Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 1/4/24 Trevor Aaronson on the FBI’s Latest Entrapment Scheme

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Scott talks with journalist and author Trevor Aaronson about an article he published recently at The Intercept. The piece tells the story of Jason Fong, a young Chinese American who was targeted online by some undercover law enforcement officers and federal informants who attempted to persuade him to commit violent acts to further his beliefs. Aaronson lays out the details of Fong's story and argues that it is another example of federal law enforcement working to create and entrap violent extremists. He and Scott then talk about the FBI’s long history of carrying out these schemes.  Discussed on the show: “Catfished by Cops: The Hamas Terrorist Who Wasn’t” (The Intercept) The Terror Factory by Trevor Aaronson Trevor Aaronson is a contributing writer for The Intercept and executive director of the nonprofit Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. He is the author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism. Find him on Twitter @trevoraaronson. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys introducing trevor erinson and you know what that means the feds framed another guy Trevor is, of course, the great author of The Terror Factory, which started out as a great investigative piece at Mother Jones years ago

and became a great book, The Terror Factory, of course, being the FBI. What they do is they frame stupid people. They're really good at that. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, Trevor? Hey, Scott. I'm great. Thanks for helping me. Very happy to have you here. Catfished by cops, the Hamas terrorist, who wasn't. first of all, please tell us the story. And second of all, I promise to save all of my commentary about all the hilarious subtext of this article until later in the interview.

But please tell us about this horrible terrorist who joined the U.S. Marine Corps. Yeah, so obviously this was a case that when it first was announced in the summer of 2020, you know, was reported on breathlessly by the media because it sounds so sensational, this idea that a U.S. Marine was communicating with terrorists. and was trying to support both Hamas and a group in Syria as well. But it turned out that wasn't at all what was happening. The backstory is that this young man, Jason Fong, at the time was about 24 years old, was a Marine Corps reservist. And during the pandemic, like a lot of people, just found himself spending a lot of time online. And, you know, he first got on Instagram and was interested in the Bugaloo movement

and was talking to people who were in that movement, was following Instagram. accounts about that, decided like that really wasn't where his interest lay and ended up around that time converting to Islam and getting involved in similar kind of Instagram groups about Islam. And one of the things that he describes is how these Bougaloo groups and these Muslim accounts on Instagram were kind of very meme-oriented. You know, all of the humor was very sarcastic. And what he liked about the accounts he was finding, you know, Muslim-centered accounts was that they were kind of shared a similar sense of humor as the boogaloo accounts, but, you know, were about a different topic. And so he ended up as a result of these, you know, groups going into like private

chats and talking to people, as all of us do, right? I think most people have like a signal group that they communicate with among close friends. And that was similar for what Jason was doing. But it turned out that, you know, it wasn't just people who were interested in Islam that were in the channel. It included two undercover cops. One was an employee of the, you know, New York Police Department and the other was an FBI informant who was being paid to kind of find people online. And so over the course of several months, you know, they communicate online. Of course, the undercover cops, catfishing him, you know, bring up terrorism a number of times.

And the things Jason says are all kind of sarcastic. And, you know, what's interesting about this case in particular is that ultimately the government would allege or will would allege that that Jason had benefited a serious. and terrorist group by posting military training documents he'd found online and had had supported Hamas by sending a website that included a donation link to a Hamas affiliate. But the question involved in the entire case is like how much of what Jason said and how much of what Jason did was ironic, was just joking. And, you know, so an example of this is that one, you know, in the chat logs that the FBI uncovered, there was a young man.

who had posted that he was planning to bomb the local Air Force base. And Jason replies, you don't have to bomb the place. Just like take the nerds off their computer and they'll die of anxiety. And, you know, it's the kind of comment that read in context, you could tell that no one is really talking about bombing an Air Force base. This was all just kind of joking around. Granted, you can, you know, argue that the taste of the jokes weren't good, but at the same time, they're jokes.

