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Notes -
Courtlistener for the case is here, complaint and affidavit, though the pretrial detention motion may be helpful as well.
Obvious disclaimer: these are all allegations by the FBI. I'd hope they wouldn't outright lie, but I wouldn't put money on it, and I'd expect that they've excluded anything especially exculpatory from the complaint.
The FBI alleges that Ventura had made at least some motions common to ISIS fanboys who escalated to violent acts, and plan to travel to join ISIS fighters:
From the complaint affidavit:
And from the motion in support of pretrial detention:
If this is true, it's likely that the FBI are emphasizing the financial support simply because it's the easiest to get a conviction, but it's not hard to imagine a slightly nuttier kid doing something violent as a result. Of the presented evidence, this might just be within the scope of janky sixteen-year-old 'planning', but it's at least the sort of thing that's easy to talk up how it might be the Next Terror Attack.
Though even the affidavit doesn't push that direction universally. Hussain mentioned the kid "appeared ready to turn in his purported ISIS contact", but the actual behavior was a little dumber:
This seems less like someone wanting to flip cell leadership, and more someone worried they were getting caught.
I think the FBI's framework is still bullshit. This kid probably flunks the propensity prong for entrapment as a legal matter, because most people aren't going to spend a whole bunch of time trying to find ways to join ISIS and then toy with flying to Cairo. The FBI's handler (says that they) very carefully simply prompted the kid about things he could do, rather than telling him to do them; a genuine terrorist recruiter could probably have been more direct.
But at the same time, it's difficult to understand what's better served doing a severe prosecution, rather than calling the kid's parents early on and having them pull his internet access — even assuming he would have been as easily manipulated by an actual terrorist, that’d still keep him out of their reaches. Maybe that's what would have happened if he didn't try the ETip fuckery, but we don't really have insight for that.
The FBI has made very overt claims that ISIS-specific stochiastic terrorism justifies or requires special powers or legislation, and it's one of the few remaining places that Red and Blue Tribe normies continue to trust the FBI. I think the focus is more specific than the general Gotta Keep Numbers Up.
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