Brandon Darby

Last updated
Brandon Darby
Brandon Darby (49279861138) (cropped).jpg
Darby in 2019
Born
Brandon Michael Darby

(1976-11-02) November 2, 1976 (age 47)
Pasadena, Texas, U.S. [1]
Nationality American
OccupationBlogger at Breitbart Texas division
Known forSocial and political activism, FBI informant

Brandon Michael Darby (born November 2, 1976) is an American conservative blogger and activist. He first became known in the fall of 2005 for actions in New Orleans in efforts to help residents, where he was a co-founder of the Common Ground Collective organized there. It coordinated the efforts of hundreds of volunteers from across the country for years.

Contents

In late 2008, Darby acknowledged in an open letter that he had acted as an FBI informant in infiltrating protest groups before the 2008 Republican National Convention, held in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He testified in court against two men arrested on plans to commit domestic terrorism.

Darby became increasingly involved in conservative movements, including the Tea Party movement, despite not being registered to vote. He served as managing director of Breitbart Texas, a far-right news and opinion website.

Biography

Early life

Darby was born in 1976 and raised in Pasadena, Texas, which is part of Greater Houston. [1] [2] [3] His father was a refinery welder in Pasadena. [2] As a teenager, Darby would often run away from home. [4] [5] [6] He lived in group homes in Houston, Texas and the surrounding areas. [2] He completed a GED. [7] He later took classes to qualify for work as an emergency medical technician (EMT). [1] [8]

Early activism

Following the extensive damage in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Darby was among numerous emergency medical personnel who went there in the first weeks to help the residents. With Malik Rahim and Scott Crow (the latter from Austin, Texas), he became a co-founder of Common Ground Relief, [9] a non-profit relief organization that provided supplies and assistance to residents, including medical care, to residents of the city. He helped organize volunteers from across the country over the ensuing weeks and months, as CGR set up emergency clinics, distribution centers, and other aid. From January to April 2007, Darby served as Director of Operations for the organization. [10]

Malik Rahim, on Democracy Now! claimed to be "heartbroken" at the revelation that Darby was an FBI informant. He also expressed regret at all the women who left Common Ground Relief due to Darby's behavior during his time at the organization, including claims that he sexually assaulted female organizers [11]

2008 Republican Convention activities

Darby started working as an FBI informant in November 2007, to infiltrate groups planning protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. [12] He gave the FBI information which led to the seizure of 34 homemade riot shields brought from Texas. [13] Two activists from Texas, David McKay and Bradley Crowder, purchased materials for and constructed firebombs (Molotov cocktails) that they appear to have planned to use against state-owned vehicles. Evidence of the firebombs was seized in a raid by local police, which was supported by the FBI.

At McKay and Crowder's trial the question was raised whether Darby encouraged their escalation in violence. [14] Specific claims about this were made by others in attendance at the protest (e.g., Gabby Hicks stated that Darby was "... the one to suggest violence, when the rest of us clearly disagreed..." and that "[a]s an older seasoned activist, Darby had a lot of sway over Crowder and McKay, making them susceptible to his often militant rhetoric"), [15] suggesting that Darby acted as an agent provocateur . A former Darby girlfriend and various former colleagues allege that Darby informed for the FBI not due to patriotism or altruism, but for self-serving motives. [15]

In a December 2008 open letter to his former fellow community organizers and activists, Darby acknowledged having worked as an informant for the FBI. [16] [17]

Neither Crowder nor McKay agreed to testify against the other in court. [14] Rather than go to trial, Crowder accepted a plea agreement in 2009 on charges of possessing Molotov cocktails during the convention. [18] He served 24 months in prison and three years of supervised release. [18]

McKay took his case to trial, claiming entrapment by Darby. The trial ended with a hung jury, in a vote of 6-6. [14] Jury interviews indicated that much of their discussion had concerned assessing the veracity of defendant McKay and witness Darby (the former claiming entrapment, the latter denying). A significant portion of the jury had voted to acquit based on their acceptance of Darby's representation of events. [14] The prosecutor prepared to retry McKay's case.

