Jess Sundin, member of the Anti-War Committee and an FBI raid target, discusses the FBI’s raid of her home that included the confiscation of personal items and the serving of a grand jury subpoena, the notoriously broad ‘material support’ for terrorism statute that was used to justify the search warrant and the nationwide solidarity protests in support of the raid victims and the First Amendment.
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Alright y'all, welcome back to the show, it's Anti-War Radio, we're streaming live from lrn.fm and antiwar.com/radio and our next guest on the show today is Jess Sundin.
Welcome to the show Jess, how are you?
I'm good, thank you very much.
Well thank you very much for joining us today.
Now you were one of the peacenik victims of this FBI persecution of the last week, is that right?
Yes I was, my home was raided by seven or more federal agents on Friday morning at 7am.
Wow, and was that because you're involved with Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah?
Neither one, absolutely not.
I'm a peace activist and I believe the government doesn't like my ideas and is trying to prevent us from speaking out and saying what we believe in.
They're not going to find any evidence in any of the things they seized from my house or any of the others that anyone ever gave anything to any terrorist organization.
It's not something that anyone in the peace movement does, nothing that I've ever done.
Well now, is it correct that the warrant described, said that they were looking for evidence that I guess each and every one of y'all somehow had provided quote material support to terrorist groups, is that right?
That's what the warrant said.
And now did the warrant describe what they thought, what evidence they thought they would find that would indicate such things?
They were looking for papers, photographs, they took books off my bookshelf.
One person had his children's artwork taken off the walls.
They took papers, computers, cell phones, checkbooks.
They took everything, except furniture.
And none of that has any information like what they say they're looking for.
And they're not going to find anything.
There's no charges against any of us.
In fact, they don't have a case against us, which is why they raided our homes to try to make one up.
Well, so now the cops are going to go arrest the judge who signed this warrant without probable cause that evidence would be found of any material support, right?
They're going to go to prison for conspiracy to oppress you under the color of law.
Unfortunately not.
Unfortunately, the government has swooping powers.
If they just say the word terrorist, they can point that at anyone they want.
And they're free to do something like what they did to me.
Of course, I was just kidding.
All judges have sovereign immunity from any crime they may commit while wearing their fancy black robe.
That just impresses me so much.
Because it's a robe, and I don't know.
I guess I don't know what's impressive about it.
Anyway, so tell us about your peace activism.
What group are you a member of?
What break-off is it a sect of or whatever for whatever reason if we need to know those things?
And what kind of work have you been doing that may have upset these, if we can call them men, so much?
I'm part of the Anti-War Committee, which is a local group in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
We've been around about ten years.
And our work has included, on the one hand, educating ourselves about the effects of U.S. war policies abroad.
And on the other hand, coming home and trying to organize ourselves and our neighbors to speak out against injustices and on behalf of peace.
So we've done things like organized demonstrations or had speakers doing educational presentations at universities.
Things like that.
This is what our work is like.
And everyone who has been caught up in this FBI operation is someone who helped organize the marches on the Republican National Convention that took place in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2008.
Okay, now there you got to an important point for me to follow up on.
There are already eight people who are the RNC-8 being prosecuted for arranging peaceful demonstrations at that convention, right?
Yeah, there is a group of folks from the Twin Cities who are facing charges related to the RNC.
But now they're not related to y'all's group specifically?
No.
I mean, we were all protesting at the RNC.
They organized some other protests, and they have come out in support of us, but we're not one and the same.
All of us are people who are from the peace movement.
And those folks specifically came together to do work protesting the RNC.
All right, now how many different houses, how many different people, members of your group were raided?
In Minneapolis, there were five houses and one in the offices of the anti-war committee that were raided.
In Chicago, there were two additional homes that were raided.
And then on top of that, in several cities, including Minneapolis, in Michigan, in North Carolina, and in California, that I know of, there are individuals who were visited by the FBI and either questioned or given subpoenas to a grand jury.
So from your best guess, or what you think you're looking at here from your perspective, do these guys have some bad information?
They thought they would be able to really get something on you?
Or they know it's not going to go anywhere, but they just want to try to scare you by sending the Waco killers to your front door?
Well, on the one hand, I think that they do help to quiet people down.
They do help to get people to keep their mouths shut and be scared.
That's not going to work, but I think they also, you know, it's like a fishing expedition.
If you throw in enough lines, they're hoping they're going to catch something.
I know that they're not, but they may not know that yet.
I don't know.
I certainly wasn't at any of their meetings that they made their plans, so I'm not sure how confident they were that they might find something.
But I think that there certainly wasn't, like, specific enough to...
They didn't have any specific information.
It was all very general.
And the fact that they don't have a case before doing all this, you know, assures me that they don't have enough information to begin with.
I don't think they ever should have raided any of our homes.
I think that I thought in this country we were free to have our ideas and to talk about them without the federal agents coming and knocking down our door.
Well, let me ask you this.
I mean, was it Mulder and Scully in suits and pantsuits came knocking on the door or guys in blue windbreakers, or was it, like, SWAT teams and machine guns and violence?
In my home, they were...
They didn't have any arms drawn.
They were not in uniform.
They were in casual attire, black hoodies and slacks, I guess.
I know that in one home...
I mean, they pushed their way in, and in one home, at least, there was a fish tank that was, you know, shattered when they burst the door open.
But in general, you know, no one was held at gunpoint.
Actually, no one was even detained.
There's just no grounds for that.
All right, well, I'm sorry that we're all out of time here.
I really do appreciate your time on the show today, Jess, and best of luck to you.
I'm sure that, you know, you'll continue on chargeless in this situation.
I hope you keep up your activism, because peace is the most important thing, as you well know.
So thank you very much for your time today.
Bye-bye.
Okay, we'll be back, y'all.
Other Scott Horton coming up.
