San Diego police Detective Emily Clark made herself into an antifa expert following the left-vs.-right Pacific Beach clashes three days after the Capitol riots in Washington.
She is said to have taken courses on anti-fascist ideology and read over 100 articles and books on the loosely structured movement with no chain of command.
According to prosecutors of 11 antifa defendants in the pro-Trump “Patriot March” violence of Jan. 9, 2021, Clark “reviewed over 200,000 pages of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google returns, a couple dozen hours to 50 hours of video and well over 5-10 terabytes of data.”
On Tuesday, Clark’s work will be tested in the first jury trial in the case — involving Luis Francisco Mora, 32, of Los Angeles.
Eight of the 11 defendants have pleaded guilty in San Diego Superior Court, with seven awaiting sentencing in what experts call the first time a conspiracy charge has targeted an antifa group.
The remaining two facing trial before Judge Daniel Goldstein are Jeremy Jonathan White, 41, and Brian Cortez Lightfoot Jr., 27 — also of Los Angeles.
It might have been four, but on Jan. 12, Jesse Merel Cannon, 33, of San Diego pleaded guilty to felony charges in the 2021 case and one last December, including conspiring to riot and assault with a deadly weapon.
A week before his admissions, Cannon wrote me from South Bay Detention Center.
He called himself a political prisoner.
“They have had it out for me since 2017 when I first started my work at Chicano Park,” Cannon hand-printed on lined paper. “I made a lot of bad moves out there, put myself out there on the front lines. … made myself the low hanging fruit for the wild pigs to snatch.”
He hasn’t been available for comment since.
Judge Goldstein, whose 19th-floor downtown courtroom will handle several riot-related cases Tuesday, in November implored both sides to settle and avoid a politically charged trial.
“I may just give probation — that’s a distinct possibility,” he said. “I would seriously consider settling. … There’s substantial liability at stake for everyone.”
But John Hamasaki, who represents Lightfoot (with a trial set for March 11 along with White), said his client wasn’t offered a plea deal as others had.
“They didn’t give a clear reason,” said Hamasaki, a recent candidate for San Francisco district attorney. “I mean ultimately they want this case to go to trial. They want … the publicity around it — taking on antifa and all that.”
That echoes an argument by Curtis Briggs, the San Francisco attorney for defendant White who lost an effort to get District Attorney Summer Stephan and her entire office disqualified from the case.
Briggs presented evidence that far-right protesters at the Jan. 9 Pacific Beach rally engaged in violence. None were charged.
Hamasaki is also critical of the DA’s Office, calling the antifa cases “wobblers” that he would have charged as misdemeanors — with a year’s maximum incarceration.
He said he wouldn’t have presented such a case to a grand jury.
“There’s been a lot of these skirmishes between the right and the left … at various protests around California and around the country,” he said in a phone interview.
“I think this could have been handled as a standard criminal case without all of the politics involved — without all of the … publicity around it being antifa.”
Hamasaki says the antifa focus keeps the case from being a “neutral and fair prosecution.”
In fact, he agrees with the notion that the PB riot prosecution — relying on a vast social media dragnet — is a January 6 in reverse.
“I think that’s an accurate way to put it,” Hamasaki said.
He said Lightfoot, his client, is currently enrolled in the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, training to be a wildland firefighter.
Attorney Briggs, representing White, said he had been offered a plea, “but it involves potential incarceration for up to a year and he would have to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit.”
“Jeremy absolutely never conspired to riot and showed up to Pacific Beach at a unique time in America when democracy was in jeopardy,” Briggs said. “He even assisted Trump supporters who were pepper sprayed that day.”
At the November motion hearing, the judge cautioned both sides “about the environment and the times that we’ll be trying this case in. … It’s going to be in the heat of the political season.
“Watching how all these fools behaved is a good indicator of what we’re going to see with juries … and with tension outside the courtroom.”
Asked about Goldstein’s fears of political drama infecting the trial, Briggs said: “Yes, it is a politically divisive time and Stephan’s public narrative about Mr. White has prejudiced him greatly. We need jurors who can check their politics at the door and listen to the evidence. People struggle with that these days.”
Briggs isn’t worried about courtroom security at trial.
“The defendants are the safest people in the courtroom,” he said via email. “I am worried about Proud Boys and the American Guard trying to disrupt the proceedings and assault and harass parties and jurors. The more security the better.”
He also condemns the case as unfair.
“Police and Summer Stephan never wanted this trial to be fair and that is why they continue to protect violent right-wing extremists in this county,” Briggs said. “They falsely accused Mr. White and issued press releases that simply were not true based on the evidence.”
Briggs calls the PB riot case a legal and ideological war playing out in the courts.
“But attorneys for both sides must demonstrate elite professionalism as we consume substantial taxpayer resources while litigating,” he said.
Mora, represented by San Diego’s Dante Pride, is accused of tear-gassing several people.
His previous lawyer, Mark Spencer, filed a mitigation package that noted Mora, studying graphic arts in college, has no criminal record, “is well thought of in his community” and volunteers to “provide food and clothing for the homeless in Los Angeles.”
Spencer concluded: “This matter should be settled as a probation case with an opportunity in the future for Mr. Mora to earn misdemeanors for any charges to which he pleads.”
Sentencing hearings are set April 19 for Alexander Akridgejacobs, 33; Joseph Austin Gaskins, 23; Christian Martinez, 25; Samuel Howard Ogden, 26; Bryan Rivera, 22; and Faraz Martin Talab, 29.
Only Erich Louis “Nikki” Yach, a 40-year-old trans woman, has heard their punishment so far.
Yach, serving time at California Health Care Facility, Stockton, was admitted Nov. 29, 2022, and is eligible for parole this April.
And police Detective Clark?
In July 2022, the San Diego Police Officers Association named her the SDPD’s Peace Officer of the Year “because of her investigative leadership during the … 2021 protests and violent attacks in Pacific Beach.”