Shortly before the retrial date in 2009, McKay accepted a 24-month plea deal sentence for the charges against him. He formally retracted his claim that Darby had entrapped him. [19] Critics have suggested that both McKay and Crowder remained firm in their initial account of events, and that additional documentary evidence supported them. McKay's decision to take the plea deal was based on his awareness that 90% of federal cases result in convictions, and he was at risk of being sentenced to decades in prison if found guilty. [14]

Following the plea arrangement, McKay pleaded guilty to possession of firearms and obstruction of justice. He was sentenced to 48 months in prison and three years of supervised release. [20] The length of sentence was attributed to a charge of obstruction of justice, based on McKay's having initially claimed that Darby had entrapped him. [21] [22] David McKay and Bradley Crowder were still serving jail sentences as of late 2011. [14]

In many left-wing activist communities, Darby has been criticized [15] and ostracized [2] [23] [24] for his role in McKay's conviction. [2] [24]

Career

Since 2008 Darby has promoted the Tea Party and speaks regularly across the United States, promoting conservative politics. [25] [26]

Related Research Articles

An agent provocateur is a person who commits, or who acts to entice another person to commit, an illegal or rash act or falsely implicates them in partaking in an illegal act, so as to ruin the reputation of, or entice legal action against, the target, or a group they belong to or are perceived to belong to. They may target any group, such as a peaceful protest or demonstration, a union, a political party or a company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1992 Republican National Convention</span> Political convention of the Republican Party

The 1992 Republican National Convention was held in the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, from August 17 to August 20, 1992. The convention nominated President George H. W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle for reelection. It was Bush's fourth consecutive appearance as a candidate on a major party ticket; only Bush and Franklin D. Roosevelt have been nominated on four consecutive presidential tickets. Richard Nixon and Roosevelt were nominated five times, but not consecutively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2008 Republican National Convention</span> U.S. political event held in Saint Paul, Minnesota

The 2008 Republican National Convention took place at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota, from September 1, through September 4, 2008. The first day of the Republican Party's convention fell on Labor Day, the last day of the popular Minnesota State Fair, though because of Hurricane Gustav, this day was mostly a call for action to help victims and formal, required activities; most of the politicking and partying did not start until Tuesday, the second scheduled day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Common Ground Collective</span>

The Common Ground Collective is a decentralized network of non-profit organizations offering support to the residents of New Orleans. It was formed in the fall of 2005 in the Algiers neighborhood of the city in the days after Hurricane Katrina resulted in widespread flooding, damage and deaths throughout the city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Malik Rahim</span> American housing activist and cofounder of the Common Ground Project

Malik Rahim is an American housing and prison activist based since the late 1990s in the New Orleans area of Louisiana, where he grew up. In 2005 Rahim gained national publicity as a community organizer in New Orleans in 2005 to combat the widespread destruction in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; there he co-founded the Common Ground Collective.

The NatWest Three, also known as the Enron Three, are the British businessmen Giles Darby, David Bermingham and Gary Mulgrew. In 2002, they were indicted in Houston, Texas, on seven counts of wire fraud against their former employer, Greenwich NatWest, as part of the Enron scandal.

Operation Backfire is a multi-agency criminal investigation, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), into destructive acts in the name of animal rights and environmental causes in the United States described as eco-terrorism by the FBI. The operation resulted in convictions and imprisonment of a number of people, many of whom were members of the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carlos Montes</span>

Carlos Montes is a nationally respected leader in the Chicano, immigrant rights, and anti-war movements. He was a co-founder of the Brown Berets, a Chicano working class youth organization in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s. The Brown Berets were inspired by and often compared to the Black Panther Party. Montes was one of the leaders of the Chicano Blowouts, a series of walkouts of East Los Angeles high schools to protest against racism and inequality in Los Angeles-area high schools. He is portrayed by Fidel Gomez in the 2006 HBO movie Walkout.

Eric McDavid is an American green anarchist who was convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage corporate and government property and sentenced to 20 years in prison. While U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott has called McDavid the first person in the U.S. to be prosecuted on Earth Liberation Front (ELF)-related charges, the trial revealed that McDavid's group had not decided whether or not to claim the planned actions in the name of the ELF. On January 8, 2015, after he spent eight years and 360 days in prison, McDavid's conviction was overturned after the prosecution conceded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had withheld thousands of pages of potentially exculpatory evidence.