And what the FBI was able to do with the help of the New York Police Department, is really frame a lot of these communications, you know, taken out of context and make it seem as if Jason really was trying to support terrorism when I think when you look at the case as a whole and look at the communications and the context that they occurred, you know, it's clear that, well, Jason may have some ideas that most Americans would disagree with. You know, there was nothing actionable. There was no direct intention to support terrorists or get involved in any sort of terrorism. And so ultimately, you know, to fast forward, Jason is charged with material support, but the feds aren't, weren't able to make that case. And so they ended up negotiating a plea deal

with Jason for making false statements because when they first, when they first interviewed him, they asked him if anyone from his group had expressed interest in terrorism. And he said no. In truth, someone had expressed interest in terrorism. It was the FBI and NYPD undercovers. So Jason ends up, you know, having to take a false statements charge for being unwilling to rat out, you know, the government's own informants who were play acting as terrorists. And so in the end, he doesn't go to prison as a terrorist. He's going to spend the next two years for making false statements. But, I mean, what's interesting about this case is I think it's, you know, as you noted, I've written about FBI Stings for a long, long time. And, you know, a decade ago,

these occurred mostly in the real world. They'd meet someone at a mosque and pull them through and you know, give them everything that they need. And now kind of as the world has moved more online, so have these sting operations. And it really raises a question and a new question about, you know, the kind of blurry boundary between First Amendment protected speech online and kind of evidence of a crime. Yeah. Well, and on that larger issue, let's get back to his case in a second. But it makes sense in the average guy's head that like maybe they want FBI agents infiltrating

groups of cooks who say crazy things about who they want to. blow up. Of course, every time somebody shoots something up, and the FBI, it's even the Bart Simpson meme. Say the line, he was on our radar. And then we go, aha, see, it's your fault that this happened while you weren't paying attention, you feds.

And then they say, well, geez, then you get mad at us every time we entrapped some kook. So, and I guess it does make sense, right? Like, let's say I'm a right winger on a jury. And I'm going, okay, they entrapped you, but you went along with it. So, is there a line

there somewhere where a guy is really wants to be guilty as hell and they're just helping him be guilty versus just framing some poor chump yeah i mean that that's the important you know this is an important point in the sense that like if you look at the FBI's requirements and you look at what they do in a generous light what you can say is that they're in something of an impossible position right like they can't stop every would-be mass shooter every would-be terrorist before they strike i think that's impossible possible. At the same time, you know, when they try to act proactively and find people before they act, they often step over the line and maybe, and I would argue, and trap people. And so, you know, the FBI's response will be like, damned if we do, damned if we don't, right? And so that is a difficult position. But I think the important thing to point out, there's a couple of things that are important to point out. One is that, as you noted, the FBI is very, very good at not stopping, you know, would be violent actors. You know, if you look at shootings as an example. You know, you can look at like the case of the Parkland shooting in

Florida a few years ago. You know, the FBI was notified by, you know, people who were close to the shooter that he was going to commit violence. They had left tips and the FBI didn't act on that. And there are a number of examples where the FBI, including the shooting of the gay club in Colorado Springs a couple of years ago as well, where the FBI had, you know, advanced knowledge and was looking into the person, but then ultimately dismissed that person as a threat. Mateen in Orlando, too, one of the worst terrorist attacks since September 11th. Omar and Teet, exactly. You know, his father was an FBI informant even.

And so there were, there are a number of examples that you can point to where the FBI's system for catching violent actors before they strike, even though that is the FBI's, you know, number one mandate in the post-911 era, is an incredibly difficult thing to do, but also is something that the FBI has a very poor track record on. And so I think, you know, if you look, if you look at sting operations, you know, what the FBI would say. is like, well, look, these sting operations catch these people before they become the Omar Matines. And I would point out that I think that's a, that's, you know, it's a, it's a reasonable argument, but I don't think it's one that ultimately holds water. Because if you look at kind of the history of these sting operations, as just one example, if you look at like the Boston Marathon bombers, for example, you know, the FBI was notified in advance by Russian intelligence services that there were concerns about the Elder Sarniaf brother.

