Hunt, Brendan

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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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      Were Brendan Hunt's Social Media Rants Free Speech or Illegal Threats?

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      The trial of Brendan Hunt, an avid Trump backer and New York City resident, will be one of the justice system’s first attempts to grapple with the events of Jan. 6.Two days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, a 37-year-old man living in New York City posted a video online entitled “KILL YOUR SENATORS.”The man, Brendan Hunt, was not in Washington on Jan. 6. But in the 88-second video, he said that “we need to go back to the U.S. Capitol” ahead of President Biden’s inauguration and “slaughter” members of Congress, according to the criminal complaint.“If anybody has a gun, give me it,” he said. “I’ll go there myself and shoot them and kill them.”Now, the question of whether the video and three other social media posts by Mr. Hunt crossed the line from free speech into illegal threats is at the heart of a federal trial starting this week in Brooklyn.Brendan Hunt in a picture from his BitChute account.This is the first federal trial in the country that will force jurors to grapple deeply with the events of Jan. 6, diving headfirst into the national debate about how much the government should police violent rhetoric in the wake of the Capitol attack.Mr. Hunt became part of the Capitol breach’s sprawling aftermath as law enforcement officials not only arrested hundreds of rioters who stormed the Capitol but also charged people with making online threats around the attack. As officials in Washington consider new ways to combat violent extremism, including a possible domestic terrorism statute, Mr. Hunt’s trial could be a bellwether of how the authorities balance the pursuit of serious threats with constitutional protections for political speech.“These types of threats are particularly dangerous when made in a charged political environment that has already led to the overrunning of the United States Capitol and the interruption, for the first time in United States history, of the certification of a presidential election,” federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said in a court filing last month.Mr. Hunt faces one count of threatening to murder members of Congress, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. In December, Mr. Hunt posted on Facebook urging a “public execution” of prominent Democratic politicians, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Chuck Schumer, according to prosecutors.Mr. Hunt’s lawyers have described the case as a groundbreaking prosecution, arguing that the government was trying to criminalize Mr. Hunt’s political opinions. Mr. Hunt had no weapons, no plans to carry out violence and no affiliations with organized groups, his lawyers said. He was ranting into the vast internet void, they argue, with no expectation that anyone would act on his words.“Seen in context, the posts are more consistent with intoxication than insurrection,” his lawyers wrote.Jan Rostal, a federal defender for Mr. Hunt, said in a statement that the First Amendment encouraged political debate “in the town square, not in secret, so bad ideas can get tested.”“This case could have serious implications for freedom of speech on social media,” Ms. Rostal said.Although Mr. Hunt had been posting menacing statements on social media since early December, he was not arrested until Jan. 19, the day before Mr. Biden’s inauguration. Mr. Hunt has been in jail since his arrest.The trial will wade into an unsettled area of law that has become especially urgent with the explosion of incendiary political speech in recent years. One of the central disputes at Mr. Hunt’s trial will be whether a “reasonable person” would have viewed his social media posts as a serious threat to kill members of Congress.“The courts have said we’ve got to leave a lot of room for dissent, including dissent that’s raised in violent terms,” said Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But how much room is a very important question.”To convict Mr. Hunt, prosecutors must prove that he was not just joking or exaggerating. They must show that he made the statements with the intention of either interfering with the official duties of members of Congress or retaliating against them for certifying the 2020 election results.Prosecutors have said that they may call Capitol Police officers as witnesses to testify about what happened on Jan. 6 and how they reacted to Mr. Hunt’s social media posts.The trial will require jurors to parse through Mr. Hunt’s web of political beliefs to understand his motivations. During jury selection, jurors were asked whether they have strong opinions about the 2020 election or about supporters of President Donald J. Trump that would prevent them from being fair and impartial.Prosecutors will show that Mr. Hunt, a fervent supporter of Mr. Trump, was furious about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and believed members of Congress were “traitors” for supporting an election result that he viewed as illegitimate.Using Mr. Hunt’s social media comments and private text messages, prosecutors will argue that his statements were deliberate threats motivated by white supremacist and anti-Semitic beliefs.In the video that Mr. Hunt shared two days after the Capitol riot, he used references that are known to white supremacists, prosecutors said. The video was posted on BitChute, a platform with less restrictive moderation policies than YouTube, which has cracked down on the spread of hate speech and conspiracy theories.In a court filing, Mr. Hunt’s lawyers said he removed the video within two days of posting it. It was a “fellow conservative” who saw the video on BitChute and alerted the F.B.I., they wrote.The defense said Mr. Hunt held more nuanced political views than the government’s portrayal. He has posted on social media that he voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 and was later involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, according to a court filing from his lawyers.“While we do not agree with many of Mr. Hunt’s views, we will fight to the death his right to express them,” his lawyers wrote.In December, Mr. Hunt wrote on Facebook describing Mr. Schumer, Ms. Pelosi and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez as the sort of “high value targets” that Mr. Trump’s supporters should shoot, prosecutors said.“They really need to be put down,” he wrote, according to the complaint. “These commies will see death before they see us surrender!”On the social media site Parler, prosecutors said, after another user suggested acting peacefully following the Capitol riot, Mr. Hunt wrote: “lets go, jan 20, bring your guns #millionmilitiamarch.”Law enforcement officials have historically been careful about bringing criminal charges hinged solely on speech, often waiting to see if the person making troubling statements online takes concrete steps toward violence. But in the weeks after Jan. 6, prosecutors around the country signaled that they were less willing to wait after witnessing how online rhetoric turned into the real-world violence that unfolded at the Capitol.During the pandemic, Mr. Hunt had been working from home in Ridgewood, Queens, making about $57,800 a year in his clerical job with the New York State courts system. He was terminated from the job after his arrest.Mr. Hunt had a long history of promoting conspiracy theories online, including falsely implicating the federal government in a cover-up of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which killed 20 first graders and six educators.Mr. Hunt’s father is a retired family court judge in Queens.At a hearing last month, Mr. Hunt’s father, John M. Hunt, told the court that after his son graduated from college, he pursued a career in acting and clashed frequently with his mother over his marijuana use. Family disputes sometimes escalated into physical altercations, prosecutors said, to the point where Mr. Hunt’s father called on the police to intervene.The father blamed his son’s social media rants on marijuana and alcohol.“My son is not a walking time bomb,” he said in court. “He’s a bright guy. He can be engaging.” More