Linda Sue Evans is an American radical leftist, who was convicted in connection with violent and deadly militant activities committed as part of her goal to free African-Americans from white oppression. Evans was sentenced in 1987 to 40 years in prison for using false identification to buy firearms and for harboring a fugitive in the 1981 Brinks armored truck robbery, in which two police officers and a guard were killed, and Black Liberation Army members were wounded. In a second case, she was sentenced in 1990 to five years in prison for conspiracy and malicious destruction in connection with eight bombings including the 1983 United States Senate bombing. Her sentence was commuted in 2001 by President Bill Clinton because of its extraordinary length.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johnny Sutton</span> American lawyer

Johnny Sutton is an American attorney who served as United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas from 2001 until 2009, and chaired the Attorney General's Advisory Committee of United States Attorneys. Sutton is known for the prosecution of United States Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos. He is currently a partner with the law firm Ashcroft Sutton Reyes, LLC in Austin, Texas.

The 2007 Fort Dix attack plot involved a group of six radicalized individuals who were found guilty of conspiring to stage an attack against U.S. Military personnel stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terrorism in the United States</span> Systematic or threatened use of violence to create a general climate of fear

In the United States, a common definition of terrorism is the systematic or threatened use of violence in order to create a general climate of fear to intimidate a population or government and thereby effect political, religious, or ideological change. This article serves as a list and a compilation of acts of terrorism, attempts to commit acts of terrorism, and other such items which pertain to terrorist activities which are engaged in by non-state actors or spies who are acting in the interests of state actors or persons who are acting without the approval of foreign governments within the domestic borders of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2009 Bronx terrorism plot</span> Foiled terrorism plot

On May 20, 2009, US law enforcement arrested four men in connection with a fake plot concocted by a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant to shoot down military airplanes flying out of an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, New York, and blow up two synagogues in the Riverdale community of the Bronx using weapons supplied by the FBI. The group was led by Shahed Hussain, a Pakistani criminal who was working for the FBI to avoid deportation for having defrauded the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. Hussain has never been charged in the United States with any terrorism related offenses and was paid nearly US$100,000 by the FBI for his work on this plot.

Linda Anita Carty is a Kittitian-American former schoolteacher who is on death row in Texas. In February 2002, she was sentenced to death for the abduction and murder in 2001 of 20-year-old Joana Rodriguez in order to steal Rodriguez's newborn son. Carty claimed she was framed by her co-defendants who were drug dealers because she had previously been an informant.

David McKay is an activist and artist known for his attempted protest of the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis and subsequent imprisonment based in part on testimony of FBI informant Brandon Darby.

Ewing Werlein Jr. is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

<i>Better This World</i> 2011 American film

Better This World is a 2011 documentary film that was directed by Kelly Duane and Katie Galloway. It had its world premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival on April 23, 2011, where it won two Golden Gate Awards for Best Documentary Feature and Bay Area Documentary Feature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joshua Ryne Goldberg</span> American Internet troll

Joshua Ryne Goldberg is an American internet troll, convicted of attempting a bombing on the 14th anniversary of the September 11 attacks while posing as an Islamic terrorist affiliated with ISIS.

Reverend Willie Ray Lampley rose to national attention in the United States of America as a self-proclaimed prophet, the head of the Universal Church of God (Yahweh) based in Vernon, Oklahoma which was part of the Christian Identity movement. Lampley was also the leader of a small far right paramilitary group called the Oklahoma Constitutional Militia. In November 1995 he and his wife Cecilia, along with John Dare Baird and Larry Wayne Crow, were arrested under charges of conspiracy to manufacture and possess a destructive device. According to the FBI, their plan was to bomb abortion clinics, gay bars, federal buildings, the office of the Anti-Defamation League in Houston, Texas, and the office of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama. According to court documents, Lampley intended to use a destructive device consisting of 'homemade C-4' made of ammonium nitrate, nitromethane, aluminum powder and a detonation device. Lampley's plans were interrupted when FBI informant Richard Schrum alerted authorities that the homemade bomb was about to be tested at Elohim City. The FBI held that their foiling the plot "saved as many lives as what was lost in Oklahoma City".

