On May 26, 2022 the waiting ended. Travis received a call from the FBI agent on his case notifying him he was receiving a target letter for charges connected to the investigation. The agent said they could not answer any questions, had been reassigned/assigned to their next case, and would email over the letter. Before ending the call the FBI agent had casually worked into the conversation Travis may have questions for the prosecutor, for example about whether evidence was legally obtained. This casual comment may have a great deal of meaning down the road, but in the moment all we could focus on was the reality we faced about our future.
I was also very shocked to hear the lead agent had been reassigned to a new case. This was odd. Very odd. Generally speaking, doing so would leave vulnerabilities in the prosecution’s case and add some complexities to their side of the case. This was incredibly noteworthy to me, but my focus quickly shifted when we reviewed the letter.
We were shocked and astonished, traumatized all over again. The letter indicated Travis was targeted in the crimes violating 18 USC 871(a) & 18 USC 875(c) with a maximum penalty of five years in jail or $250,000 fine for each charge.
Five years in prison?!?
There were other surprising elements in the target letter:
- It stated Travis was “a target” rather than “the target” in the case. No other prosecutions or targets have been made or identified in this case to date to our knowledge.
- The letter was executed on 4/27/22 by digital signature of the prosecutor setting forth a response due date of 6/1/22. But the letter wasn’t shared or delivered until 5/26/22 giving Travis only three business days to obtain legal counsel and respond to the letter due to the Memorial Day weekend.
- The agent listed in the target letter as a point of contact was not the lead agent who had interviewed Travis, who I had spoken with, or had any involvement in the case until now.
- It only identifies threats made to three people yet you will see later in the plea agreement they added three other people who had “threats” made to them.
How is three business days’ notice legal? How is this due process? Due process is rights afforded to defendants, and in general refers to fair procedures.
We cancelled our Memorial weekend trip. We were desiring to move and had planned to spend the weekend on a leisure trip scoping out neighborhoods in the city we anticipated would soon be our new home. Those aspirations definitely needed to be placed on hold. All of our attention went to retaining an attorney ASAP! Instead I spent the majority of the weekend sitting in our backyard, crying, speaking to no one about what was going on, and beginning the documentation process compiling everything which allows you to read this story here today in detail.
Finding an attorney proved to be a challenge. The first call Travis made to a defense attorney at a very well-known law office in Lincoln suggested it was a scam and probed diligently in an attempt to discern this wasn’t a “real” federal investigation at all. That attorney and law firm most certainly was not going to represent him. As much as we would have preferred this to be a scam that wasn’t the case and we didn’t have time to sit around and convince a defense attorney it was.
I recommended a defense attorney in Omaha I had met during my days in probation and finally on Tuesday, May 31st Travis was able to speak with him. The time was ticking, the pressure was mounting, and options were few and far between. His response was due the very next day.
Not knowing any better Travis had reached out to the prosecutor to ask for more time, desiring the full five weeks to obtain counsel. The prosecutor wouldn’t correspond with him and reached out to the lead FBI agent directing the agent to see what Travis needed. The agent served as a liaison for Travis and the prosecutor, and the prosecutor via communications through the agent extended the deadline for the response to the letter by only two additional days.
Travis retained his attorney just before the original deadline. An attorney who had no trial experience with internet crimes and later we would discern had limited personal experience with social media platforms.
I was and still am befuddled with how being given three business days to retain an attorney and have them respond to the prosecutor is “fair procedures” or due process under the law. The three requirements of due process require, at minimum, notice, an opportunity to be heard, and an impartial tribunal.
With or without an attorney, Travis would be heard if he chose to go before the grand jury himself. But had he not obtained an attorney in time, would that have meant he would have had no opportunity to receive a plea agreement? Would his only opportunity to be heard be at the grand jury where he would have been representing himself? What layman with no previous experience in the justice system and no law background could possibly present a compelling case to a grand jury? This also would mean he would be facing the original charge and respective sentence of up to five years in prison. This felt intentional for the sake of the prosecution’s advantage.
One of the first things Travis’s attorney had told him was the federal court can indict a ham sandwich, meaning they could get a grand jury to rule with formal charges against nearly anyone. It was becoming alarmingly and shockingly clear as to why that was with the current judicial procedures in place. You barely have time to obtain an attorney let alone determine if you have a case in order to take the long, expensive, and arduous road of going to trial. It seemed he was guilty until proven innocent and time was not being given to allow for him to make a case for himself. This is not justice.
So there we were: in a canoe, in the middle of an ocean, enduring a raging hurricane and tsunami, without paddles.
But we glazed over a very unusual fact which creates another question we will never likely get answers to: why was the lead agent assigned to a different case/taken off this case? Why wouldn’t they see this case through to conviction??
Even though we had made it to the first deadline, the clock was still ticking and the pressure cooker was just heating up…
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Travis surrenders to begin his sentence tomorrow. Please write to him.
Peace & Love,
Janessa