patrick.net

Speaking of widening nets of corruption, late last week, the outstanding Andy Ngo ran a story in the Post Millennial headlined, “First Antifa terrorism convictions in US history.” Progress!

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-first-antifa-terrorism-convictions-in-us-history

"FORT WORTH, Texas — Five far-left extremists have admitted to being Antifa members and terrorists in federal plea deals stemming from a coordinated ambush shooting on a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on the Fourth of July.

It is the first known case in U.S. history in which Antifa members have officially admitted to being part of an organized Antifa cell.

On Nov. 19, Seth Sikes, Joy Abigail Gibson, Lynette Read Sharp, Nathan Baumann and John Phillip Thomas each admitted to one count of providing material support to terrorists for their role in the shooting attack on the Prairieland facility in Alvarado, Texas, that resulted in a police officer being shot in the neck and other officers being fired upon."

... If the ambush looked like a paramilitary operation, the arrests resembled the finale of a dramatic police procedural. Within days, federal agents fanned out across North Texas with sealed warrants, grabbing suspects in door-kicking predawn raids that left neighbors blinking through screen doors and asking why the FBI was in their driveway.

Agents recovered masks, clothing, shell casings, improvised explosive components, encrypted messaging devices, and — in one case — an entire drawer full of “revolutionary literature” more like a freshman-year anarchist starter kit.

The biggest break in the case came when one suspect’s burner phone turned up with an unexpected automatic iCloud backup. Whoops. Investigators pulled GPS pings placing him at the detention center minutes before the shooting, along with group chats coordinating the approach, the firing positions, and the getaway route. From there, the dominos toppled quickly. Each arrest added another link in the network, another target in the growing conspiracy. ...

By the end, prosecutors didn’t only have a case. They had a conspiracy narrative: a self-declared Antifa cell, armed, masked, coordinated, launching an in-and-out, ninety-second ambush on a federal facility, leaving an officer shot in the neck and a detention center shaken.

Last week, the six cell members marched in single file into plea agreements confirming under oath that their attack was intentional, organized, and meant to do serious harm.

As Andy Ngo pointed out, this is not just a minor legal victory. It’s a historic pivot point.

These otherwise unmemorable ne’er-do-wells became the first Antifa terrorism convictions in U.S. history. It didn’t happen because a prosecutor got creative. The defendants copped to it. Their own plea deals cemented the terrorism narrative into the permanent judicial record.