Longtime Paid FBI Informant Was Instrumental in Terror Case Against “Turtle Island Liberation Front”

An FBI analysis into an alleged terror plot in Southern California bears the familiar hallmarks of the bureau s long-running use of informants and undercover agents to advance plots that might not otherwise have materialized court documents show News of the plot surfaced Monday morning in a Fox News document that ran ahead of court filings or official statements Within minutes FBI personnel amplified the story on social media PROTECT THE HOMELAND and CRUSH VIOLENT CRIME wrote FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino a former podcaster These words are not slogans they re the investigative pillars of this FBI The informant and the undercover agent were involved in nearly every stage of the affair What followed however painted a more complicated picture The limited details available suggest an inspection that leaned heavily on a paid informant and at least one undercover FBI agent according to an affidavit filed in federal court The informant and the undercover agent were involved in nearly every stage of the event including discussions of operational prevention and transporting members of the group to the site in the Mojave Desert where federal agents ultimately made the arrests The informant who has worked other cases on the FBI s payroll since had been in contact with the group known as the Turtle Island Liberation Front since at least late November just two months after President Donald Trump designated antifa a domestic terrorism organization On the morning of December FBI Director Kash Patel declared the arrests calling the plot a credible imminent terrorist threat Yet the scenario had the familiar markings of FBI terrorism stings that stretch back more than two decades hundreds of cases that have disproportionately targeted left-wing activists and Muslims and less often right-wing actors Bring Cases Get Paid Since the September attacks the FBI has relied on informants to identify and build terrorism cases The structure has created perverse incentives for prospective informants Their cooperation can get them out of criminal cases of their own and lead to handsome monetary compensation The FBI s call is simple Bring cases get paid Rick Smith a defense consultant and former FBI agent commented confidential sources are essential to investigative police work but cautioned that they come with inherent baggage Related FBI Counterterrorism Informant Spent a Decade Committing Fraud They re sources they re not ordinary citizens Smith mentioned They have either been compromised in various way or they re going to be paid Either way they ve got specific sort of skin in the tournament They re getting something out of it In the years after attacks the FBI created a territory for cases involving left-wing activists and Muslims After the January Capitol riot the bureau made clear to informants that right-wing extremism was a priority Now under the second Trump administration the federal ruling body s focus is again turning to perceived left-wing extremism In September days after the terror designation of antifa Trump outlined his administration s war on the left in a memo titled National Defense Presidential Memorandum or NSPM- which called for the National Joint Terrorism Task Force to coordinate with local offices to investigate alleged federal crimes by political radicals The head of the federal prosecutor s office in Los Angeles explained on Monday that the Turtle Island Liberation Front arrests stemmed from Trump s executive order Related Post- Stings Targeted People Who Posed No Threat They Remain in Prison Key questions in the Turtle Island Liberation Front occurrence however remain unanswered It is still unclear how the FBI first identified the group or how long the informant had been embedded before the bomb plot emerged a period defense attorneys say is central to any serious examination of entrapment whereby defendants are coerced into crimes they would not otherwise commit a frequent criticism of stings involving paid informants and undercover agents The question that without delay popped into my mind was that There s a reference to a confidential human source but there s no indication of how that source came to be explained Brad Crowder an activist and union organizer who was convicted in a incident of alleged violent protest plans that involved a confidential informant It s not totally out of the realm of possibilities that this idea was planted or floated by whoever this confidential human source might be Turtle Island Scenario Despite comments from Attorney General Pam Bondi Patel and others characterizing the Turtle Island Liberation Front as a coherent group and a Signal chat called Black Lotus as an ultra-radical subset there s little evidence that any group by that name exists beyond a small digital footprint and a handful of attempts at organizing area events including a self-defense workshop and a punk rock benefit show planned for February The Instagram page for the Turtle Island Liberation Front cited in the complaint had just over followers as of Tuesday morning after it was widely publicized and its first post came in late July The YouTube channel bearing the group s name which had just subscribers as of Tuesday morning was registered on July and contains a single video posted on September Online the group styled itself as radical and righteous Its activists spoke in the language of solidarity with Palestinians and Indigenous people railing against U S Immigration and Customs Enforcement and American power On Instagram they posted slogans and absolutes Become a revolutionary America has constantly been the brutal evil monster that several of you don t want to face Resistance is the deepest form of love The informant did not however meet with the group on November for its slogans According to the affidavit the informant met up with Audrey Illeene Carroll who went by the nickname Asiginaak At the meeting Carroll handed over eight pages covered with handwriting in blue ink The document was titled Operation Midnight Sun and laid out a plan to detonate backpack bombs at five