SAN DIEGO (CN) — Prosecutors in their closing arguments in San Diego Superior Court Monday tried to convince jurors that two left-wingers drove from Los Angeles to San Diego in January 2021 to violently disrupt right-wing protesters as part of a wide-ranging anti-fascist conspiracy to riot.
“Their goal was twofold: Do not let them march. Do not let them assemble. Do not let them have their First Amendment right to free speech, and do it with any means necessary, and in this case we know that, means with violence,” Deputy District Attorney Makenzie Harvey said regarding Jeremy White, Brian Lightfoot, and other defendants’ motives on Jan. 9, 2021.
Three days after supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building to try to keep him in power, supporters of the outgoing president organized a “patriots march” rally in the coastal Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego three days later. Local leftist groups organized a counter-protest.
The competing right- and left-wing protests devolved into multiple rolling street brawls, often involving pepper spray or orange colored bear mace throughout the day.
Prosecutors claim that White and Lightfoot are self-described anti-fascists and members of “antifa” who traveled to Pacific Beach from Los Angeles, dressed in black protective gear, armed with mace, to join a conspiracy to stop Trump supporters and other right-wing groups from rallying, and to attack them.
That conspiracy spread over social media posts and messages between the codefendants in the case before Jan. 9, and in person the day of, when the defendants showed up in San Diego dressed in black clothing to signify they were either a part of “antifa” or sympathetic to it, prosecutors claim.
Antifa is widely considered a decentralized movement of various left-wing ideologies. During his testimony last week, White said that antifa is “just a mindset based on your opposition to fascism,” not a group that one can claim membership in.
Lightfoot and White originally had nine other codefendants, but each pleaded guilty to different charges; some received time in prison, some are still awaiting sentencing.
Harvey told jurors not to think of a conspiracy as something like they have seen or heard about in movies, but as “an agreement between people to accomplish a goal.”
Lightfoot, Harvey said, triggered his express agreement into the conspiracy via his social media activity shown in court during the trial that discussed how he wanted to fight in San Diego — which he testified meant fighting neo-Nazis and other violent groups wishing to do harm to others. White then triggered his inferred agreement in the conspiracy by not only wearing all black to the protest, but searching for information on Faraday bags, which block electronic signals from both being sent and received to phones, and by using Signal, an encrypted text messaging service, the prosecutor added.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors played a series of sometimes shaky video footage from participants in the protest, onlookers, and undercover law enforcement, showing figures clad in black, sometimes carrying Black Lives Matter or antifa Aktion flags marching, confronting people wearing apparel featuring the American flag, Trump or macabre skulls associated with far-right groups.
Both Lightfoot and White have admitted that some of the footage of people discharging mace and attacking others was them, but they both said their actions were in self-defense to protect themselves and other left-wingers from being attacked by armed and dangerous right-wingers, similar to groups that rioted at the U.S. Capital building in D.C., and other right-wing protests that turned violent on the same day in downtown Los Angeles.
Harvey advised jurors that they can’t take into account what happened at other protests in other places, they have to decide what happened in Pacific Beach that day. They also can’t speculate why others were or were not prosecuted, seemingly a reference to White’s attorney Curtis Briggs' contention during opening arguments that San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan chose to prosecute only left-wing protesters, and not right-wingers.
Last year, Briggs filed a motion to disqualify Stephan from prosecuting the case because, he claimed, she ignored violence from members of the American Guard and other far-right extremists. San Diego Superior Court Judge Daniel Goldstein denied the motion.
Harvey argued that a person only has a right to self-defense if they are in imminent danger of being hurt, and no evidence shown in court indicated that any defendant was in imminent danger.
Instead, left-wing protesters fell into a “mob mentality,” that struck out at anyone perceived as their enemies, especially victims in small groups, in Pacific Beach, she said.
White, Harvey added, was not a medic trying to protect people and their First Amendment rights like he claimed to be, but an enforcer doling out violence, or signaling people to do violence for him.
Being interested in or associated with “antifa” isn’t a crime Harvey said, but it is the thing “that tied this group together.”
White and Lightfoot’s attorneys will give their closing arguments on Tuesday.
Along with a conspiracy charge, White faces an assault charge in the case. Lightfoot is facing multiple assault charges.
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