A New Jersey blogger crossed the line protecting free speech by writing that three federal judges in Chicago “must die” for a decision supporting gun control, a prosecutor said Friday in Brooklyn federal court, as the defense countered in closing arguments that giving a passionate opinion is not a crime.
“There is no right to threaten violence against people,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney William Ridgway. The judges, he added, “received that threat just by virtue of doing their jobs.”
Hal Turner, 47, of North Bergen, N.J., was charged earlier this year with threatening to assault or kill a federal judge. Defense attorney Nishay Sanan sought to portray him as a “shock jock” and fierce gun control opponent whose tirades were protected by the First Amendment.
“Giving your opinion is not a crime,” he said in his closing argument. “To do it passionately is not a crime.”
The lawyer also cited evidence that his client once was a paid FBI informant in investigations of neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups.
“What does he get from his country? Betrayal,” he said.
The arguments came after only one day of testimony U.S. DistrictCourt for the Eastern District of New York, located adjacent to Cadman Plaza in Downtown Brooklyn, where the trial was moved based on a change-of-venue request. Prosecutors called three federal agents to describe Turner’s fiery web site entries; his attorneys opted not to call any witnesses.
The jury began deliberating Friday afternoon.
Turner’s troubles began in June after the three judges with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook and William Bauer — upheld a district court ruling dismissing lawsuits challenging handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park. The same day, Turner blasted the decision with a lengthy Internet posting. In one passage, he quoted Thomas Jefferson as saying, “The tree of liberty must be replenished from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots,” court papers said.
Authorities say he then went too far by writing: “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges must die. Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty.”
Turner later posted the judges’ photographs, telephone numbers and work addresses, along with maps of a federal building that pointed out truck bomb barriers, they say. He also referenced the 2005 slaying of the mother and husband of another federal judge in Chicago, they say.
“Apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit didn’t get the hint after those killings,” authorities say he wrote. “It appears another lesson is needed.”
In a separate case, Turner, who prosecutors have portrayed as a radical white-supremacist, was charged with “inciting injury to persons” for urging blog readers to “take up arms” against Connecticut lawmakers who proposed legislation to give Roman Catholic lay members more control over parish finances. If convicted of threatening the Illinois judges, Turner would face up to 10 years in prison.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Showing posts with label Hal Turner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hal Turner. Show all posts
December 05, 2009
January 13, 2008
Neo-nazi threatmaker Hal Turner accused of working for FBI
New Jersey radio host Hal Turner is well known as one of the most vicious neo-Nazis in America, a man who routinely suggests killing his enemies.
Railing against President Bush, he told his audience last June that “a well-placed bullet can solve a lot of problems.” He has written that “we need to start SHOOTING AND KILLING Mexicans as they cross the border” and argued that killing certain federal judges “may be illegal, but it wouldn’t be wrong.” In 2006, after he published an attack on New Jersey Supreme Court justices that also included several of their home addresses, state police massively beefed up security for the members of the court, checking on one justice’s house more than 200 times.
Hal Turner is a serious extremist. He may also be on the FBI payroll.
On Jan. 1, unidentified hackers electronically confronted Turner in the forum of his website for “The Hal Turner Show.” After a heated exchange, they told Turner that they had successfully hacked into his server and found correspondence with an FBI agent who is apparently Turner’s handler. Then they posted an alleged July 7 E-mail to the agent in which Turner hands over a message from someone who sent in a death threat against Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.). “Once again,” Turner writes to his handler, “my fierce rhetoric has served to flush out a possible crazy.” In what is allegedly a portion of another E-mail, Turner discusses the money he is paid.
On Thursday, as the E-mail exchange was heatedly discussed on a major neo-Nazi website, Turner suddenly announced he was quitting political work. “I hereby separate from the ‘pro-White’ movement,” he said, adding that he was ending his radio show immediately. “I will no longer involve myself in any aspect of it.”