separate locations on New Year s Eve when fireworks would mask the sound of explosions The plan was unfinished Beneath the list of targets were blank lines marked add more if enough comrades Carroll s attorney did not forthwith respond to a request for comment Over the following weeks the plot advanced according to court filings A Signal group was created for in the participants words everything radical including the bomb plan itself On December the supposed bomb plot expanded to include an undercover FBI agent At that meeting Carroll distributed pages describing how to build the bombs She stated she already had PVC pipes cut to size and had ordered two five-pound bags of potassium nitrate from Amazon believing naively that a burner account she set up was keeping her anonymous Delivery was scheduled for December The FBI allowed the plan to progress with both an informant and an undercover agent actively participating The FBI had visibility into nearly every part of the supply chain chemicals ordered online and pistol primers purchased at a retail store Agents could have intervened at any stage They didn t Instead the bureau allowed the plan to continue with both an informant and an undercover agent actively participating in the conspiracy On December the group drove into the desert with an aim of testing the bombs They took two vehicles the informant in one the undercover agent in the other Riding with the undercover agent was Zachary Aaron Page who went by the nickname AK He suggested using cigarettes as a delayed fuse In the other car Carroll explained another member that the desert exercise was a dry run for the New Year s Eve attack What we re doing will be considered a terrorist act she explained according to the affidavit At the site they pitched tents and set up tables They laid out PVC pipes charcoal sulfur gasoline string cloth and protective gear As they began assembling the devices the FBI moved in Overhead an FBI surveillance plane recorded the scene as agents took into custody four alleged members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front including Carroll and Page along with Tina Lai and Dante Gaffield An attorney for Page declined to comment and lawyers for Gaffield and Lai did not at once respond Read our complete coverage Chilling Dissent Nonpartisan Incentive Structure Terrorism prosecutions built around confidential informants have long drawn criticism particularly over the threat of entrapment For more than a decade legal scholars have argued that while these cases often resemble classic governing body inducement they rarely meet the legal standard for entrapment Courts define predisposition so broadly that ideological sympathy or recorded rhetoric is treated as evidence of a preexisting willingness to commit violence a framework that effectively shields government-manufactured plots from meaningful judicial scrutiny That concern surfaced starkly in a previous sting operation involving the so-called Newburgh Four in which an aggressive and prolific FBI informant steered four poor Black men into a scheme to bomb synagogues and attack an Air Force base Years later a federal judge granted the men compassionate release describing the situation as an FBI-orchestrated conspiracy Because informants can be so instrumental in building cases their use can be leveraged by administration to focus guidance on investigations with more political overtones Related The Informant at the Heart of the Gretchen Whitmer Kidnapping Plot Was a Liability So Federal Agents Shut Him Up At times the right has criticized the political nature of selected cases Among them was the development in which the FBI encouraged a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov Gretchen Whitmer a sting that the FBI s Patel and Bongino harshly criticized back when they spent their days attached to the microphones of right-wing podcasts There is a nonpartisan incentive structure that has become overly reliant on these kinds of confidential human sources announced Crowder Crowder knows better than the majority In he and fellow activist David McKay were arrested and charged with plotting to use Molotov cocktails at the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul Minnesota Despite deciding not to follow through with the plan both ultimately pleaded guilty with Crowder sentenced to two years in prison and McKay to four Part of the playbook Crowder mentioned is for an informant to exploit their targets righteous anger The circumstance against Crowder and McKay development hinged on the work of an FBI informant Brandon Darby who had been a prominent activist in anarchist circles in Texas and Louisiana Crowder and McKay looked up to Darby viewing him as a mentor and someone they hoped to impress or convince of their radical bona fides In interviews over the years they ve alleged that Darby who now works at Breitbart was instrumental to their decision to cross the line from protest to discussing something more violent Part of the playbook Crowder mentioned is for an informant to exploit their targets righteous anger in the development of the Turtle Bay Liberation Front rights violations in Palestine and ICE actions in Los Angeles From there administration take advantage of the allege plotters political immaturity walking hand in hand with them as they cross the line from legal dissent into illegal conspiracy Related The FBI Paid a Violent Felon to Infiltrate Denver s Racial Justice Movement The informant gets paid the FBI gets a good headline that justifies their anti-terrorism budget and the defendants are left to face the consequences often without ever posing a real threat to society safety Crowder revealed On both sides you have a sort of momentum that develops Crowder announced This ICE repression is crazy and that feeds into a sort of hopelessness that drives a sort of nihilistic response that you see from people who have immature politics And then that heartfelt but immature and irresponsible response plays into the incentive structure of the FBI The post Longtime Paid FBI Informant Was Instrumental in Terror Situation Against Turtle Island Liberation Front appeared first on The Intercept