03
Dec
Hal Turner: ‘Nothing but a shock jock’
Cross-posted from ShockJocks.org
Michael A. Orozco had it right — or rather, half-right. Orozco, one of the lawyers for Hal Turner, the Internet radio host accused of making death threats to three federal judges in Chicago, offered as a defense that his client is “nothing but a shock jock.” But Orozco also added, erroneously, that his client is “a journalist simply stating his opinion.”
Turner’s trial is already beginning to look like a media circus — not to mention an embarrassment to the government trying him. It was revealed recently, for example, that the hate-speaking Turner, whom prosecutors have referred to as a white supremacist and “domestic terrorist” who tried to incite his audience to murder three federal appeals judges, was also an F.B.I. informant spewing his racist rhetoric at the agency’s instruction.
Turner’s trial is expected to bring the three judges to the witness stand in the ongoing trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, where the case was moved after Turner’s lawyers successfully argued that he couldn’t obtain a fair hearing in Illinois. Turner is charged with trying to intimidate the judges, who had upheld a handgun ban. He had posted a message on his Web site saying they deserved to be killed — and conveniently provided their contact information and pictures, presumably in case someone wanted to act on his suggestion…
Turner has long been notorious for making anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and white supremacist remarks on his Internet radio show and companion Web site. But last June, when the judges’ opinion was released, he posted this message on his site: “The government — especially these three judges — are cunning, ruthless, untrustworthy, disloyal, unpatriotic, deceitful scum.”
Offering that opinion was certainly Turner’s right — but going on to say, “These judges deserve to be killed” may not be.
“That is not just political rhetoric,” said the prosecutor, assistant United States attorney William R. Hogan. “It is not O.K. — very definitely not O.K. — for him to call for their execution and their murder.”
That’s when Michael Orozco chimed in. Not only was Turner just a “shock jock” offering constitutionally-protected “opinion,” he was also speaking and acting in accordance with guidelines the F.B.I. had set out for him as a confidential informer, Orozco noted. In fact, he added, the F.B.I. had even requested that Turner turn up the heat and the volume of his remarks to impress — and perhaps infiltrate — certain shadowy groups the Bureau was looking into.
Turner’s “hand was guided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Orozco said. “He was providing a service. This is betrayal.”
Prosecutor Hogan acknowledged in his opening statement that Turner was an informer for the government, beginning in 2004 and culminating in 2007. Defense attorneys meanwhile have subpoenaed Governor-elect Christie, who had been United States attorney for New Jersey when Turner was working for the Feds, to ask Christie why his office hadn’t prosecuted Turner.
Stay tuned for more “shocking” revelations in the coming days and weeks…
The arguments given herein for Mr. Turner’s innocence advanced by a supposed citizen and thinker I find to be shockingly wrong. A “newsman”, male or female, young or old, of whatever political persuasion is supposed under laws to be a non-fiction purveyor. That means he/she must avoid using false or misleading headlines and/or non-objective secret agendas; and that he/she must also confine statements to attested facts and not myths, standards-based evaluations not attitudes pro or con and scientific definitions, not the spewing of opinions, beliefs or slanders. These things I suggest the defendant in the present case manifestly failed to do. Regulations define how men access rights after satisfying non-negligence requirements; laws punish only criminals. Thus, too suggest,
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:53 amadvise, countenance or in any other way incite anyone to murder judges is a crime punishable by law. If such a provable crime was perpetrated and was in fact suggested, solicited or advised by federal personnel of any agency to the accused, that also might be a revelationof the moral and ethical bankruptcy and culpability of George Bush and his Administrations’ leaders and appointees.
But it wouldn’t change the facts about Mr. Turner’s personal guilt or innocence. To such ideas, he could have said, “No”. If he didn’t, and did commit felonious acts, he is therefore neither a newsman nor a citizen innocent of wrongdoing. No more than the Bush Administration’s leaders are moral, ethical or guiltless if they had anything to do with such a crime’s perpetration. It’s perhaps about time that we the victims of public-corporate non-news, anti-news, anti-concepts and de facto brainwashing of 300 million victims by covert neocon attitudes and cultural anti-conceptual filters in media since 1972 and even before start to act to protect our lives, our constitution, our beleaguered few remaining rights and our increasingly constricted futures against shock jocks. And those who permit, abet, goad and pay for and argue against desperately-needed regulation of their illegal and destructive activities.
Why has no one mentioned that, among others, Turner called for the killing of former Rep. Cynthia McKinney? And, more to the point, why hasn’t he been prosecuted for that? It doesn’t even appear in the pleadings in the case, atleast not those that are publicly available at PACER.
My real question: Was the call to assassinate McKinney Turner’s idea, or the FBI’s?
December 10th, 2009 at 5:39 amThat’s a really good question, Don. Now that the case has resulted in a mistrial, maybe it can be answered…
December 10th, 2009 at 8:35 am