We know that the FBI then investigated the Elders Arna. and ultimately, you know, both tried to recruit him as an informant and viewed him as not a threat. At the same time, they then pursued the same office in Boston, then pursued the sting operation involving this man who was mentally ill, was wearing adult diapers, and gave him, his name was Reswan Ferdos, and gave him a plane or a drone, basically, that they said he could load with grenades and then fly into the U.S. Capitol. And that was the arrest that they made. And so So what my argument has been is that if you at least look at a few anecdotes, and really, unfortunately, there's not a lot of data on this, so we have to kind of limit ourselves to a few

anecdotes. But if you look at these anecdotes, such as the Boston case, you can point out these sting operations may not be stopping the real terrorists, but instead distracting the FBI from the real threats. So as they were going after Reswan Ferdocin in Boston, they were ignoring Tomlin Sarnaev. And I think the reasonable question is, like, as they're spending so much time going after adjacent Fong online, you know, what else are you? are they missing? And I think, you know, that's the larger question in these cases. Yep. Well, and you know, the good thing about being you and me is that we've been doing this

for so long that, of course, long before the Boston bombing, you and I had had this discussion on this show that, geez, as long as George Bush is over there blowing people up and Barack Obama's over there blowing people up and causing blowback terrorism against the United States, the FBI is leaving us vulnerable every time they're chasing their tail on one of these stupid stings when they're ignoring the real threat and we're going to end up getting bit and then it happened after we said that you know right after yeah yeah i think you know i mean this you know stings are kind of a little bit like like heroin for the fbi right it's like it's hard for them to give it up uh because in in a way you know stings are really a great avenue for the fbi to prove that it's doing a good job right it

it's millions and millions of dollars, you know, I've said this line before in the past, but it still holds true today, you know, that the FBI can't go before Congress every year and say, hey, thanks for these millions and millions of dollars. We didn't find any bad guys. You know, sting operations allow them to, you know, build a portfolio of cases that they can present as evidence that, you know, this is all money well spent. You know, and the interesting thing that I discussed in the article about Jason Fong is that, you know, this is no longer just the FBI. I mean, in the post-9-11 era, as you know well, you know, we've seen federal grant money, you know, rain down on regional and local law enforcement agencies as part of contracts to help

the FBI and the federal law enforcement agencies do work, whether that's terrorism or drug interdiction. And, you know, in the post-9-11 era, we see various local law enforcement agencies, you know, that I would argue should be involved in local policing work. Instead, Instead, kind of moving toward this more intelligence-driven sting. And, you know, that's what we saw in Jason Fong's case, because not only was it the FBI that was a primary actor in the sting, you could argue that the NYPD's undercover employee was an even larger actor than the FBI actor in a sting. And that's because the FBI and the, excuse me, that's because the Department of Homeland Security gives the NYPD hundreds of millions of dollars in grant funding to help with JTTF, Joint Chairs and Task Force, you know, mission. and cases like this. And so, you know, not only are we kind of now seeing the FBI continue using these very problematic stings, you know, we're now seeing cases where local law enforcement agencies

are assisting, you know, as a result of these hundreds of millions of dollars in grant funding kind of under the terrorism rubric. Right. So this is where we get into, you know, like they call the public choice theory here, where there's no real national interest. There's just the interests of the individual actors sitting in their offices making these decisions from the president to the FBI director to the special agent in charge in whichever city and their informants too. It's in this informant's interest to tell the NYPD bosses and the FBI bosses that, wow, this guy's really dangerous. You better pay me tens of thousands more dollars to finish entrapping him real good here. And then, of course, they go along with that. And this guy's got a direct financial

interest in getting this subject entrapped. I don't know. Do you know of any contrary incentive for the special agent in charge, for his agents, for his informants to say, actually, this is barking up the wrong tree. This is just some coup making complaints in a chat group that doesn't mean anything. Let's move on to the next one. Or as soon as they've caught assent, build a case, right? Who's stopping them? And we all know you mentioned about, you know, the congressional hearings, the House loves to hear about all this progress and all that. Well, NBC buys it every time too, right? Look, everybody, a perp walk. Yeah, that's absolutely, that's a good point as well that, you know, the FBI, you know, throughout its history has done a very good job of kind

