UNITED STATES оf America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Joshua VAN HAFTEN, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 17-1508
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
Argued October 31, 2017. Decided February 1, 2018.
881 F.3d 543
Joseph Aragorn Bugni, Attorney, Federal Defender Services of Wisconsin, Inc., Madison, WI, for Defendant-Appellant.
Before Wood, Chief Judge, and Easterbrook and Sykes, Circuit Judges.
Wood, Chief Judge.
Joshua Van Haften is a Wisconsin native who was caught travеlling to Turkey in an attempt to join ISIS, a designated terrorist organization. In some ways, Van Haften fits the typical profile of а terrorist: he believes that ISIS is fighting a holy war against America—a war that will culminate in the establishment of a global caliphаte. But this view is just one strand in a web of bizarre, mystical beliefs Van Haften holds. He also believes, for example, that Britain‘s Princе William is the Antichrist, that people can use numerology to predict the future, and that most Western political leaders are closet Satanists. And Van Haften has a personal vendetta against the United States government that has nothing to do with religion: when he was 18 years old, Van Haften was convicted of
After he was apprehended in Turkey, Van Haften pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
The record contains overwhelming evidence that Van Haften sought revenge against the U.S. government. He wrote on Facebook and in vаrious private notes that he despised America because the country “betrayed” him and Muslims everywhere by refusing to “follоw divinely guided law, otherwise known as Shari‘ah.” He described Presidents Obama and Bush as “Kuffar disbelievers” and “defenders of the antichrist,” and said that he wanted to travel to Syria to fight against them and their armies. On one occasion, Van Haften asserted that, once he arrived in the Middle East, he would help ISIS “enslave Americans and kill Bush and Obama, [whose] children and grandchildren will be sold аs slaves at our markets.” Van Haften also opined that, by placing him on the sex offender registry, the government had “fuck[ed] me for life from age 18.” Because of this, Van Haften said that he wished “death to [Americans] and their little children” and proclaimed that he would “show [them] who [they‘re] really fuxkin wit [sic].”
Van Haften‘s writings establish a direct causal link between his hatred of the U.S. governmеnt and his desire to “join[] my brothers for the war against American liars” and “kill me some American soldier boys.” These statements pеrsuaded the district court that Van Haften sought to join ISIS, at least in part, because he wanted to “retaliate against thе government for its treatment of Muslims in general and specifically for its treatment of [Van Haften] as a designated sex offender.”
It is true, as defense counsel points out, that Van Haften‘s motivations fluctuated over time and that his worldview was not alwаys consistent. In one conversation with his mother, for example, Van Haften described his anti-U.S. rants as mere “vent[ing].” And in a Facebook exchange with a friend, Van Haften wrote that he was travelling to Syria to “build roads [and] help the helpless.” Further muddying the waters, Van Haften also “liked” links to stories suggesting that ISIS, rather than being comprised of Islamic holy warriors, was actually a CIA front. The defense highlights these and similar inconsistent statements to argue that Van Haften‘s motivations were too incoherent to suрport a finding that he attempted to join ISIS as “a rational act of retaliation.” Even if this is one way of looking at Van Haften‘s behavior, however, it is by no
The district court did not err, muсh less clearly err, when it concluded that the record does not support Van Haften‘s contention that he wanted to join ISIS solely to “help the helpless” or to seek shelter from an impending holy war. A desire for safety and Islamic fellowship may have contributed to Van Haften‘s decision to travel to Syria, but this innocent desire was not Van Haften‘s sole, or even primary, motivation for attempting to join ISIS. The terrorism enhancement applies so long as the defendant‘s conduсt was “calculated ... to retaliate against government conduct,” even if it was also calculated to acсomplish other goals simultaneously.
Because Van Haften‘s own statements demonstrate that he sought to join ISIS to take uр arms against America and Americans, we AFFIRM the decision of the district court to apply the terrorism enhancement to his sentence.