In liberal circles William Charles Ayers is known as a progressive activist, a retired professor at the University of Illinois, and a philanthropist who had fiscally endorsed Barack “Hussein” Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. In 1969, Ayers founded the Weather Underground, a revolutionary group modeled on the Red Guards in China active at the same time, which sought to overthrow American capitalism. The Weather Underground conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings (including police stations, the United States Capitol, and the Pentagon) during the 1960s and 1970s in response to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The bombings resulted in Ayers being hunted as a fugitive for several years, until charges were dropped due to illegal actions by the FBI agents pursuing him and others. Despite his crimes, modern-day progressives and Social Justice Warriors like Obama and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have secretly championed Ayres’ cause, even naming him “an American hero.”
To the military Ayres is something else entirely. A malcontent and a felon whose Deep State allies of yesteryear had helped him avoid prosecution. In the last 40 years his name had seldom appeared in print. In 2008, The Hill exposed Ayres and Obama’s chummy relationship, even though the latter falsely claimed he only knew Ayres “in passing,” and in 2011, investigative reporter Jack Cashill proved in his book Deconstructing Obama that Ayres was the true author of Obama’s best-selling memoirs, Dreams of My Father.
But friendship and ghostwriting are not crimes. And if Ayres had kept to the shadows, removed himself from the arena of aggressive and violent political activism, White Hats within the U.S. military would have let him languish in solitude. However, Ayres had other plans.
In November 2021, the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps opened a case against Ayres after obtaining unassailable evidence that he had founded and funded a new radical organization whose goal was to systematically carry out a campaign of arson against both Democrat and Republican election offices in advance of the midterms. JAG spent 6 months, at the cost of 10,000 man-hours, collecting evidence for trial.
On 1 May, JAG investigators quietly arrested Ayres at his Hyde Park home in Chicago, charging him with seditious conspiracy. He was processed and sent to Guantanamo Bay pending the outcome of a military tribunal, which took place on 12-13 May 2022.
Unlike typical Deep Staters, Ayres was neither belligerent nor combative; he never raised is voice. Calm, cool, and collected, he either coolly refused to answer questions or gave direct, succinct replies to Vice Adm. Darse E. Crandall’s queries. A key piece of JAG’s evidence included an 80-page manifesto that investigators had found during a search of Ayres’ home. It was largely a screed against President Trump, prophesizing, in Ayres’ words, that Trump would return to the Oval Office unless drastic action was taken to prevent “a repeat of Donald J. Trump’s 2016-2020 reign of carnage.” He wrote, “The United States will implode when Trump regains power, an unfathomable thought from which we must defend ourselves.”
Vice Adm. Crandall said the manifesto was a tool, which Ayres had disseminated to political allies, calling for the cautious recruitment of trustworthy persons willing to sacrifice themselves, if necessary, to safeguard the nation from another four years of Donald J. Trump.
“Quoting your words, detainee Ayres,” Vice Admiral Crandall began, “‘Persons brought into the fold must swear to avoid social media, to not discuss future assignments on platforms watched by our adversaries. No digital footprint or paper trail. Word of mouth only. Plausible deniability is paramount. They must be so dedicated, so enmeshed in our position, as to understand we may not be able to rescue them, as it were, if they’re caught…We cannot wait until 2024. As it stands today, the midterms are awash, our allies will lose, and only immediate and decisive action can stop that.’ This all sounds incriminating to me, detainee Ayres,” Vice Adm. Crandall finished.
“What you call a manifesto, admiral, I call a diary, the contents of which are protected by my 1st Amendment right to free speech. You cannot prosecute my thoughts, my feelings,” Ayres replied calmly.
Vice Adm. Crandall continued reading aloud the manifesto: “In aggressively targeting election offices when empty, or at least ensuring no fatalities, the Biden administration will have due cause to indefinitely postpone the midterms and potentially the 2024 presidential election, thus preventing Trump’s reemergence. Historically, arson is a powerful weapon. Still, we must not only target our enemies, but also our friends, to make it appear as though acts of sabotage are not linked to a specific political affiliation. Our allies will understand this. These are desperate times, and we are the desperate measure.”
“Again, admiral, these are my thoughts. None of this has happened yet. Have we arrived at the point where thought crimes are prosecutable? I guess so,” Ayres said.
Vice Adm. Crandall introduced a witness for the prosecution, a 34-year-old Ohio man and self-admitted liberal who claimed he was approached by Ayres in February 2021 with a financially lucrative offer. This person, who RRN has been asked not to name, is a Twitter-verified (blue checkmark) Social Justice Warrior whose every Tweet between 2015-2022 espoused hatred of Donald J. Trump, his supporters, and the entire Republican party. As of March 2022, he had 6.7 million followers.
The witness testified under oath that Ayres had paid a surprise visit to his home on February 7, 2022. Ayres, he said, had asked him to “enlist followers to the cause” and promised financial compensation to the tune of over $1m.
“Bill Ayres told me, yes told me, to find someone willing to bomb the offices of [Ohio Rep. Governor] Mike DeWine and [his chief opponent] Nan Whaley. He wanted this done by July. This was too much, even for me. Yeah, I told him I’d do that, but never did. I didn’t want to see anyone killed, even if I disagree with their politics,” the witness said.
Over the course of several hours, Vice Adm. Crandall presented several witnesses who gave similar testimony.
He then asked the 3-officer panel tasked with weighing JAG’s case to consider the evidence. In an unusual turn of events, the panel spent 15 hours in deliberation, ultimately returning a verdict of guilty on the seditious conspiracy charge but not recommending a death sentence. Instead, it opined that Ayres, 77, spend 25 years in confinement at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp Delta detention center.
Vice Adm. Crandall accepted the recommendation, but asked Ayres one last question.
“Is this Obama’s plan?” he asked.
“I barely know the man,” Ayres replied.