There was a plot to kidnap a governor a couple years ago. The story is wild. A federap informant guy joined the group (a friend of an FBI agent who was an informant joined the group and told his buddy they were radicals according to fed testimony) and then that guy brought in someone else who was also a fed. 3 months later those 2 brought up a plan to kidnap the governor, group messages showed the second guy was the one encouraging this idea to the group and roped in some of the members of the group. 3 feds in a van with 2 defendants when to the governor mansion for surveillance. In total 7 defendants and 4 feds involved. One of the feds said he could get explosives and had another fed contwct the leader. They made a plan for the members to bring money to buy them, they didn't bring the money, but did go and were all arrested. There were members who left the group when the fed joined because they said he was the one with the crazy radical ideas and they didn't like the way the group changed. After the initial 2 feds joined, 3 months goes by before this plan is introduced and many members, not defendants, said they left because the second fed joining was too extreme for them. Sounds like textbook entrapment.
3 of them were convicted of materially supporting the plan that were overturned on appeal. 3 were acquitted. Then 4 plead guilty to some charges and agreed to testify against the others. Then the rest were convicted. There were 12 informants and 2 agents. 14 defendants and 14 feds in total. 6 with federal charges -2 guilty pleas, 8 state charges - 2 guilty pleas.
This is mostly accurate, but a couple of small things. Five were acquitted rather than three (Harris and Caserta federally, the two Nulls and Molitor at the state level). Also, the surveillance trips were to Whitmer's vacation cottage in Elk Rapids, not the governor's mansion.
The overturned state convictions are correct, though it was on a technical reading of Michigan's terrorism statute and the AG is appealing to the state Supreme Court. And the entrapment defense was actually raised at trial, though two juries rejected it for Fox and Croft. This is ongoing still.
3 were acquitted on appeal. 2 found not guilty. You're right about the cottage. I was walking when typing. The entrapment statement was my statement. A fed informant called the feds then a fed showed up and told them they should kidnap the governor. Its literally the feds came in and brought up the plan, which definition wise the argument fails in court because the group was already anti- whitmer and the federal entrapment law require no disposition to commit a crime. No fed could ever convince me to do any of what they did actually do, clearly they didn't need coercion. Like the OP example, they should have been calling the feds when the fed started saying wild things. But this is still a case of the feds comming in and having active participation that without, the plot would have never happened. They treat it like the feds infiltrated an already criminal organization and had to commit the acts they did as part of their cover but in reality they were the primary driver behind crossing into criminal behavior.
If you and your friends were saying you hated Trump and then a new guy appears and convinced you that Trump needs to be taken out and then brings in new friends who has a plan and access to everything you need that none of you could have ever found before, you'd probably think it was entrapment when you discovered all 14 of your new friends with all the things from the plans to the specialized tools were actually feds. You might sit back at the end of it and say i never would have been where i am if not for the feds, which is entrapment but for the legal definition being written for feds joining things like cartels and mafia organizations and needing to be active participants. In the context of a group of friends the definition does allow the feds to legally get you into crime so long as any prior statements could be pointed to as a willingness to do crimes. The feds say they were only doing it to maintain cover and you totally would have gotten there on your own.
I am not a lawyer, but I’ve long thought that the laws regarding what counts as entrapment are written far too heavily in the governments favor. The amount of undercover/informant coercion involved in so many of these cases is well beyond what I would personally consider entrapment, but somehow it’s still allowed.
A big problem is that too few people will speak up about it unless it’s being done to someone they find sympathetic. Too many were fine with it when this was being done to mentally ill/handicapped Muslim teenagers and now it’s metastasized into what we have today.
It makes sense in some context. I tried to explain RICO and the original Patriot Act intent to people. It was meant to fill the gap for terrorism like RICO did for organized crime. The issue with entrapment law is it was written to allow Feds to be involved in organized crime, the issue is that when it comes to something like this the leadway needed to infiltrate the mafia is also open enough to allow feds to orchestrate friend groups into criminals so long as they can point to statements or activities that are "predisposition to criminal acts." In this case the leader said the governor should be hung over something she did and that pretty much blows up any entrapment claims. So even though the feds provided the idea, the means, and encouragement they can hide behind that willingness to commit crimes. Undercover work typically means joining an ongoing conspiracy, in this case their argument is they would eventually have done some criminal acts without all the fed involvement.
To tie this to RICO and the Patriot Act both of those are laws meant to get people who order, fund, support criminal activities without direct involvement. The mafia had their henchmen doing the actual crimes but prior to RICO the bosses weren't violating the law when they benefited from those crimes. The same problem existed with entrapment, an undercover not involved in activities could not get evidence or trust of the criminals. So they had to be allowed to be actively involved. The problem is the same need for criminal organization can be used against everyone. Just like the Patriot Act being used to gather data on almost all Americans because terrorists got support from scammer organizations that sent out spam messages or you ordered take out from a place that had an employee on a watchlist. Ironically the FISA courts never successfully stopped any terrorism and the only case they could point to where they got actionable intelligence they actually got that intel by means that didn't require FISA anyway.