The FBI declined comment. “Longstanding FBI policy prohibits disclosing who may or may not provide information,” Agent Richard Kolko of the agency’s press unit said. Reached in New Jersey, Turner also declined all comment.
The apparent revelation set off a torrent of criticism from experts in criminology and the use of informants. “This is clearly over the line,” said James Nolan, an associate sociology professor at West Virginia University who is an expert in police procedure and a former unit chief in the FBI’s Crime Analysis, Research and Development Unit. “Informants may be involved in drugs, and you overlook that because of the greater good. However, these are viable threats — they could be carried out — that the FBI clearly knows about. I want to see the FBI stop it.”
Informants, of course, are commonly used by law enforcement agencies that have no other way of proving suspected criminal activity. “These are frightening groups whose members deserve to be investigated and infiltrated,” said Jack Levin, a criminology professor and expert on the radical right at Northeastern University. “My concern is that Turner’s methods actually are more dangerous and destructive than the evil they are seeking to cure. His threatening messages may actually inspire neo-Nazis to up the ante, to engage in even more destructive behavior.”
Turner, 45, has developed a reputation as one of the hardest-line racists on the radical right since starting up his radio show seven years ago. He has routinely ranted about such things as a “Portable Nigger Lyncher” machine and slimed those he hates as “savage Negro beasts,” “bull-dyke lesbians,” “faggots” and worse.
But it is his threats that are legendary.
In 2006, Turner told his audience to “clean your guns, have plenty of ammunition … [and] then do what has to be done” to undocumented workers. Around the same time, he suggested that half the U.S. Congress “may have to be assassinated.” A year earlier, he suggested “drawing up lists of yeshivas,” or Jewish religious schools. He once started a website called www.killtheenemy.com for the purpose of posting photos and names of those who marched in favor of immigrant rights. Hearing that anti-racist activist Floyd Cochran was visiting Newark, N.J., last June, Turner said he had “arranged for a group of guys to physically intercept” Cochran and added that Cochran would likely “get such a beating that his next stop is going to be University Hospital.” In a July letter, Turner wrote to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which publishes the Intelligence Report: “If you do not change your stance soon, you will face a wrath of fury that you will never be able to defend yourself against. We have the ability to reach out and touch someone.”
Last July, Turner posted photographs of a pro-immigrant activist being taken away by an ambulance outside Turner’s North Bergen home. “Click the images below to see how I kicked the shit out of one such douchebag,” he wrote.
Reaction on the radical right to the apparent revelation was mixed, as activists tried to figure out if Turner really was an informant. But to many, there was little question it was Turner, based on the style of writing in the E-mails. “It does sound like Hal,” wrote “Varg” on the Vanguard News Network, a neo-Nazi website. “I agree,” responded “Yankee Jim.” “The Email definitely sounds like Hal.”
Turner’s alleged E-mail to his FBI handler is also addressed to a detective sergeant with the New Jersey State Police who trained with the FBI Police Executive Fellowship Program in 2004. Interestingly, as long ago as May 2006, Turner wrote of a visit paid to him by the two men, saying they had come to his house to warn him that “Washington has instructed us to close you down.” In that same posting on his website, Turner described himself as the type to inspire “a whole slew of potential Timothy McVeighs. I don’t make bombs,” he added, “I make bombers.”
“It’s become so routine,” Turner said of FBI visits in a 2005 interview with The (Hackensack, N.J.) Record, “they are like my private FBI agents.”
Hatewatch
Railing against President Bush, he told his audience last June that “a well-placed bullet can solve a lot of problems.” He has written that “we need to start SHOOTING AND KILLING Mexicans as they cross the border” and argued that killing certain federal judges “may be illegal, but it wouldn’t be wrong.” In 2006, after he published an attack on New Jersey Supreme Court justices that also included several of their home addresses, state police massively beefed up security for the members of the court, checking on one justice’s house more than 200 times.
Hal Turner is a serious extremist. He may also be on the FBI payroll.
