FBI SENT HAL TURNER TO BRAZIL, AND ALL THEY GOT WAS…WELL, NOTHING!

So our pissed off levels are now in overdrive, and we are just glad we are not alone. It’s bad enough that the FBI allowed Hal Turner to make life hell for a whole bunch of people and towns over the past years, bad enough that they paid him to do it, a move that included paying for a trip to Brazil to ID a National Alliance benefactor (as seen in the picture; Hal is second from right), but when it results in no arrests, with the exception of some guy who ran Aryan Nations on drug charges, that’s just bad. Real bad. Remember that rally Turner and “Yankee Jim” Leshkevich organized in 2005 in Kingston, NY? Kingston wants the feds to foot the bill for that crap. You can bet they are going to get it. Kalamazoo, MI and the State of New Jersey might also have valid claims. We will let you know when they make the formal request. Here we are in our second day of the Turner trial and the drama is just revealing itself bigtime. We will be covering this for the length of the trial, and we are working with Lady Liberty’s Lamp to get you the updates as they happen.

One People’s Project

BROOKLYN, NY — On and off for six years, white supremacist Internet radio host Hal Turner was paid informant for the FBI, and when it was all over the only thing that came out of it was thousands of dollars spent, an all expenses paid trip to Brazil for Turner, lives and municipalities unfairly held hostage by his antics and only one arrest – that of a low level drug dealer that also happened the be the New Jersey State chapter head of Aryan Nations, according to FBI officials who testified at his trial on Tuesday.

This was the second day of Turner’s trial for inciting violence against three federal judges from Illinois on his website and radio program on June 2. While those judges may possibly testify later in the trial, prosecutors started off with the federal agents who were involved with not only Turner, but also of Matt Hale, the former head of the World Church of the Creator that is currently in prison for soliciting the murder of Federal Judge Joan Lefkow, who works in the same district as the judges whom Turner threatened.

According to the FBI agents that testified, Turner had been a paid federal informant since June 12, 2003, almost four months before he called a white power rally to counter the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, NJ. It was a lukewarm relationship as Turner had to be admonished numerous times for the threatening content of his website.

In 2005, Judge Lefkow’s husband and mother were murdered by a plaintiff in a medical malpractice case that Lefkow had dismissed. It was originally believed to be white supremacists, and Turner on his website boasted about and claimed indirect responsibility for the murders. He also called for violence against three other judges involved with the Matt Hale infringement case, posting information on them on his website and appearing on Geraldo Rivera’s Fox News program to make the announcement. When agents told him to remove the information from the site, Turner complied, but two weeks later he resigned as an informant, citing in a letter as a reason that the FBI interfered with the content of his site. A month later he begged to come back and the FBI took him on again on a probationary basis. He was again removed from the informant program in 2006, because he didn’t heed warnings about the content on his website, but came back the following year.

According to a supervising agent that testified, Turner was providing information on domestic terrorist groups and their leaders, particularly the National Alliance’s national and New Jersey leaders and members of Aryan Nations. In 2005 the FBI paid for him to go to Brazil because a person there was going to give the National Alliance a large sum of money. The agent however noted that none of the information he gave led to any arrests, save for the information he provided about James Mazzone, the head of the New Jersey chapter of Aryan Nations. Mazzone, who could be seen often in a Kevlar-lined leather coat, and had been hounded out of a October 1999 counter-demonstration against a Klan rally in New York City is currently in prison on drug charges.

The defense repeatedly objected to any references to other white supremacists like Matt Hale and Overthrow.com’s Bill White, himself awaiting trial on similar charges that he incited violence to be committed against a number of different people. It was he that inititaly posted Lefkow’s home address on his website with Turner making a link to that information on his own immediately after. The FBI immediately instructed Turner to remove Lefkow’s information from his website. The prosecution said Turner’s compliance in these requests imply that he knew that what he was doing was wrong, but the defense dismissed even discussing Bill White or Matt Hale as irrelevant to the case at hand.

In his opening remarks that went on for an hour, Prosecutor William Hogan reminded the multiracial jury that the Turner is not on trial for his views, but rather for his call to incite violence. Referencing Turner’s response to the Lefkow murders, Hogan ran down the statements that Turner made about Lefkow and the causes for her family’s death. “That is not political rhetoric,” he said. “That is not protected by the First Amendment, and we will prove that in this case.”
The opening remarks by Defense attorney Michael Orozco were significantly shorter, with him finishing in approximately ten minutes. He referred to Turner’s trial as “a modern day witch-hunt,” which drew and objection from the prosecution, and suggested that this was more about Turner’s free speech and the defense of it. “For the first time in well over 100 years, a member of the media is on trial for his opinion,” Orozco said, noting also that not only did the FBI approach Turner and direct him to spice up his rhetoric about the Lefkow murders, but that the FBI ended up cheating Turner out of money. Orozco called Turner’s situation nothing short of a “betrayal.”

That betrayal is not only felt by Turner however. Those that have felt wronged by Turner, namely the communities and municipalities that he targeted for his rallies are pointing the finger at the FBI for allowing him to do so. According to the Kingston (NY) Daily Freeman, Kingston Mayor James Sottile says he will ask the FBI to reimburse the city for expenses incurred during the November 2005 white supremacy rally Turner co-organized there with James “Yankee Jim” Leshkevich to protest an assault outside Kingston High School in which a white student was seriously injured by a black student. Turner and Leshkevich, who in February 2008 killed his wife and himself in their West Hurley, NY home, called for the black student to be charged with a hate crime. The rally cost the city $80,000, mostly for police overtime, and both the police chief and Kingston Alderwoman Ann Marie DiBella support Mayor Sottile’s efforts to get reimbursed. “Hal Turner and his thugs put the city at a standstill and cost the taxpayers an exorbitant amount of money,” DiBella told the Freeman. “If we can receive … monetary reparations from the federal government for that despicable display, then we should do everything we can to get it.”

In addition to the Liberty State Park rally and the Kingston rally, Turner also held a rally in Kalamazoo, MI, which cost that city $80,000 as well. Kalamazoo city officials have not responded to the latest revelations.

Meanwhile New Jersey’s governor-elect Chris Christie has been subpoenaed at his home Tuesday morning by Turner’s lawyers to testify. Christie was the US Attorney for New Jersey while Turner was an informant and according to a blog supporting Turner, Christie issued a “‘Blanket letter of decli
nation’ which officially declined to prosecute Hal for things he wrote on his blog and things he said on radio.” Christie said he forwarded the subpoena to the U.S. Justice Department and will follow its advice on how to proceed.

No one that Turner associated in the racist circles were apparent in the courtroom. The only ones there for him were his wife Phyllis and an unknown man who muttered “Asshole” at the mention of Richard Posner, one of the judges threatened. According to the New York Law Journal, a potential juror who caused a one-day delay when he failed to tell Presiding Judge Don Walter of Louisiana that he did not think he could be impartial was ordered by Judge Walter to sit in the audience throughout the trial. He was released after lunch.

In addition to these charges, which could net him a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, Turner also faces similar ones regarding him allegedly inciting injury to two politicians in Connecticut and a state ethics official.