of controlling the narrative and, you know, larger media organizations that with national audiences tend to kind of be very good at covering the first day story, you know, the day the FBI announces an arrest and are less good at covering the second and third day stories where it turns out the FBI's story isn't quite what they made it out to be. And so, and that ends up leaving, you know, a distorted perspective or it's distorted view of America, right? If you look at, you know, what I've mentioned before, if you look at, you know, the history of sting operations running up to 2016 when Trump first ran for office, you know, one of the, one of the things that Trump said early on is like, you know, talked about the so-called Muslim ban and we need to figure out what

the hell is going on. And, you know, what he was tapping into was a narrative that he didn't create. What he was tapping into was a narrative that the Justice Department had created over 15 years to kind of exaggerate the threat of Islamic terrorism in the United States through the use of these sting operations. And I think what you described earlier about the incentives is really an important one, which is that I think it's important to kind of look at what's happening as if this is a market-based economy that the government is operating in, right? So I think you have the FBI realizing that, well, look, there's all this counterterrorism money potentially being, you know, printed by Congress. You know, what can we do

to make sure we get that money? And so then they, you know, talk about the threat of terrorism and what they need to do. That puts pressure then on field offices to build cases because they're like, look, bosses say we're getting millions for counterterrorism, we got to find some cases. And so they then go and recruit informants, many of whom, you know, have very sketchy backgrounds are often, you know, accused criminals or convicted criminals and conmen. And they then say, like, look, man, you can make a lot of money if you help us build these cases, find the terrorists. And so the informant then has an incentive to find someone because he knows he can get paid tens of thousands of dollars to build a case. And yet, and so everyone down the line from the very top of the FBI to the lowest level, which is the

informant, you know, ultimately has a financial incentive or a, you know, career advancing incentive to build these cases. And there isn't a lot of safety built into the system where there's a pressure release valve where you have some guy who's like, guys, I don't know. This doesn't seem like much of a case, right? There's no incentive to be that adult in the room. And so as a results, you have a lot of these really problematic cases. Yeah. And then it's really worth reiterating that then you have real terrorist attacks. I mean, for many years there, there were only fake entrapment cases. But again, we were warning that, hey, as long as the wars are still going on, and it's the wars and occupation and foreign intervention that causes terrorism against this

country, not radical Islam. As long as the intervention continues, we're playing with fire here. you know one just causing blowback terrorism but then two of course the FBI as we were talking about in the case of Boston chasing their tail and trapping some guy while a real plot is going on under their nose and there have been a handful here there was that guy zazi which was there were a couple of different plots against the new york subways but this was a real one right i think one or two of them were entrapments but one of them was real was zazi shared not it was really yeah uh-huh and then there was um of course san bernadino and And Orlando, and there was the guy that set off the bombs along the marathon route in New York and New Jersey that one time, and, you know, a couple others like that.

I have a section on it in the book. The guy that did the stabbing at the airport in, in LA, I think. Or in Canada, I think it was. Okay. But he was saying, you know, and he tried to take the cop's gun. He almost took the cop's gun, but the janitor kicked his ass and stopped him. And he was saying, you know, shouting slogans about blowback over American foreign policy. Syria at the time, same as Omar Mateen and all that. So there is a real danger. And look at

what's happening right now. There's a real danger of blowback, or as I call it, backdraft terrorism. If blowback is long-term consequences of secret foreign policies, then backdraft is when the obvious consequences of overt foreign policies blow up right in your face, which is, you know, what we're very likely to suffer right now. And we got these cops chasing the wrong incentives, right? Instead of really protecting the American people, they're protecting their own agency and its reputation and its revenue stream and this kind of thing. And this is exactly the sort of, you know, bad bureaucratic economics that gets people killed, just like we saw in the lead up to September 11th. And I'm just not a truth around this. I know it makes people mad. But even the official story is that the CIA and FBI agents hated each other so much, they wouldn't work together. And, of course, James Bamford adds in his book, The Shadow Factory, that you can throw in the NSA, too, that all these guys were interested in protecting their own turf. The American people were not even an afterthought. You know, they're bureaucrats, these people.