On Jan. 1, unidentified hackers electronically confronted Turner in the forum of his website for “The Hal Turner Show.” After a heated exchange, they told Turner that they had successfully hacked into his server and found correspondence with an FBI agent who is apparently Turner’s handler. Then they posted an alleged July 7 E-mail to the agent in which Turner hands over a message from someone who sent in a death threat against Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.). “Once again,” Turner writes to his handler, “my fierce rhetoric has served to flush out a possible crazy.” In what is allegedly a portion of another E-mail, Turner discusses the money he is paid.
On Thursday, as the E-mail exchange was heatedly discussed on a major neo-Nazi website, Turner suddenly announced he was quitting political work. “I hereby separate from the ‘pro-White’ movement,” he said, adding that he was ending his radio show immediately. “I will no longer involve myself in any aspect of it.”
The FBI declined comment. “Longstanding FBI policy prohibits disclosing who may or may not provide information,” Agent Richard Kolko of the agency’s press unit said. Reached in New Jersey, Turner also declined all comment.
The apparent revelation set off a torrent of criticism from experts in criminology and the use of informants. “This is clearly over the line,” said James Nolan, an associate sociology professor at West Virginia University who is an expert in police procedure and a former unit chief in the FBI’s Crime Analysis, Research and Development Unit. “Informants may be involved in drugs, and you overlook that because of the greater good. However, these are viable threats — they could be carried out — that the FBI clearly knows about. I want to see the FBI stop it.”
Informants, of course, are commonly used by law enforcement agencies that have no other way of proving suspected criminal activity. “These are frightening groups whose members deserve to be investigated and infiltrated,” said Jack Levin, a criminology professor and expert on the radical right at Northeastern University. “My concern is that Turner’s methods actually are more dangerous and destructive than the evil they are seeking to cure. His threatening messages may actually inspire neo-Nazis to up the ante, to engage in even more destructive behavior.”
Turner, 45, has developed a reputation as one of the hardest-line racists on the radical right since starting up his radio show seven years ago. He has routinely ranted about such things as a “Portable Nigger Lyncher” machine and slimed those he hates as “savage Negro beasts,” “bull-dyke lesbians,” “faggots” and worse.
But it is his threats that are legendary.
In 2006, Turner told his audience to “clean your guns, have plenty of ammunition … [and] then do what has to be done” to undocumented workers. Around the same time, he suggested that half the U.S. Congress “may have to be assassinated.” A year earlier, he suggested “drawing up lists of yeshivas,” or Jewish religious schools. He once started a website called www.killtheenemy.com for the purpose of posting photos and names of those who marched in favor of immigrant rights. Hearing that anti-racist activist Floyd Cochran was visiting Newark, N.J., last June, Turner said he had “arranged for a group of guys to physically intercept” Cochran and added that Cochran would likely “get such a beating that his next stop is going to be University Hospital.” In a July letter, Turner wrote to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which publishes the Intelligence Report: “If you do not change your stance soon, you will face a wrath of fury that you will never be able to defend yourself against. We have the ability to reach out and touch someone.”
Last July, Turner posted photographs of a pro-immigrant activist being taken away by an ambulance outside Turner’s North Bergen home. “Click the images below to see how I kicked the shit out of one such douchebag,” he wrote.
Reaction on the radical right to the apparent revelation was mixed, as activists tried to figure out if Turner really was an informant. But to many, there was little question it was Turner, based on the style of writing in the E-mails. “It does sound like Hal,” wrote “Varg” on the Vanguard News Network, a neo-Nazi website. “I agree,” responded “Yankee Jim.” “The Email definitely sounds like Hal.”
Turner’s alleged E-mail to his FBI handler is also addressed to a detective sergeant with the New Jersey State Police who trained with the FBI Police Executive Fellowship Program in 2004. Interestingly, as long ago as May 2006, Turner wrote of a visit paid to him by the two men, saying they had come to his house to warn him that “Washington has instructed us to close you down.” In that same posting on his website, Turner described himself as the type to inspire “a whole slew of potential Timothy McVeighs. I don’t make bombs,” he added, “I make bombers.”
