It’s still a flimsy basis for the case. He didn’t attend the protest nor even knew about it. The motivation wasn’t proven, it’s all in the prosecution’s head for all we know.

"Involved" the shooting of a police officer in the loosest possible sense. If the guy's wife had any relation at all with the shooting, it would be explicit in the article.

I recommend reading the whole thing to find the relevant bits. The judge says he is sentencing based on thought crime.

> U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor said he intended to “send a message to anyone who shares a similar ideology.”

> The following can be attributed to Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern:

    “If prosecutors are correct that Sanchez moved zines because he feared they’d try to use them against his wife, that’s a commentary on prosecutors’ lawlessness, not Sanchez’s. Under the First Amendment, possessing literature cannot be criminal, so what legitimate evidence could he possibly have been concealing? Political zines like those Sanchez possessed are no different from the pro-Revolution pamphlets this country’s founders had in mind when they drafted the First Amendment’s press clause.

    “Sanchez’s case is the latest example of the Trump administration grasping at any legal straws it can to criminalize disfavored ideologies and writings, from conflating dissent with terrorism to deporting immigrants who report on protests or criticize wars the U.S. bankrolls. Americans should not make the mistake of believing Sanchez’s sentence only threatens immigrants, leftists, or so-called Antifa members — they’re just the low-hanging fruit, not the end game.”

I understand your inference but I don't think we know enough to conclude that with the information here, especially judging by other comments.

We don't know if he was truly involved in any kind of evidence tampering, if he was prosecuted for it, or something else.

> was involved in evidence tampering in a case that involved the shooting of a police officer

Did the zines shoot the police officer? Or was the police officer shot with the zines?

Evidence of what?

Link to "National Security Memorandum-7" for reference: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/coun...

Example quote:

>(h) The Attorney General shall issue specific guidance that ensures domestic terrorism priorities include politically motivated terrorist acts such as organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder. This guidance shall also include an identification of any behaviors, fact patterns, recurrent motivations, or other indicia common to organizations and entities that coordinate these acts in order to direct efforts to identify and prevent potential violent activity.

The prosecutor's description of the "ICE protest" is "setting off fireworks, vandalizing property, and shooting at police officers who responded. One officer was struck in the neck with a bullet and survived.".

https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/ice-detention-attack-defe...

> nor did he know about it

I'm not loving this turn of phrase. Seems very Weasel-worded. Did not know about it according to who? I think we need a better news source.

Very US approach.

This seems to be the PR piece around the indictment: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/antifa-cell-members-ind...

Assuming the quoted source can be trusted then we've got a conspiracy without knowledge of the thing being conspired about plus a blatantly unconstitutional line of argument regarding political views (either held or written take your pick). Last I checked creating a pamphlet about how awesome and amazing Bin Laden was qualified as protected speech.

It's federal, a democratic president can pardon them

What difference does it make? The point being that nobody should be sentenced for transporting pamphlets, regardless of what's in them. And the 30 year sentence? This is absurd.

It doesn't matter if it was a gardening monthly, the charge was basically that his girlfriend was arrested and asked him to move it, and, something something terrorism.

Wikipedia has an image of a few https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Prairieland_ICE_detention...

There are some pretty standard anarchist / anti-government like zines.

You can find them on the various zine aggregators like: https://guides.library.illinois.edu/zines/online

Feminist culture coming out of the 70s also incorporates many of the same themes. The first one at the zine link, "Moral Revolution - Creating new values, undermining oppression, and connecting across difference" by Kriti Sharma is quite good.

A zine about anarchy, apparently. But I can't find any details.

Yes, but it will cost you a 10 stretch.

Strange that it has just occurred to you that HN is being mined.

The top comment there is so illuminating. The National Lawyers Guild declaring that these defendants werent even allowed to mount a real defense!

This sounds like an incredible shame upon America, mostly. I hope many of these sentences are pardoned by a future president.

Here's an older article, talking about how the reason the authorities found this person was because one of the other defendants called him from jail to ask him to remove things: https://www.foxnews.com/us/man-busted-anti-government-anti-t...

I would expect that at that point it ought to stop mattering whether the evidence being hidden actually would have been useful evidence.

> And apparently the judge openly made a statement indicating unconstitutional bias on his part in court. So I guess the entire thing is a farce meant to intimidate the average joe.

Yeah, the judge is well aware that every court this case can be appealed to already agrees with him. The legal arguments and the facts of the case are causally disconnected from the outcome.

Those pamphlets are the Epstein files

The person being sentenced was not involved in any way based on this information.

You commented on this thread! You must be involved! Prison for you.

But is anyone you know going to be within the vicinity of a crime being committed? That'll be 30 years