It's really dangerous. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think, you know, often when we talk about terrorism and the causes of terrorism, we have this, the kind of George W. Bush era simplicity to the rhetoric. And you often hear people like, I don't understand why they don't, why they hate our freedom. Right? And as if that's the reason people are attacking the United States or attempting to get involved in terrorism attacks. I mean, if you look at just like one anecdote, you know, there was a man, I guess about 10 years ago now, but he tried to he tried to bomb the bus station in New York. And the reason he did it is that his family had been killed at a wedding in a drone strike in Pakistan. And, you know, that was his incentive.

He wanted revenge for having seen his parents or excuse me, his family die in a, in a, in a, in a, a drone strike. You're talking about the Times Square attack at 2010? This was the, what's the big bus station in New York? He had a, he had a bombs drop to his chest that fortunately didn't go off. Oh, this was a different one. I was thinking, yeah, because that's almost the same story as Faisal Shazade was the guy that tried to bomb Times Square. Shazade also, yeah, he had, he had claimed that his family had been killed in the, in a drone strike as well. So I think, you know, if you're looking at kind of roots of terrorism, I mean, that's what you have. And then, you know, What makes the FBI policy so problematic or so problematic in targeting Muslims, if, you know,

if you go and listen to like, you know, Anwar Al-Aki videos from back in the day, what he describes is a, is an America that is, you know, does not support Islam and is against Islam and unfairly treats Muslims. And then so you look at what happened in the post-9-11 era, and that's that's pretty much what happened, right? Not that there, the FBI is trying to live up to what on what he's, you know, criticism of the United States are. But at the same time, like, that's, you know, the policies in response to the terrorism just kind of further engender anti-American feelings among Muslims, not only in the United States, but around the world, that they feel that the American government is unfairly targeting them.

And all of that, you know, then, you know, then obviously pushes people toward extremism, you know. And then you can even look now at, you know, given the Israel-Gaza war in the United States as military support of Israel. You know, you have the FBI director now saying, well, look, you know, we're concerned about, you know, Hamas actions as well, even though to this day, there has never been a real Hamas case in the United States, but, you know, he's kind of very plainly saying, if you take him at his word, that, look, American foreign policy, you know, is engendering potential terrorism in the United States.

And, you know, at least, you know, you have that acknowledgement. But that's not really, you know, the idea of blowback and the roots of terrorism, unfortunately, aren't something that are, you know, discussed very much in the open in Congress or in the media. Hey, guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expandesigns.com for your new business or news site.

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Get tickets now. Yeah, you only get it kind of, you know, other than when Ron Paul's telling the truth up there, you know, back in 07 and through 12. Well, before that, but he got the attention in 07 with the Giuliani moment. But otherwise, you only get little glimpses of it where they talk about things as you're saying, where Ray is essentially spinning for Israel, but then he's bringing up the potential of blowback terrorism. And then we also have, as people can read in your book, and in all of your coverage of all of these takes, the informants, the FBI informants, always invoke American foreign

policy. Aren't you upset about what America is doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc., etc., Palestine, in order to fool these people? into saying, yes, I'll commit a violent act. They never say, doesn't Islam make you hate freedom? Come on, that would never work. And they don't even try that. It's always American foreign policy that the informants use as their stick to entrap the schmuck.

Right, yeah. I mean, if you went to, you know, just an average mosque in the United States today, you know, Muslim worshippers would talk about their dissatisfaction of American foreign policy. I mean, you know, now, today more than ever, given the war in Gaza, and, you know, so you're going to find tons of people who will describe being, you know, angry about American foreign policy, which is their right to be. At the same time, though, of those people, you can find a very, very small subset of people who maybe they're mentally ill or they're just, you know, they're kind of badly educated or they are incentivized by money, who will then respond. to that FBI informant saying, like, we should do something about the war in Gaza and say, yeah, we should, right?