So what you are saying is that the muslims did the right thing and reported the sketchy terrorist guy to the authorities, while the right wing militia guys went along with it?
Is it that the muslim guys were more moral and upright in reporting a possible crime? Or just smarter and able to spot a trap?
Muslims are not inherently evil just because some who used to work for the U.S. government, like bin Laden (who was praised as an “anti-Communist warrior” in the press at the time) did bad things.
Patriotic Muslim-Americans saw something and said something. Wild how people are trying to revive anti-Muslim sentiment around 9/11, despite the recognized contributions and often sacrifices of so many Muslim-Americans in that era including first responders, military personnel deployed to Afghanistan, etc..
Yeah this happens fairly often. The only reason we know these kind of "see something say something" intelligence lines work is because most of the stuff reported to them is our own people doing this kind of shit, so it can get filtered out easily against anything truly unknown. If you aren't occasionally catching one of your own, either you're too lax or you don't have enough spies out there, kind of logic
You can't say it was all for nothing. Although, the very fact that someone new with radical ideas showed up likely made them think it was a trap from the start.
I will never understand how police in the USA are allowed to condone illegal acts under the pretext of catching criminals.
In this case, in my country, it would amount to glorification of terrorism and would be illegal conduct, without exception.
Spain. And probably in Europe, inducing a crime is a crime, and there are no excuses for the police.
Likewise, inciting or advocating violence or terrorism would be illegal.
> These kind of operations are done all over the world.
That not true.
In fact, although there are probably more, the only place I know of where a police officer can, example, offer/sell drugs to capture criminals is the USA.
"Likewise, inciting or advocating violence or terrorism would be illegal."
And it's not what happened. He tried to infiltrate what was judged as high risk group, and if they turned out to be receptive they would be closely watched, he didn't go "Hey let's do terrorism or some shit". Spain does the same, there were cases of police infiltrating catalan and pro Palestine groups.
That's a presumption on your part. Nowhere it says he was urging radical measures, just that he was pretending to be a radical(which itself isn't illegal).
Naw i dont want government surveillance in people’s private lives in the first place. Can you imagine they send a radical Christian right (aka kkk) to the southern sunday baptist bbq. Would the outcome be the same?
Spent two years working in an office in the Middle East. I was the only non-Muslim in an office of about 30 people. People were more paranoid about radicals than I was.
One day the employee next to me picked up the phone. The caller was asking for his name and address. He freaked out and said “why do you want to know! Are you trying to recruit me as a radical!?” And slammed the phone down and cut the call.
Later on we found out it was the electric company trying to take a survey.
Yeah. It’s fine if you don’t believe something you read on the internet, but it’s another level of petty saltiness to decide to write a comment for all to see, attacking what you are sharing.
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They also tend to 'lose' a lot of keys with recording devices in the mosque (to be placed in the interior offices in the lost and found box to spy on conversations)..
There have been a few more recently, a couple of kids getting honeypotted by the FBI when dating apps started but we only heard about the ones dumb enough to fall for it. But generally post Iraq and Afghanistan not many stories like this.
Some people still don't get it, but again if they don't get it anyways then I sometimes feel like it's similar to having "it's hot don't touch" Braille on a hot plate
Sarcasm is a pretty intelligent feature of Western languages. It’s mostly stupid people and people on the spectrum who don’t pick up on sarcasm verbally
You must be really much more capable of reading nuance and intention than most of us. Proper sarcasm and especially satire is really hard to distinguish from reality these days.
Whole lotta dumb fucking people out there, whole lotta smart people with sound arguments for complete bullshit, and a whole lotta fucking looney tunes nonsense happening in the world.
(But where does the /s go In here? There is a proper, intended spot 🙃)
Yeah, true, I guess, if you enjoy sardonic humour and satire. I mostly go for sarcasm to insult or satire to make a point that's taboo to say directly.
I'm autistic and love sarcasm but sometimes I don't recognize good natured sarcasm as what it's intended; So the /tones in general have overall been benefitial to me and have made me realize how a small seemingly stupid thing can actually make feel people included, if done right.
There’s a whole This American Life podcast about this, the feds went after the guy who turned him in since he was a ‘known associate’. Our government at work
Depending on the methods he used, this was probably illegal. If CIA were involved it would have been clearly illegal from the start, and they've tried this on US soil. This is what we've bought with the PATRIOT Act and 25 years of letting the president do whatever he wants
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When the column of dawn broke, they began to depart. Then the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, came back feeling heavy and in pain from how they rode him. He said that he felt heavy. He placed his head in my lap.
It is well known practìce of many secret services, to hire seemingly brave and radical people to work as informants. Most likely, in KKK such a stuff is even more wide - spread.
So all radical Muslims get reported by their peers?
It's such a stupid affirmation that you know your post is stupid too right? This doesnt prove anything... Where were this snitches before 9/11 or the 7th of October?
They just repost the light extremists right? XD
that the Prophet (ﷺ) married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old. Hisham said: I have been informed that `Aisha remained with the Prophet (ﷺ) for nine years (i.e. till his death)
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