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      New York Man Found Guilty of Threatening Democrats After Capitol Riot

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      Brendan Hunt said videos and social media posts calling for the slaughter of congressional Democrats were just jokes. Jurors were not convinced.Brendan Hunt was struggling to find success as an actor in New York City when he discovered another way to become famous.He began to film conspiracy theory videos about the Sept. 11 attacks and other mass killings, building an audience over many years. He posted anti-Semitic propaganda, and branded himself as a free speech warrior. He eventually became a fan of President Donald J. Trump.But during the pandemic, Mr. Hunt’s tone escalated. The tipping point came on Jan. 8, two days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, when Mr. Hunt published a video urging Mr. Trump’s supporters to kill Democratic politicians. A viewer notified the F.B.I., and Mr. Hunt was arrested in January.On Wednesday, after a weeklong trial in Brooklyn, a jury concluded that Mr. Hunt’s words were not protected by the First Amendment. He was found guilty of making a threat to kill members of Congress, a federal crime that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.Although Mr. Hunt did not travel to Washington on the day of the Capitol riot, his criminal trial was the first one in the country that required jurors to weigh the events of Jan. 6 in their verdict. Jurors watched footage from the attack and heard the testimony of a Capitol Police officer.Mr. Hunt’s rhetoric, prosecutors said, had to be viewed in the context of the Capitol riot.“Many watched the video clips from the Capitol in horror, but the defendant was inspired,” said Ian Richardson, an assistant U.S. attorney, in his closing statement. “He watched the events of Jan. 6, and he wanted more, more violence, more bloodshed.”Mr. Hunt’s lawyers, Jan Rostal and Leticia Olivera, argued at trial that all of his statements were strongly worded political opinions, not specific and targeted threats.People like Mr. Hunt have long posed a challenge for law enforcement officials, who sift through violent threats online to determine which ones are worthy of criminal prosecution and which ones are protected speech. Mr. Hunt was arrested on Jan. 19, the day before President Biden’s inauguration, a signal that F.B.I. agents did not want to wait and see what he might have done on that day.The trial centered around four social media posts that Mr. Hunt made starting in December. Upset about the 2020 election outcome, he urged the slaughter and beheading of prominent Democrats ahead of Mr. Biden’s inauguration. Mr. Hunt singled out Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Senator Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “high value targets.”“We’re not voting in another rigged election,” he wrote on Facebook in December. “Start up the firing squads, mow down these commies, and lets take america back!”In a Jan. 8 video on BitChute, a video-sharing site, he said: “If anybody has a gun, give me it. I’ll go there myself and shoot them and kill them.”On Wednesday’s verdict sheet, the jurors indicated that they found the video to be an illegal threat, but not the three other Facebook and Parler posts that prosecutors had also presented. The jury only had to conclude that one of the posts was a true threat to convict Mr. Hunt.Mr. Hunt, a former clerical worker with the New York State court system and the son of a retired Queens judge, published the posts from his home in Ridgewood, Queens, about a 20-minute drive from Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s district office. The government presented no evidence that Mr. Hunt owned or took any real-life steps to obtain weapons.This undated video frame grab image shows Brendan Hunt, 37, in a video he posted online.US Attorneys Office/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe jury reached its verdict after three hours of deliberation. After the verdict, Mr. Hunt’s lawyers said in a statement: “This prosecution is a slippery slope into a new war on speech.”The climax of the trial was Mr. Hunt’s highly unusual decision to testify in his own defense — a risky maneuver that allowed him to share his side of the story but also meant prosecutors could cross-examine him about his anti-Semitic and white supremacist beliefs.Before he took the stand, Judge Pamela K. Chen of Federal District Court in Brooklyn asked him repeatedly if he was sure about the decision.During Mr. Hunt’s testimony, he apologized for his posts and took full responsibility, but insisted that he did not intend for them to be serious threats. He described himself as “a pretty immature 37-year-old.” Wearing a gray suit, blue tie and a clear plastic face shield, he seemed relaxed and spoke nonchalantly.