You know, we should, you know, I've got a bomb I can give you. And then they engage them in conversation. But, you know, how many of these people really would have acted? They are definitely kind of exploiting anger that is justified in many cases. Right. But of American foreign policy within those communities. Right. And then, look, I got to point this out, too.

It's so important. And you don't harp on this just because you're so polite in your article. But come on, this guy's a terrorist because he likes Ibn al-Katab, Bill Clinton, and Tony Blair's guy in Chechnya. He's a terrorist because he likes Jolani, Al-Jolani in Syria, Barack Obama's guy, and Benjamin Netanyahu's guy from Hyatt to Rear al-Sham. You know, slightly ironic there. Yeah, for sure. You know, the FBI is very good at not kind of showing those shades of gray among these various organizations. And, you know, certainly, you know, a number of Syrian groups that are portrayed as terrorist groups or now on terrorist lists were at one point, like, openly supported by Western powers or proxies like Saudi Arabia.

And, you know, so it is, it is interesting in that sense that they kind of portray, you know, these people as evidence that Jason Fong was somehow interested in, you know, violent terrorism, even though, you know, he was kind of praising people that had various times had been, you know, allies of the United States. You know, and at the same time, too, you know, I think, like, you know, a lot of what Jason said is anti-Israeli describes kind of, and this is before the war in Gaza, this would have been in 2020. But, you know, he describes in his text messages with the group about, you know, describing Gaza as an open-air prison and being angry with Israel for its policies there. And, you know, whether he was interested in kind of taking that anger and turning

into violence, I think is highly debatable and unlikely. But the government used that kind of angry rhetoric, you know, as kind of evidence that maybe he could. Like maybe, you know, this wasn't just irony. This was really violence. And what Jason pointed out to me in the interviews, and it's true, is like, you know, if you go on all sorts of forums today, you'll find people like, you know, you know, saying horrible, horrible things about Hamas and the things they would like to do

to people of Gaza, you'd also find people saying similar things about the Israelis, right? And, you know, the internet can be accessible. Like, no one disputes that. But just because you're saying these things, however, you know, however awful those things might be, you know, that it doesn't necessarily mean you were going to commit some sort of violence. And I think that's where the FBI and running these sting operations online runs into a real problem, which is that like how do you know what kind of rhetoric is violent and how do you know what kind of rhetoric is joking and you know meant to be ironic because you know i'm i'm a middle-aged man now but like young people like jason fong and their 20s and even younger you know they're the

communication style of the extremely online is very ironic right so how do you how do you know what they're saying isn't just kind of the language of the internet versus kind of the language of suggestions of violence in some way yeah all right now uh real quickly here and I'm sorry, I talk too much in these interviews, but I love talking with you. Can you just tell us here real quick about how this case fell apart? Yes, it's kind of an interesting story. So they had initially charged Jason with two counts or several counts of material support, I should say. One count specifically involved supporting Hamas or Al Qasam Brigades, which is the militant affiliate of Hamas,

because Jason had shared a website for them. And basically all he said was, I think this is a cost. we can all get behind. Did not kind of explicitly ask them to donate, did not donate himself. And then in addition, he had shared military training documents with the group that can easily be found online. You know, and these are largely historical military training documents about building explosives. Shared it with the group. The intention of that was always kind of ambiguous. Did he mean to be used to support terrorism? He also, you know, included a video where he shows how to handle an AR-15 style rifle. And the FBI presented that as sinister, even though you can find

similar videos on YouTube that are just like, you know, instructions, how to handle a rifle safely. And so the, Jason fought his charges and, you know, for his material support charges and took it to trial. And this farcical thing happened where the FBI's informant was testifying and the justice department had asked the judge to allow the informant to testify in disguise. and also to close the courtroom to the public. And this was something that the jury was not supposed to know about for fear that it would prejudice them against Jason Fong, the defendant. And it just so happened that this Los Angeles billionaire