References

  1. 1 2 3 "David McKay Trial Report: Days 1 and 2". Infoshop.org. January 29, 2009.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Harkinson, Josh (September–October 2011). "How a Radical Leftist Became the FBI's BFF". Mother Jones . Retrieved September 9, 2011.
  3. ↑ "Better This World". PBS. September 6, 2011. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
  4. ↑ "'Informant' takes us inside the life of Brandon Darby". Austin360.com. October 18, 2012.
  5. ↑ "From left-wing activist to conservative hero: New documentary spotlights Brandon Darby's strange trip". Fox News. September 11, 2013.
  6. ↑ "Brandon Darby "Informant"". Houston Chronicle . September 4, 2013. Archived from the original on October 16, 2014. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  7. ↑ Darby, Brandon. "I have a GED and most of my adulthood ..." Twitter. Twitter. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
  8. ↑ "Social activist, organizer ... and RNC informant". St. Paul Pioneer Press . January 2, 2009.
  9. ↑ "New Orleans: Update From Common Ground Relief". A-Infos Radio Project. September 3, 2009. Retrieved September 9, 2011.
  10. ↑ Buncombe, Andrew (March 9, 2007). "Desolation row: The betrayal of New Orleans". The Independent . Archived from the original on August 23, 2009. Retrieved September 9, 2011.
  11. ↑ "Why Misogynists Make Great Informants". 30 May 2010.
  12. ↑ Hanners, David (January 1, 2009). "Social activist, organizer ... and RNC informant". Pioneer Press, Twin Cities.com. Archived from the original on June 6, 2009.
  13. ↑ Federal Bureau of Investigation, Sept. 8, 2008. Affidavit by Special Agent Christopher Langert Archived 2011-07-26 at the Wayback Machine
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Better This World". POV . PBS . Retrieved September 9, 2011.
  15. 1 2 3 "Austin RNC Informant is Provocateur Not Hero". Houston Independent Media Center. January 6, 2009. Archived from the original on February 3, 2012. Retrieved September 9, 2011.
  16. ↑ "Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements". INCITE!. 2010-07-15. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
  17. ↑ Moynihan, Colin (January 4, 2009). "Activist Unmasks Himself as Federal Informant in G.O.P. Convention Case". The New York Times . Retrieved September 9, 2011.
  18. 1 2 Austin, Texas Man Sentenced for Possessing Molotov Cocktails During the Republican National Convention, Department of Justice Press Release, US Attorney’s Office, District of Minnesota, May 14, 2009
  19. ↑ Walsh, James (May 21, 2009). "Second Texan gets four years in RNC plot". Star Tribune . Archived from the original on March 5, 2011. Retrieved May 11, 2011. "I embellished — I guess actually lied — that Brandon Darby came up with the idea to make Molotov cocktails." — David Guy McKay
  20. ↑ Flener, Matt (January 8, 2009). "RNC suspect pleads guilty". KXAN News. Archived from the original on August 23, 2009. Retrieved January 17, 2009.
  21. ↑ Walsh, James (May 21, 2009). "Second Texan gets four years in RNC plot". Star Tribune. Archived from the original on March 5, 2011. Retrieved May 11, 2011.
  22. ↑ Texas Man Sentenced on Firearms Charges Connected to the Republican National Convention, Department of Justice Press Release, US Attorney’s Office, District of Minnesota, May 21, 2009.
  23. ↑ "An Open Letter to Brandon Darby". Death and Taxes. Retrieved September 11, 2013.
  24. 1 2 "What informs an informant?". Waging Nonviolence. 11 September 2013. Retrieved September 11, 2013.
  25. ↑ "Brandon Darby, Leftwing Anarchist To Conservative Activist". Houston Chronicle . May 17, 2012. Archived from the original on October 16, 2014. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  26. ↑ "Meet Brandon Darby, Grass-Roots Activist (And FBI Rat)". NPR. September 12, 2013.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.