“The idea that I would somehow borrow somebody’s gun, waltz into Biden’s inauguration ceremony like some Looney Tunes character and somehow line up all senators and execute a firing squad on them, I think is a pretty ridiculous idea,” he said.He has been in jail since his arrest, which he said has made him realize how irresponsible his social media posts were and how he needed to “readjust what I think is humorous.”“I’m sort of just a YouTube guy who makes controversial content and clickbait videos,” he said.But the verdict showed that the jurors sided with the prosecutors, who argued that the posts were not poorly worded jokes.Prosecutors presented evidence that Mr. Hunt repeatedly posted threatening language against members of Congress, motivated by his anti-Semitic belief that the government was controlled by a Jewish conspiracy. He created a video that was never published online in which he talked about killing Jewish people.Mr. Hunt was quick to resort to violent threats, prosecutors said. In December, after his cousin unfriended him on Facebook, Mr. Hunt sent the cousin a text message threatening to stab his child with a knife.Mr. Hunt was charged with one count of making an illegal threat. He was not charged with inciting violence. Prosecutors did not need to prove that he intended to carry out the threat, nor that members of Congress even received the threat.Prosecutors had to prove that a “reasonable person” would have seen the messages as real threats, and that Mr. Hunt made the threats with the intention of interfering with or retaliating against members of Congress for doing their jobs.Daniel Bonthius, the law enforcement coordinator for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s office, testified at trial that he was concerned that Mr. Hunt spoke so calmly in his Jan. 8 video and did not seem mentally ill. Mr. Bonthius said he worried for his staff’s safety, as Mr. Hunt’s Facebook post about a “public execution” brought back memories of the Capitol riot.Among the prominent Democrats Mr. Hunt said should be killed were Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, left, and Sen. Chuck Schumer. Seth Wenig/Associated PressThe trial testimony became a time capsule of the world-altering events in 2020. Mr. Hunt explained that he became increasingly lonely working from home during the pandemic, drinking and smoking marijuana to deal with isolation. He listened to the news all day long, furious about government lockdowns and mask mandates.He started visiting a neo-Nazi website and began reading Adolf Hitler’s book, “Mein Kampf.” Two days after the 2020 election, he downloaded the manifesto of Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine Black churchgoers in 2015 in South Carolina.Mr. Hunt testified that he merely wanted to learn more about mass murderers and did not endorse their beliefs.“Are you a Nazi?” his lawyer asked him. He replied, “No. I’m not a Nazi. I hate Nazis,” pointing to the fact that he owned comic books written by Jewish men.After he published his Jan. 8 video calling for people to kill their senators, right-wing commenters called him an “imbecile” and asked if he had lost his mind. One person wrote: “Good way to put a target on your back and get arrested soon.” Humiliated, he deleted the video the next day.But it was too late. Among the 502 people who viewed the video was the one who called the F.B.I. hotline. Agents opened an investigation and followed Mr. Hunt for over a week.On the day of Mr. Hunt’s arrest, 17 law enforcement officers showed up to his home, searching for bombs and weapons. Instead, his lawyers said, the officers found a trove of comic books, toys and a Ninja Turtle sweater.Mr. Hunt testified that when he is released from prison, he hopes to continue making videos.“I think I should maybe stay away from the political kind of stuff or offensive material,” he said. “Maybe reviewing comic books, reviewing movies. Things like that.” More