“It’s become so routine,” Turner said of FBI visits in a 2005 interview with The (Hackensack, N.J.) Record, “they are like my private FBI agents.”
Hatewatch
Labels:
FBI,
Hal Turner,
neo-Nazi,
New Jersey,
radio host
August 29, 2007
Hatewatch for the week of August 29th 2007
Aryan Nations Bank Robber Threatens Judge At Sentencing
A white nationalist who said he robbed banks to fund a "racially pure homeland" told the judge who sentenced him to 20 years that racial holy warriors will "visit revenge to your doorstep."
Klansman Sentenced To Life For 1964 Murder
James Ford Seale, 72, was sentenced to three life terms in prison for his role in kidnapping and killing two black teenagers in 1964...
White Supremacist Gang Member Faces Execution
Prosecutors continue to seek the death penalty for Public Enemy Number One enforcer Michael Allen Lamb, 32, who was convicted of murdering one of the gang's founders for breaking its code of silence...
Police Bill For Racist Rally: $150,000
The cost of providing security at a rally staged by white supremacist radio host Hal Turner outside a Department of Public Safety building included $118,000 to pay 398 police officers...
Idaho Men Charged With Felony Hate Crimes
Steven Leas, 24, and Cody Lindell, 18, allegedly chased, shoved and hurled racial epithets at a black man outside a convenience store...
A white nationalist who said he robbed banks to fund a "racially pure homeland" told the judge who sentenced him to 20 years that racial holy warriors will "visit revenge to your doorstep."
Klansman Sentenced To Life For 1964 Murder
James Ford Seale, 72, was sentenced to three life terms in prison for his role in kidnapping and killing two black teenagers in 1964...
White Supremacist Gang Member Faces Execution
Prosecutors continue to seek the death penalty for Public Enemy Number One enforcer Michael Allen Lamb, 32, who was convicted of murdering one of the gang's founders for breaking its code of silence...
Police Bill For Racist Rally: $150,000
The cost of providing security at a rally staged by white supremacist radio host Hal Turner outside a Department of Public Safety building included $118,000 to pay 398 police officers...
Idaho Men Charged With Felony Hate Crimes
Steven Leas, 24, and Cody Lindell, 18, allegedly chased, shoved and hurled racial epithets at a black man outside a convenience store...
August 09, 2007
Hatewatch for the week of August 8th 2007
Neo-Nazi Group Posts Wrong Man's Home Information
The American National Socialist Workers Party got the wrong Brian Schwartz when they posted the home address of a man with the same name as the Mayor of Toledo's spokesman...
Duke Crony Elected to Louisiana GOP Governing Committee
Right-wing radio host and longtime David Duke supporter Keith Rush was elected to the governing body of Louisiana's Republican party...
Neo-Nazis Rally in Kalamazoo
More than 400 law enforcement officers kept the peace while passions ran high at a neo-Nazi rally organized by white supremacist Hal Turner...
Ex-Cop Linked to Aryan Nations After Bomb Blast
Investigators found a large amount of Aryan Nations "literature and items" in the home of a former Pittsburgh police officer who was injured when a homemade bomb exploded...
SPLC
The American National Socialist Workers Party got the wrong Brian Schwartz when they posted the home address of a man with the same name as the Mayor of Toledo's spokesman...
Duke Crony Elected to Louisiana GOP Governing Committee
Right-wing radio host and longtime David Duke supporter Keith Rush was elected to the governing body of Louisiana's Republican party...
Neo-Nazis Rally in Kalamazoo
More than 400 law enforcement officers kept the peace while passions ran high at a neo-Nazi rally organized by white supremacist Hal Turner...
Ex-Cop Linked to Aryan Nations After Bomb Blast
Investigators found a large amount of Aryan Nations "literature and items" in the home of a former Pittsburgh police officer who was injured when a homemade bomb exploded...
SPLC
Labels:
Aryan Nations,
David Duke,
Hal Turner,
KKK,
neo-Nazi,
SPLC
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