[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
A 12-person jury in San Diego County has convicted two So Cal Antifa
...the armed wing of the Democratic Party...
members after hearing evidence over the course of a four week trial. The two men from Los Angeles were revealed to have conspired as part of So Cal Antifa to confront beach-goers at Pacific Beach more than three years ago. This legal case could provide a blueprint on how prosecutors can unmask and break up criminal Antifa cells.
Defendants Jeremy Jonathan White, 41, and Brian Cortez Lightfoot Jr., 27, both of Los Angeles, were accused of assaulting supporters of former President Donald Trump
...Oh, noze! Not him!...
and others on a beach boardwalk, but the jury deadlocked on the six assault charges against Lightfoot. This case was the first time Antifa suspects were charged with conspiracy in the US. Ten of their comrades were already convicted in plea deals, including Luis Francisco Mora, 32, who took a last-minute plea deal at the start of the trial.
The jury found White guilty of felony conspiracy to riot, the most serious charge, and acquitted him of felony assault of a man on a bicycle who was documenting the Antifa rioters with his cell phone. Lightfoot, accused of being one of the "ringleaders" of the riot, was found guilty of conspiracy to riot and five felony unlawful uses of teargas.
BACKGROUND
On Jan. 9, 2021, cars full of black-clad So Cal Antifa members traveled more than a hundred miles to Pacific Beach armed with weapons and protective gear to confront Trump supporters who had organized a rally. The "direct action" quickly devolved into a riot as the masked Antifa members bear-maced and assaulted their targets, including those just walking by on the boardwalk. A dog wearing a "service dog" vest and his walker were among those attacked. Prosecutors identified 18 victims including a woman and teenage schoolboys.
The verdict on Friday, May 3, brings the total to 12 for 12 charged So Cal Antifa members who were convicted of violent mostly peaceful felonies.
Eleven suspects, about half from Los Angeles County, were indicted in 2022 by a secret grand jury on dozens of felonies including conspiracy to riot, assault and other violent mostly peaceful crimes. Alexander Akridge-Jacobs, 33, Jesse Merel Cannon, 33, Joseph Austin Gaskins, 23, Christian Martinez, 25, Samuel Howard Ogden, 26, Bryan Rivera, 22, Faraz Martin Talab, 29, Erich Yach, 40, and Luis Francisco Mora, 32, have all pleaded guilty.
A 12th co-conspirator, Jonah Abraham Bigel, pleaded guilty in 2021 to assault with a deadly weapon after having used a baseball bat in the riot. He was given a suspended prison sentence, which is sometimes offered for cooperation in an investigation. Within six months, into the following year, his comrades were indicted by a secret grand jury. Most of the co-defendants who accepted plea deals still await sentencing; they are expected to be sentenced to prison. Two defendants, trans activist Erich "Nikki" Yach and Jesse Merel Cannon were already sentenced to around five years in prison each; their sentences were compounded by other violent mostly peaceful felony crimes committed in unrelated cases.
THE TRIAL
Since April 2, prosecutors have presented evidence against defendants White and Lightfoot; this included hours of riot video, recovered encrypted Signal messages, private texts, aerial video from a police helicopter, photographs, and testimony from victims and law enforcement witnesses.
"I hadn't seen a group that coordinated," San Diego Police detective Emily Clark testified in the first week of trial.
Honorable Judge Daniel B. Goldstein heard the trial. At times, the judge admonished defense attorneys for repeatedly trying to bring politics into the case, especially in trying to explore the political beliefs of the alleged assault victims. But the jury deadlocked, they could not come to a unanimous decision on the assault charges, so it was declared "mis-trial" on those counts.
Lead prosecutor Makenzie Harvey showed jurors the armored black costume and mask worn by White at the riot, even though he claimed to be a volunteer "medic." White was armed with bear mace, a knife and a taser. White was known by several monikers online where he called himself "the Antifa Soldier," and "ACABman"; his co-defendant Lightfoot used "Antifa commander" as one of his aliases.
White and Lightfoot were represented pro-bono by Bay-area leftist activist attorneys Curtis Briggs and John Hamas
 ...the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
aki, respectively. Throughout the trial, defense attorneys suggested to jurors that assault victims provoked violence by appearing to be "right-wing turbans" to their attackers, because of the way the victims were dressed, e.g., in khaki pants or by wearing American flag apparel, and therefore their clients' actions were lawful self-defense.
White said he has been a leftist activist for nearly a decade, going back to Bernie Sanders
...The only first openly Socialist member of the U.S. Senate. Sanders was Representative-for-Life from Vermont until moving to the Senate for the rest of his life in 2006, assuming the seat vacated by Jim Jeffords. He ran for the 2016 nomination for president, to be cheated out of it by Hillary Clinton, then went back to being an Independent socialist, waiting for 2020 to roll around...
' presidential primary campaign in 2015. He said he then became involved with Black Lives Matter in Los Angeles, and he participated in protests "probably" twice a week from 2019.
Under questioning by prosecutor Harvey, White said he began his involvement with "Antifa" in Los Angeles in late September 2020, when many cities in the country were experiencing deadly and violent mostly peaceful riots after Saint George Floyd
...The patron saint of Minneapolis...
's death. However,
Switzerland makes more than cheese...
he added: "There is no joining [Antifa], it is just a mindset of your personal relationship to fascism
 ...a political system developed in Italy, symbolized by the Roman fasces -- thin reeds, each flimsy in itself but unbreakable when bound into a bundle. Its distinguishing philosophical feature is the Corporate State. The word is nowadays thrown around by all sorts of people who have no idea what they're talking about...
." White said that opponents of Antifa are "fascist
...anybody you disagree with, damn them...
s." On former President Trump, he said that "support for Trump is textbook fascism."
WHAT IS ANTIFA?
Defense often argued throughout the trial that Antifa is not organized. However,
Switzerland makes more than cheese...
Antifa organizes around an ideology of anarchist communism and it can manifest as radicalized individuals taking direct action or groups of people who form a cell, sometimes with formalized membership, such as Rose City Antifa in Portland, Ore. So Cal Antifa is the regional cluster of multiple Antifa groups from Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego.
"I was going down there to attend a First Amendment protest in support of BLM," White said, regarding his role in the riot in January 2021. "BLM and Antifa share a lot of common ideologies and movement spaces," he explained. He said he was driven from Los Angeles with comrade Lightfoot by "Chip Nooo," the alias of Portland Antifa member Robert Sneed. White admitted he handed out yellow walkie-talkies to both Sneed and Lightfoot, and White kept one, so they could all communicate and coordinate during the action at the beach.
White claimed he didn't know Lightfoot's real name and had seen him "possibly four or five" times at previous direct actions. Antifa members are known to one another by aliases, a tactic to prevent them from learning the true identities of members.
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