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      Citing Trump’s Pardon, Judge Dismisses Case Against Michael Flynn

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCiting Trump’s Pardon, Judge Dismisses Case Against Michael FlynnA federal judge portrayed the Justice Department’s prior attempt to drop the case as unlikely to have met legal standards as legitimate.Michael T. Flynn was the only White House official charged in the Russia investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.Credit…Carolyn Kaster/Associated PressBy More

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      In Harsh Rebuke, Appeals Court Rejects Trump’s Election Challenge in Pennsylvania

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      In a blistering decision, a Philadelphia appeals court ruled on Friday that the Trump campaign could not stop — or attempt to reverse — the certification of the voting results in Pennsylvania, reprimanding the president’s team by noting that “calling an election unfair does not make it so.”The 21-page ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals was a complete repudiation of Mr. Trump’s legal effort to halt Pennsylvania’s certification process and was written by a judge that he himself appointed to the bench. “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy,” Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote on behalf of the appeals court in a unanimous decision. “Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”Many courts have used scathing language in tossing out a relentless barrage of lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and its supporters since Election Day; but even so, the Third Circuit’s ruling was particularly blunt.“Voters, not lawyers, choose the president,” the court declared at one point. “Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.”The court accused the Trump campaign of engaging in “repetitive litigation” and pointed out that the public interest strongly favored “counting every lawful voter’s vote, and not disenfranchising millions of Pennsylvania voters who voted by mail.”Even though Republican plaintiffs have continued filing lawsuits challenging the integrity of the elections and Mr. Trump has not let up on baselessly questioning the election results on Twitter, judges around the country — some of them appointed by Republicans — have held the line, ruling over and over that the legal actions in several swing states lack both merit and sufficient proof.Last week, a federal judge in Atlanta appointed by Mr. Trump denied an emergency request to halt the certification of Georgia’s vote, saying that such a move “would breed confusion and disenfranchisement that I find have no basis in fact and law.”Then there was the judge whose ruling was upheld by the Third Circuit, Matthew W. Brann of Federal District Court in Williamsport, Pa. When Judge Brann, a former Republican official and member of the conservative Federalist Society appointed by former President Barack Obama, dealt Mr. Trump’s team an initial legal defeat last Saturday, he likened the suit to “Frankenstein’s monster,” saying it had been “haphazardly stitched together.” He also noted that the suit was filled with “strained legal arguments” and “speculative accusations” that were “unsupported by evidence.”The Pennsylvania decision came on a day of baseless tweets from Mr. Trump that the election was “a total scam,” that he “won by a lot” and that the news media “refuse to report the real facts and figures.”Still, when asked on Thursday if he would leave the White House if the Electoral College, as expected, formalizes Mr. Biden’s victory, the president said: “Certainly I will.”On Friday, moments after the three-judge panel from the Third Circuit handed down its ruling, Jenna Ellis, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, wrote on Twitter that she and Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is leading the president’s postelection legal campaign, planned to appeal to the Supreme Court. In her Twitter post, Ms. Ellis accused “the activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania” of covering up “allegations of massive fraud” despite the fact that all three judges on the panel were appointed by Republicans.But even if the Supreme Court granted the Trump campaign’s proposed request to reverse the Third Circuit, it would not get much, given the narrow way in which the appeal was structured.Mr. Trump’s lawyers had asked the appeals court only for permission to file a revised version of its original complaint to Judge Brann. If the Supreme Court abided by the strict terms of the appeal, it could do no more than return the case to Judge Brann’s court for further action.In a letter to the Third Circuit earlier this week, lawyers for Mr. Trump had suggested that the appeals court could, on its own, reverse the certification of Pennsylvania’s vote, which took place on Tuesday when Gov. Tom Wolf signed off on the slate of 20 electors and solidified President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory there. Georgia certified its vote last week after a hand-recount of its five million ballots left Mr. Biden’s victory intact. But Mr. Trump’s lawyers stopped short of formally requesting such a move.Still, the appeals court shot down that suggestion too, saying the campaign’s arguments for effectively undoing Pennsylvania’s election had “no merit” and would be “drastic and unprecedented.”“That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised,” the judges wrote.In the initial complaint, the campaign’s lawyers had argued there were widespread improprieties with mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania and that Mr. Trump’s poll challengers were not allowed proper access to observe the vote and vote count.But the appeals court dismissed these arguments as “vague and conclusory.”Mr. Trump’s lawyers never alleged “that anyone treated the Trump campaign or Trump votes worse than it treated the Biden campaign or Biden votes,” the court wrote. “And federal law does not require poll watchers or specify how they may observe.”The underlying lawsuit has been beset by legal snafus almost from the moment it began on Nov. 9.One week after it was filed, the Trump campaign was already on its third set of lawyers. On Nov. 17, Mr. Giuliani, rushing into the matter, personally appeared at a hearing in front of Judge Brann and gave a disjointed opening statement that mentioned Mickey Mouse, former Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago and the Philadelphia mafia.Mr. Giuliani also contradicted Mr. Trump — and his own public statements — by admitting at the hearing that no one was accusing Pennsylvania elections officials of committing fraud.“This is not a fraud case,” he said.The appeals court seemed to throw that statement back in Mr. Giuliani’s face in its decision.“The Trump presidential campaign asserts that Pennsylvania’s 2020 election was unfair,” it wrote. “But as lawyer Rudolph Giuliani stressed, the campaign ‘doesn’t plead fraud.’” More

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      Over 30 Trump Campaign Lawsuits Have Failed. Some Rulings Are Scathing.

