HAL TURNER GUILTY!

Well this was a pleasant surprise, and continuing the trend started with David Irving last November, a bonehead feels the pain on Friday the 13th! We didn’t even cover Hal Turner’s third go around in court because we thought he would never get convicted and he would be out and about again. But today, things changed. Harold C. Turner, political activist, Libertarian and Republican party player, one time friend of Sean Hannity, FBI and violent-spewing white supremacist radio show host can now add convicted felon to his resume. Turns out that despite what hung two other juries up, the First Amendment doesn’t cover threats, so the ones he made against federal judges in Chicago are sending him away. This third jury only took two hours to come back with a verdict. The entire trial took three days. Turner is completely broken now. He has no respect among the lunatic fringe on the right anymore, particularly among the racist right. He has no job, no money, and now no freedom. This has been a rather interesting year for us, to be honest. It is as if everything and everyone we have been working on for the past ten years (longer in Turner’s case) is now coming to fruition. We helped shut down the American Renaissance conference, White supremacists Dick Barrett and Eugene TerreBlanche are dead. Bill White is in jail and may be there longer than he expected, Sean Hannity’s Freedom Concerts, while currently underway are being questioned because of our work, conservative propagandist James O’Keefe is finished, and so is anti-immigration activist Dan Smeriglio before he even starts. Now Turner. He has made threat after threat on his radio show towards everyone he disagreed with, including us. Now one of those threats is coming back to haunt him. He also still has to deal with the threats made against Connecticuit lawmakers as well. Those charges are still pending. We can stick a fork in Turner. Finally, at long last, he’s done!

NorthJersey.com

A federal jury in Brooklyn this afternoon convicted Hal Turner, the ultra-right-wing shock jock and one-time FBI confidential source, on a charge that he threatened the lives of three judges in an Internet blog post last summer.
North Bergen shock jock and one-time FBI informant Hal Turner has been found guilty and ordered held witout bail.

The jury deliberated for less than two hours in returning a conviction, and the judge overseeing the case ordered Turner held without bail as a danger to the community.

The verdict stood in stark contrast to the government’s previous attempts at convicting the North Bergen radio host, with his trials in December and in March ending in mistrials after jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict.

Turner, 48, of North Bergen, faced a single count of threatening to assault or murder three Chicago-based judges from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after writing on his blog in June 2009 that they “deserved to be killed” for upholding local gun-control ordinances. He also published their photos and courthouse addresses.

Turner went into his third trial unemployed, with a bankruptcy petition pending in Newark, and a federal public defender in his corner.

As it did in the second trial, the prosecution called the three judges to testify. The final witness, called by the prosecution to rebuff Turner’s testimony was Special Agent Steven Haug, Turner’s principal handler during his time as an informant, who had not previously testified.

Haug said Turner’s inflammatory web postings and trash talk made him a frequent “control” problem for the FBI, but his unique insider access to the white supremacist movement also made him a valuable asset.

Haug contradicted key elements of Turner’s testimony, denying he gave him legal advice in the difference between protected and unprotected speech, or telling him to “ratchet up his rhetoric” to help the FBI find the killers of a Chicago judge’s family in 2005.

But on cross-examination, Haug said the FBI did warn Turner that he could be prosecuted if anything he said or wrote prompted others to commit crimes.

Turner testified he was recruited by FBI counterterrorism agents in 2003 and paid thousands of dollars to provide intelligence on white-power extremists who gravitated to his show. He also that said similar remarks directed at another judge were sanctioned by his handlers, who coached him on the limits of lawful speech.

His testimony was largely rebuffed by Haug.