Emanuel Lutchman (Part 11)

Fragments of a future narrative

It was 2011. Years before Emanuel’s arrest. FBI Director Robert Mueller, not yet metamorphosed into a liberal savior, was defending the Bureau in Orange, CA.

The charge: that cases involving agents provocateurs entail entrapment. That these agents goad innocents to commit criminal acts. That these agents steer resourceless people to prison.

“There has not been yet—to my knowledge—a defendant who has been acquitted in asserting the entrapment defense,” Mueller stated. The Coalition for Civil Freedoms (CCF) argues that’s by design.

The group’s 2014 report, Inventing Terrorists, cites two scenarios where entrapment does not apply: 1) the target is deemed “predisposed,” meaning they would have committed a crime even with no government involvement; 2) the target “readily responded” to a plot an agent provocateur introduced.

“So far,” CCF concludes, “this ‘ready response’ theory has been upheld by the courts, and so in all practical respects the entrapment defense no longer exists.” 

That defense did nothing for Emanuel. “While not a perfect case of entrapment,” his attorney, Steven Slawinski, wrote in a sentencing memo, “Lutchman would have never been able to take any of the substantial actions in the conspiracy”—buying supplies; plotting; carrying out the attack—“without the assistance of Individual C who was working with the FBI.”

Judge Frank P. Geraci, Jr., disagreed: Emanuel “had some sophistication in his planning”; his scheme “was the real deal.” He deserved the recommended 20 years.

CCF suggests federal sting cases like these: 1) terrify the public; 2) encage “vulnerable young men.”

Check; check.