough that we've gone through the phases of you and I agreeing and predicting that, you know, as the war on terror goes on, they're going to have real terrorist blowback continue to come to this country after September 11th.
They had to fill the gap with all these entrapments.
But as the wars go on, we are going to have more and more attacks here.
And then it's pretty obvious what's going to happen.
Because the FBI, as I remember putting it way back then and all along, they'll be so busy chasing their tail, doing these stupid entrapments, that it'll be more likely that these terrorist attacks take place under their nose.
And then that's exactly what has happened in the meantime.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I and I think, you know, the other troubling aspect of this, too, is like, you know, ten years after I started reporting on this, I mean, you're seeing, you know, the FBI kind of turned the laws or the FBI and the Justice Department turned the laws and powers designated for what was supposed to be terrorists into, you know, on on their citizens.
Right.
So we were dealing with mass surveillance.
There's talk of, you know, there's talk now of, you know, Trump saying we should designate Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization.
You know, like all of these things that, you know, I think you can point to and in a troubling way and say, you know, we're now kind of bringing the war home.
And I think that should really frighten people, because I think these laws are were established and written for this very specific threat and enemy at the time.
And and they allowed the government to expand its power.
And the government rarely, if ever, gives up that power.
And they just kind of move that power into other places.
And I think you're seeing a lot of these laws and powers that were designated for the so-called war on terrorism, you know, now being pointed at average American citizens.
Yeah, absolutely.
Right.
And in fact, we have another interview coming up right after you on that same issue today.
But now.
So I'm curious about what you said before about the judge's ruling that.
Call it what you want, but it's legal entrapment, at least to them, or I don't know exactly what the law and the legal definitions are.
But how entrapped would somebody have to be for the courts to just, you know, stop one of these?
I mean, you know, you cited the the trial, the hung juries in the Liberty, Liberty City seven.
But as far as the judge's interpretation of whether, you know, this counts as because there is some kind of standard, right?
The courts have ruled what back in history that if it's some degree of entrapment, then that's really just not fair.
But you're saying that they refuse constantly and consistently to apply that standard to these cases.
Right.
Yeah.
I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not a lawyer, but I'll play one for a moment.
Do my best to explain.
So, you know, generally the argument for entrapment is that you were overwhelmed.
Your will was overwhelmed by the government agent and they made you do something or put an idea into your head that never would have been possible were it not for the entrapment scheme that the government's established.
And then the argument that the government makes is that they argue that you were predisposed and predisposition is really the deciding factor on whether someone, you know, can can legally claim entrapment.
And it requires a jury to say, OK, yeah, I I totally get that.
I agree that that person was wasn't predisposed.
And as such, if they weren't predisposed, this was entrapment.
But the challenge with international terrorism cases in particular is that the bar for meeting predisposition is is is is woefully low.
So as an example, they often put on so-called experts who will testify that there is this radicalization effect for people who, say, watch jihadi videos or read, you know, Islamist literature.
And that, you know, abracadabra, once you've read this, you kind of become adopted into the ideology or you adopt the ideology.
And that makes you predisposed to to, you know, commit some sort of act of terrorism.
And that's the argument that the government has consistently made in these cases that, you know, this person was predisposed because they wanted to do this because they watched videos or they said something.
And, you know, that juries have bought that.
And so often, oftentimes they're able to establish that, you know, someone did watch a video.
Right.
Like I mean, under the under those under those guidelines, essentially, like I would be predisposed to international terrorism.
Right.
Because I've watched these videos and I've read this stuff.
And, you know, but so what a lot so of a lot of people in the United States.
Right.
If you've if you watch CNN or MSNBC or Fox News in the last 20 years, you've seen some of these videos.
I'm predisposed to become a neoconservative with all the David Wormser I've been reading, you know.
God help.
Right.
So that's the argument they make.
And, you know, the challenge is it's really a kind of a and the reason that makes it so much worse is that it's there's a there's a fair amount of prejudice that's established with it that like, you know, someone the juries tend to believe, oh, this guy charged with terrorism.
You know, he you know, he must be guilty.
Right.
Because he watched this video.
I think if you had the same like let's say it's a white guy charged with bank robbery and it was like a bank robbery sting where they get this guy and they get them involved in this plot to rob a bank and then they arrest him just before he enters the door to rob it.
Right.
And then you could tell the jury that, hey, the only you know, the only predisposition this guy had was he watched, you know, a couple of bank robbery movies that everyone else has seen.
Right.
Is that would that be enough to establish predisposition?
I don't think so.
I think most juries would be like, no, that's that's not enough.
I mean, I think if you had researched bank robberies or talk to someone about robbing a bank before, maybe you could establish predisposition.
But you know, just because you watch that Al Pacino movie where he's robbing a bank doesn't mean, you know, that that you want to become a bank robber.