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      Judges, a generally sober lot, are not as a rule given to snark, sarcasm or outbursts of emotion in their orders.But in the nearly three dozen lawsuits challenging the 2020 election that the Trump campaign and its proxies have either lost or withdrawn in recent weeks, a number of judges have lost patience.Here are some scathing excerpts from their rulings:PennsylvaniaOct. 10“Perhaps Plaintiffs are right that guards should be placed near drop boxes, signature-analysis experts should examine every mail-in ballot, poll watchers should be able to man any poll regardless of location, and other security improvements should be made. But the job of an unelected federal judge isn’t to suggest election improvements, especially when those improvements contradict the reasoned judgment of democratically elected officials.”“Put differently, federal judges can have a lot of power — especially when issuing injunctions. And sometimes we may even have a good idea or two. But the Constitution sets out our sphere of decision-making, and that sphere does not extend to second-guessing and interfering with a state’s reasonable, nondiscriminatory election rules.”Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, dismissing the Trump campaign’s attempt to stop Pennsylvania counties from using ballot drop boxes and from tallying absentee ballots that were not in a “secrecy” envelope.Nov. 21“This claim, like Frankenstein’s Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together… This Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more.”Judge Matthew W. Brann of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, dismissing the Trump campaign’s attempt to block certification of Pennsylvania’s election result. (The state certified its results on Tuesday.)TexasNov. 2“Here, the court finds the plaintiffs did not act with alacrity. There has been an increasing amount of conversation and action around the subject of implementing drive-through voting since earlier this summer…”“At virtually any point, but certainly by October 12, 2020, plaintiffs could have filed this action. Instead, they waited until October 28, 2020 at 9:08 p.m. to file their complaint and did not file their actual motion for temporary relief until midday on October 30, 2020 — the last day of early voting.”Judge Andrew S. Hanen of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, dismissing a Republican-led lawsuit seeking to end drive-through voting in heavily Democratic Harris County, Texas.MichiganNov. 6“This ‘supplemental evidence’ is inadmissible as hearsay. The assertion that Connarn was informed by an unknown individual what ‘other hired poll workers at her table’ had been told is inadmissible hearsay within hearsay, and plaintiffs have provided no hearsay exception for either level of hearsay that would warrant consideration of the evidence.”Judge Cynthia Stephens of the Michigan Court of Claims, dismissing a Republican-led lawsuit attempting to stop the count of absentee ballots in the state.Nov. 13“Perhaps if plaintiffs’ election challenger affiants had attended the Oct. 29, 2020, walk-through of the TCF Center ballot-counting location, questions and concerns could have been answered in advance of Election Day. Regrettably, they did not and, therefore, plaintiffs’ affiants did not have a full understanding” of the absentee ballot tabulation process.”Judge Timothy M. Kenny of the Third Judicial Circuit Court of Michigan, dismissing a Republican-led suit seeking to stop the certification of the vote in Wayne County. (Michigan certified its results on Monday.)GeorgiaNov. 19“To halt the certification at literally the 11th hour would breed confusion and disenfranchisement that I find have no basis in fact and law.”Judge Steven D. Grimberg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, in a ruling from the bench, turning down an emergency request from a Trump supporter, L. Lin Wood, to halt certification of the vote in Georgia. (Georgia certified its results on Friday.)Nov. 20“Although Wood generally claims fundamental unfairness, and the declarations and testimony submitted in support of his motion speculate as to widespread impropriety, the actual harm alleged by Wood concerns merely a “garden variety” election dispute. Wood does not allege unfairness in counting the ballots; instead, he alleges that select non-party, partisan monitors were not permitted to observe the Audit in an ideal manner. Wood presents no authority, and the Court finds none, providing for a right to unrestrained observation or monitoring of vote counting, recounting, or auditing.Judge Grimberg, once again turning down Mr. Wood’s emergency request to halt certification of the vote in Georgia.

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