Defense lawyers in a Texas Antifa terrorism trial want to sway jurors with “experts” who study supposed right-wing extremism, downplay Antifa tactics or support “anti-fascist” causes.
Attorneys picked longtime activists and left-leaning thinkers to help fight federal charges against nine people over a July 2025 terrorist attack at an Alvarado immigration facility, court documents show. The proposed lineup includes a self-described “anarchist,” a “male supremacism” researcher and those who criticize the Trump administration’s labeling of the Antifa movement as a terrorist organization.
The trial, scheduled for Tuesday, revolves around a planned protest at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center where a band of activists arrived together, started vandalizing the building, shot fireworks, and tried to flee after one of them shot and injured a police officer, according to authorities. Seven pleaded guilty to federal crimes in aiding the Antifa cell’s activities, such as hiding the alleged shooter from law enforcement.
Some experts for the defense will argue that carrying firearms, wearing black “paramilitary” gear, staging a “noise demonstration” and other alleged protest tactics do not constitute criminal intent, according to a defense lawyer’s court filing. They will also emphasize that protesters launching fireworks is not “unusual” and that “the actions of the defendants do not bear the hallmarks of an ANTIFA attack.”
In its effort to find experts, the defense hosted a Zoom call with “Anti-Fascist Handbook” author Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers University, attorney Christopher Weinbel told the DCNF in an email. Weinbel did not end up using Bray in part because he fled the U.S. in 2025 after claiming to have received death threats from political enemies, Weinbel said. Bray did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“He was very smart and knowledgeable,” Weinbel said. “Honestly if he didn’t live in Spain we might have been more willing to call him as a witness.”
Weinbel “didn’t think we would need him” due to the abundance of Antifa experts they already found, he told the DCNF.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) expects to call crime lab scientists, federal agents, and counterterrorism analyst Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy for expert testimony, court filings show. Dozens of total witnesses are expected to participate in the trial.
Veteran Activists
One expert witness chosen to dispute the government’s claims is Shon MeckFessel, the author of a 2009 book that describes traveling the Balkans as a “North American Anarchist.” He also teaches English at Highline College in Washington State.
A book of his from 2016 also weighs the merits of violent and nonviolent protesting. “My goal in this book is not to advocate violence or to prescribe nonviolence; it is, in fact, to move beyond the politically obstructive dichotomy of such prescriptions,” Meckfessel’s introduction says.
“Shon Meckfessel has been active in disruptive social movements for nearly 25 years … After blocking highways to stop the first Persian Gulf War, he was never again inclined to petitionary protest,” his author profile on Barnes and Noble says.
Steven Gardiner, another proposed defense witness, also led activist efforts since the 1990s in Portland, Oregon, according to a profile from Political Research Associates (PRA), where he works as principal research advisor. The group argued in 2021 that conservatives’ concerns about left-wing violence were a “Great Antifa Scare” meant to protect so-called fascism.
MeckFessel did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment. Gardine could not be reached, and PRA did not respond to a request for comment outside of normal business hours.
‘What Antifa Is, And Is Not’
“I’m serving as expert witness in the first case where the US government has tried to label a group of protestors in which one went rogue and violent as Antifa,” Dr. Anne Speckhard, psychiatrist and counterterrorism expert, said in a Thursday LinkedIn post. “This is an important case given many of us are out protesting for No Kings, ICE out, etc. and the government is starting to label the exercise of first and second amendment rights as terrorist activity and fourth amendment rights are being violated by the government.”
Speckhard directs the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism and is a former psychiatry professor at Georgetown University, her LinkedIn profile shows.
“She will testify on what Antifa is, and is not, and she will rebut and critique the testimony of Mr. Shideler,” one lawyer’s notice to the court says.
Dr. Max Krochmal, director of “justice studies” at the University of New Orleans, will testify that groups linked to Antifa “are frequently decentralized networks rather than formal hierarchical organizations,” a defense lawyer’s motion says. Krochmal did not respond to a request for comment.
‘Right-Wing Studies’
The Texas defendants’ team also wants experts on alleged right-wing radicalism to take the stand, including self-described “old school anti-fascist” Devin Burghart, who is the president and executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR). Burghart’s group has specialized in “documenting the far-right” for over four decades, according to its website. The IREHR did not respond to a request for comment, and Burghart could not be reached directly.
Burghart described himself snidely as “Antifa” in X posts responding to conservatives in September and October. He also spread the claim that conservatives “invented” Antifa in another October post.
Defense team pick Dr. Meredith Pruden has said little publicly about movements like Antifa, instead focusing on supposed far-right ideas as a fellow at the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism (IRMS). Drawing from “feminist media studies and political communication,” her research explores “hate speech, supremacist and violent extremist communication,” “far-right media and politics” and “mis/disinformation and conspiracism circulated by and through these groups,” her IRMS profile says.
Additionally, the University of California, Berkeley, lists Pruden as a researcher for its “Journal of Right-Wing Studies,” which says its aim is to promote debate on conservative ideas.
The scholar did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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