who had been involved in this patent dispute with Mattel's Barbie stumbles into the courtroom to say a look to the judge because that particular judge had overseen their Mattel lawsuit. And the judge is startled, doesn't understand how the bailiffs allowed this person into the courtroom. him and then kind of, you know, yells out that this is a national security trial and he's not supposed to be here. And of course, the jury wasn't supposed to know that. And so that causes a mistrial. Jason is then kind of thrown back into limbo. And I think at that point, the government

realized that it was going to be really hard for them to make the case against Jason, given how ambiguous a lot of the evidence was. And so they offered him a deal that, you know, wasn't really a deal. I mean, what they said was, look, we'll drop the charges of terrorism against you if you plead guilty to one count of making a false statement to a federal agent, which was not part of the initial indictment. And basically, they had Jason on that one. And Jason admits it because when, you know, he was initially interviewed by the FBI when they raided his home, he was asked, as I mentioned earlier, you know, did anyone in your chat groups express an interest in terrorism? And he said no. And that was a lie because the FBI agent and the undercover New York police. police department employee had both done so. And so he knew they had him on that. And he ended up pleading guilty on that one, which, you know, again, it's like another, another case example or anecdote of like why you should never speak to law enforcement without a lawyer present, right? Because potentially this case would have, you know, gone away after the mistrial, but they did have Jason on that making false statements because he had, unfortunately, agreed to speak to the, to the FBI,

you know, as they were raiding his house. Yeah. Well, you know, It's just another for the pile. And I have a kind of map of America in my head with little thumbtacks where all of these fake cases are from, like the Miami 7 and Lodi, California, and the Florida Dix pizza plot and the synagogues up in Brooklyn and the, you know what I mean? Like, it's just another one for the pile here, out there, California way. Yeah, no, it's got the NYPD entrapping some idiot. Right. And it's, you know, it's really like, to me, it's just very counterproductive. There's also a part of me that years, you know, I've been, as you know, I've been writing about this for over 10 years now. And there's a part of me now, like, looking backwards that thinks, like,

how does this ever end, right? Like, how do we finally get to the point where Congress says, okay, you know, maybe we don't need to spend as much on counterterrorism or, or maybe we should review, you know, whether the FBI's tactics are effective. But no one really has these conversations at a level that would cause reform. And, you know, so we're just kind of stuck in this kind of loop. And, you know, the FBI will keep finding cases because you can always find someone that you can kind of set up in one of these things. And so, you know, more recently I've started to wonder, like, how does this end?

Maybe it doesn't, not any time soon. Well, and especially with this foreign policy, as long as they continue to build up these terrorist groups and then occasionally stab them in the back and turn against them and then flip back and forth over and over again the way that they do and continue. supporting Israel in Palestine and Lebanon and elsewhere. You know, look at what just happened in Iran. Presumably that was Israel or the United States that had either M.E.K. Or a bin Ladenite type group do that bombing, which could lead right to not just war in the Middle East, but terrorist attacks across Europe in the United States and God knows what.

And so, you know, I presume the worst is still headed this way. Like, if we have an FBI at all, I would like for them to pay attention to real ass bin Ladenites, please, and leave regular schmucks alone and protect this country from their sister agencies, policies, and the consequences of them, you know? Right, right. Remember there was that one where the FBI was prosecuting a guy for wanting to go to Syria and his lawyers and father complained. But the CIA recruited him. They told him it was okay. He was going to fight for the moderate rebels. Yeah, there's a number of cases where they've got people whose activity was almost entirely online

with the only kind of real world activity being that they showed up at an airport expecting to kind of fly to Turkey or somewhere else in the Middle East. And that was when America was on their side in the war there. Yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry, we're overtime. But the thing is so crazy. And what's funny is I used to be so jealous of you because I started to write a book like this. I had a co-author, and we had a whole book proposal.

I think you know this. And we had a whole book proposal. We shopped around to some different publishers and stuff, and, you know, based on a few of these Liberty City 7 and whichever Lodi. And we just couldn't get any takers and then you beat us to it. And I'm just so glad now. Thanks for it. Yeah. It's such a burden.