And but that's really the standard that has existed in these terrorism cases.
And for that reason, the government has really been able to take advantage of that and manipulate, you know, some really sad people into getting involved in crimes that they never would have in the first place.
And how prevalent is that?
I mean, I guess I'm so naive after all this, Trevor.
I guess I thought that maybe most of these, the guy was at least spouting off on Facebook, like some pretty specific threats or something or had gone to a rally with a rifle and had, you know, made specific threats then or some kind of thing that they began to build off.
But you're saying really they're showing up in court and saying, well, you know, his search history says he looked up a couple of things on YouTube that a million other people saw too?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm not lying.
Yeah.
You know, a lot of times it's, you know, when you look at these criminal affidavits where they target people that they found through social media, for example, you know, it's not like they're posting, you know, I pledge allegiance to ISIS and I'm going to, you know, bomb the U.S. Capitol building.
Right.
They're not saying things like that.
They're they're posting stuff that like the FBI would view as, you know, kind of ideologically in line with Islamist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda.
Sometimes they might post ISIS propaganda.
But, you know, that's all protected by the First Amendment.
I mean, you know, you don't you there's nothing illegal about reading that kind of material.
And so they're really they're really using that as the predisposition that they're sharing this material, that they're reading or looking at this material.
But very few cases have involved, you know, specific actionable threats like that.
And in reality, the people they're getting have just been, you know, all they can really prove is that this person had an intellectual curiosity about these extremist groups.
And then it was the FBI through their sting operation that really kind of pushed them into a more active position.
Mm hmm.
Well, and then when it comes to domestic politics, you forget all this, you know, jihadi this or that.
But how many Americans have books about World War Two or about the Soviet Union that have big swastikas or hammers and sickles on the spine that I remember when I was a kid seeing a guy got arrested.
Well, he had books with, you know, extremist political propaganda at us.
Well, for all I know, he's a professor or something, you know, I mean, maybe he's a libertarian who has studied as much as he can about communism and Nazism just to oppose them all.
Right.
I mean, the rise and fall of the Third Reich has a big hammer and sickle on the spine.
Is that verboten now?
Is that show predisposition to blow up a building?
Right.
You know, and I think I think the last time I was on your show, it was it was related to this right wing informant or just domestic informant who infiltrated these militia groups.
And and this was very similar where the FBI had no reason to think that they were committing any sort of crimes.
They were just suspicious of them because it was a group of guys that were practicing their constitutional rights to get together and train and like, you know, think of themselves as a militia.
And and he went in and spied on them and was trying to entrap them into into various various crimes.
And so you see this, you know, this isn't just you know, this is probably most prevalent among in these jihadi cases.
But you see this elsewhere.
You see this in the investigation of what the FBI views as as right wing threats.
And you also see it in you know, there have been a number of really kind of crazy money laundering cases.
I mean, there was a case out of Las Vegas, for example, where this guy was into Bitcoin and this informant approaches him and says he, you know, needs to launder like ten thousand dollars and like some drug money.
And it was like a friend.
And so he laundered it through Bitcoin and he gets arrested for it is now facing some serious charges.
And granted, he committed a crime.
But like, would he have done that?
Had his friend not come to him with that opportunity and his friend ended up being an informant for the FBI?
I mean, the challenge with these cases is that the FBI is targeting people about whom they may not have probable cause that they're committing significant or even any crimes.
And yet they're then making that crime available.
And so I think there are a lot of people who would say, like, no, no, no, that's money laundering.
I'm not going to get involved or that's, you know, that involves that involves some other crime and I'm not going to get involved.
But there are a lot of other people who do it.
And, you know, the question is, in my mind, would they have done it were it not for the government making that crime possible?
And I think that's where you really get into this kind of, you know, 1984 style question of like, should the government be, you know, making possible crimes that really otherwise weren't?
And, you know, would that person have become a criminal were it not for kind of the introduction of the opportunity by the government agent?
Right.
And then there's the whole other conversation, as you brought up earlier, about how they've just made jury trials obsolete with the maximum sentencing and everything so that everyone has to plead.
Ninety eight percent of everyone pleads.
And they've just completely obliterated the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the Bill of Rights without even, you know, heralding it at all.
But I'm sorry, because that is a whole other conversation and I'm late.
Thank you so much for doing the show.
Great to talk to you as always.
Great journalism as always.
Trevor.
Thanks, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
OK, guys, that's Trevor Aronson.
He's at The Intercept.
His book is called The Terror Factory.
Of course, it's about the FBI, your security force.
This article is called Hamas Disavows FBI Sting Against Right Wing Boogaloo Boys.
The Scott Horton Show, Antiwar Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A., APS Radio .com, Antiwar.com, ScottHorton.org, and LibertarianInstitute.org.
