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The Eastern District of New York has quietly cooked up one of the most dangerous legal precedents in modern American history: the “forced labor conspiracy.”
On paper, it sounds righteous, a powerful tool to stop human trafficking and modern-day slavery. But in practice, it’s now being wielded against consenting adults, peaceful communities, and free speech, with the terrifying power to turn any group, gathering, or ideology into a federal crime ring.
Ask the folks at OneTaste. Or Douglass Mackey. Or parents at school board meetings—you get the picture. Once the government labels you “unworthy” of your First Amendment rights, they’ve got atime-tested recipe to put you behind bars.
In the OneTaste trial, federal prosecutors told jurors that a spiritual practice about personal freedom and sexual wellness was really just a cult—and that its founders were slave masters. No physical chains. No locked doors. Just teachings and voluntary work, spun by prosecutors into “serious harm” and “psychological coercion.”
Assistant US Attorney Sean Fern sold the “slavery conspiracy” to the jury, claiming that OneTaste members “worked because they were taught the way to enlightenment was to obey the defendants’ demands… They worked because they were scared… afraid they’d be exiled from their community, their homes, their whole world.”
“There may not have been physical chains. But they did not feel like they could leave. It was by design,” AUSA Nina Gupta told a jury in the heart of wokeness, Brooklyn, New York. “Serious harm can just be psychological or emotional. They called it brainwashing, loss of identity, exhaustion. That is serious harm that left them feeling like they had no choice,” AUSA Kayla Bensing added.
So staying up late, working hard, and believing deeply in a cause, all normal human behavior, can now be packaged as “forced labor” if a single disgruntled ex-member claims they “felt trapped.”
Imagine the can of worms this will open…
One Recipe to Prosecute Them All
This is not theoretical. Their playbook is public. OneTaste’s supporters call it the “Cherwitz Cookbook,” a how-to manual for turning any tight-knit community into a full-blown trafficking conspiracy.
READ MORE: Exclusive: Meet the TDS Cult ‘Expert’ Behind the FBI’s Lawfare Machine
Step 1: Find a community with an unpopular idea, a charismatic leader, and devoted followers.
Step 2: Label them a cult, using an FBI anti-Trump “cult expert” if needed.
Step 3: Pressure members to flip, recording hours of interviews until they finally say what you need.
Step 4: Claim normal behaviors were “undue influence,” “serious harm,” and “forced labor.”
Step 5: Package it for Netflix. Serve it to a jury.
Rinse and repeat as needed.
It worked on OneTaste. A similar theory of “conspiracy” worked on Douglass Mackey (who was prosecuted for sharing a satirical anti-Hillary meme). And they’re already drawing up the same theory for Steve Bannon’s War Room. In a hypothetical “War Room Indictment” drafted by OneTaste supporters to demonstrate the point, Bannon’s loyal unpaid Posse are described as victims of psychological exploitation, coerced into unpaid labor by promises of political influence that “rarely materialized.”
Sound ridiculous? So did convicting someone sharing a meme. So did calling concerned parents terrorists. And claiming meditation teachings are “slavery.”
READ MORE: LAPD Cop: ‘We don’t have sh*t under control, it’s a godsend the National Guard are here’…
Because these cases have nothing to do with stopping actual forced labor. They’re about creating a precedent: if prosecutors don’t like your politics, your religion, your podcast, or your wellness class, they can flip the “Cherwitz switch” and reframe your words and your followers as criminal evidence.
Regret is now a felony in the USA.
Just like Mackey’s harmless tweets, which the DOJ twisted into a civil rights conspiracy to deprive voters of their rights, this same idea to take speech, claim it caused indirect harm, ignore the First Amendment, and lock them up is being used in so many assorted flavors.
Revolver spoke exclusively with Douglass Mackey about this dangerous new precedent. Here’s what he told us:
This is an extremely dangerous precedent. Such a cavalier treatment of the forced labor statute and the “serious harm” element of the statute threatens the religious liberties and free association of all Americans and therefore implicates the First Amendment. Ultimately, this case is not about the virtues of OneTaste, but rather about the vices of the “cowboys” at the EDNY and New York FBI Office mistreating and abusing American citizens whom the government and the general public might consider controversial or unpopular, just like the DOJ did with President Trump, myself, the J6ers, and countless others in the wake of the 2020 stolen election.
Mike Howell, Executive Director of the Oversight Project and a fierce critic of federal prosecutorial abuse, also spoke with Revolver News about the dangerous precedent. “If you look around with EDNY’s logic, there are forced labor conspiracies everywhere,” he explained. “Girl Scouts selling cookies. Illegal migrants working farms for cheap. CrossFit junkies doing unpaid promo videos. Churches sending teens on mission trips—look out, Mormons, the DOJ will be coming for you… Even volunteers knocking on doors for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump.”
READ MORE: Mike Benz reveals the CIA’s ‘How to Start a Riot’ guide…
In addition, Revolver spoke with former Trump defense attorney Susan Necheles about the dangers of this forced labor conspiracy racket.
Here’s what Necheles told Revolver:
There can be no question that the prosecutor’s theory in the OneTaste case of criminal liability under the forced labor conspiracy statute is a radical expansion of the law. The government convinced the judge to allow the defendants be convicted based on allegations that they exerted psychological control over the alleged victims, and with a complete absence of evidence of physical violence or extortion.
Essentially, the government alleged that the victims were brainwashed and shamed into consenting to behavior which the prosecutors did not like.
This is a dangerous theory. It allows a prosecutor to bring criminal charges against “cults” with whom they disagree. For example, religious groups could be called a cult which “force” people to do things because of “brainwashing” and “coercive compulsion”. This theory could apply to many groups.
Susan is right. The scary point is this: if prosecutors want to make an example of you, the new tools are ready, willing, and able to cut you down.
That’s why an unlikely alliance is forming. Seasoned criminal defense attorneys, who know how dangerous novel conspiracy charges are, are now linking arms with conservatives who’ve been the main targets of this new normal. They know that if OneTaste’s verdict stands, it won’t stop there.
In post-Cherwitz, post-Daedone America, the difference between a tight-knit community and a federal criminal conspiracy is just one overzealous prosecutor and a Netflix deal away. Today it’s a meditation company. Yesterday it was a meme poster. Tomorrow it could be your church, your political rally, or your podcast community; the potential victims are endless.
READ MORE: Netflix, the FBI, and a Federal Frame Job That Took Down a Wellness Company…
This is lawfare, and it’s growing fast and furious style. Conservatives, independents, and civil liberties lawyers need to kill this precedent before it kills what’s left of free speech and free association in America.
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