It's funny like when I, you know, and I imagine you've had experienced this as well. Like when I was pitching the book around over 10 years ago, there was a lot of skepticism about, you know, is this really true? Is the FBI really doing this? Yeah, does anybody care about this? Yeah, but it has been interesting to see how it's, you know, how it's shifted. In some ways, shifted in a farcego way. I mean, I think some of the kind of more right-wing propaganda about the FBI is a little out of touch with the facts.

But it is pretty interesting to see that people are very open to accepting that this happens now and open to seeing the criticism of the FBI. Yeah, and, you know, those of us familiar with the FBI's PatCon operation and infiltration of the Patriot movement in the 1990s. And, you know, their informants involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing and other things has, you know, some parts of the right pretty wise to this kind of deal. And I think, in fact, parts of the right getting wise to this, like you look at the absolute hoax of the Whitmer kidnapping plot there. And then I think it's incumbent upon libertarians like myself to point out that, look, they do this to leftists, you know, to earth-first environmentalist types, they do this to Muslims, they do it to army veterans, they do it to right-wing Trump's support and patriots. They do it for themselves at the expense of, you know, essentially anyone with politics outside of the party system, right? You want to be some kind of radical. You're going to get investigated and maybe co-intel prod and may be entrapped.

and set up and divided, because that's how they do it, you know? For sure. Yeah, no, that's their focus, is sting operations on, like, both ends of the political spectrum, both extremes, and as the FBI would see it. And, you know, I think the problem, too, is that, you know, this is all, you know, hangover effect of the war on terror that, you know, by being so willing to kind of expand these definitions of terrorism and, you know, build out these laws, you know, you end up eventually kind of targeting people who might be extreme, depending on how you define it,

the United States. And then, you know, you find ways in the law and then the language of the law to kind of define them as terrorism to justify, you know, more aggressive investigative techniques or prosecutions that you might not otherwise pursue. And certainly the, the Whitmer case is an example of that. And there are others where, you know, the FBI has kind of exported this, these tactics that it refined in the war on terror against Muslims and have applied it to other communities, you know, whether that's, you know, kind of far-right communities like, you know, militia members or, you know, you even see this today and kind of like, you know, I've written a couple of stories about like money laundering cases involving kind of dupes that had no interest in money laundering, but the FBI is able to kind of create these by, you know, using these very aggressive sting operations. And, you know, I think that's kind of the farce that we're in today, which is that more often than not when you're looking at high-profile cases that the FBI pursues, you know, they're sting operations. That doesn't mean they're all sting operations, right?

Like, I think this Robert Menendez investigation and indictment is a good example of what the FBI can and should do, right, when they're investigating, you know, that type of high-level political corruption. But at the same time, these sting operations that target very marginal people in our society whose capacity for violence is very questionable doesn't seem like a good use of their resources. Yeah. Well, and it gets to the point where you can tell every time one of these comes out, you go, oh, yeah, let's see. Is the word informant in the first news story? Okay. Let's wait until the second or third one comes out and see what it was that this guy allegedly said to an FBI informant. Oh, okay. And then we all just, you feel the whole planet shift under our fees. Every rolls their eyes at once. Okay, another informant job. Yeah, I apologize if I recycle a joke that I've used in one of your shows before. But I've often joked that it's like it's like a mad lives, right? When you look at the affidavit, it pretty much is a template. And you just changed a few words here and there. But it's like informant found some, you know, do talk to him about terrorism. offered him a bomb. It's a pretty solid formula for the FBI at this point.

Yeah, I was recycling that planet shift. I rolled things. We're even. All right. Thank you, Trevor. You're a great journalist, man. I should appreciate your time, as always. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for the platform. Talk you soon. All right, you guys. That is Trevor Aronson. He's at the Intercept.com. Catfished by cops. The Hamas terrorist who wasn't, and of course the book is The Terror Factory. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7. fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scot horton dot org and libertarian institute dot org