Robert Doggart Federal Court Sentencing Transcript Convicted in Islamberg Plot

1
1 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
2 EASTERN DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE
3 AT CHATTANOOGA
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4 :
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, :
5 :
Plaintiff, :
6 :
v. : 1:15-CR-39
7 :
ROBERT R. DOGGART, :
8 :
Defendant. :
9 ------------------------------------------------------------
Chattanooga, Tennessee
10 June 14, 2017
11
BEFORE: THE HONORABLE CURTIS L. COLLIER
12 UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
13
14 APPEARANCES:
15
FOR THE PLAINTIFF:
16
PERRY H. PIPER
17 Assistant United States Attorney
U. S. Department of Justice
18 Office of the United States Attorney
1110 Market Street, Suite 515
19 Chattanooga, Tennessee 37402
20 SAEED AHMED MODY

United States Department of Justice
21 601 D Street
Washington, D. C. 20044
22
23
24 SENTENCING HEARING
25
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

Case 1:15-cr-00039-CLC-SKL Document 293 Filed 09/27/17 Page 1 of 208 PageID #:
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1 APPEARANCES: (Continuing)
2
FOR THE DEFENDANT:
3
RAYMOND GARTH BEST
4 Best Law Office, PLLC
707 Georgia Avenue, Suite 300
6 JONATHAN T. TURNER
Speek, Webb, Turner & Newkirk
7 631 Cherry Street
Chattanooga, Tennessee 37402
8
LESLIE A. CORY
9 Attorney at Law
Post Office Box 11320
11
12 - - -
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14
15
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17
18
19
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24
25

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1 INDEX OF PROCEEDINGS
3 ANNITA GAUNT
Direct Examination by Ms. Cory. . . . . . . . . 71
4 Cross-Examination by Mr. Piper. . . . . . . . . 76
Redirect Examination by Ms. Cory. . . . . . . . 78
5
6 THERESA LEE
8
9 ED SEAY
10
11 CHARLES HELLIER
13
14
15
16 DEFENDANT'S EXHIBITS
17 1 Algorithm 166
18 2 "Suspected Domestic Enemies of the USA. 169

Premise: Loss of confidence in the
19 Executive and Legislative Branches of
the Federal Government"
20
3 "Attachment 1 - Function of the Federal 176
21 Grand Jury"
22
23
24
25

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1 THE COURT: Please call the case.
2 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: United States of America
3 versus Robert R. Doggart, Case Number 1:15-CR-39.
4 THE COURT: Counsel, please make appearances for the
5 record.
6 MR. PIPER: Perry Piper and Saeed Mody for the United
7 States, Your Honor.
8 MS. CORY: Leslie Cory, Garth Best, and Jonathan
9 Turner here for Robert Doggart, Your Honor.
10 THE COURT: Thank you.
11 We are here this morning for the sentencing hearing
12 pertaining to this defendant. We set the hearing at this
13 unusual time because the Court was informed that the parties
14 had much argument and they anticipated that the hearing would
15 take several hours; I think one estimate was as many as eight
16 hours.
17 The Court appreciates the number of arguments and
18 the commitment that the parties have to their particular case,
19 but the Court would encourage the parties to consider the time
20 restraints that we have and try to proceed as expeditiously as
21 possible.
22 The Court notes that the defendant is present here
23 in court. The defendant went to trial, and after trial he was
24 found guilty. Subsequent to his conviction, the Court
25 considered the defendant's motion with respect to dismissing

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1 some or all of the charges, and the Court concluded that the
2 law in application with respect to the charges did not permit
3 those charges to go forward. So the Court granted the
4 defendant's motion with respect to that. So the defendant is
5 here before the Court to be sentenced on two charges.
6 The Court ordered the probation office to prepare a
7 presentence report. The probation office completed the
8 presentence report, had it provided to the parties. The
9 parties, after reviewing the presentence report, made comments
10 and objections to the report. The probation office responded
11 to those comments and/or objections. And the Court now has
12 received the presentence report.
13 The Court has also received, in addition to the
14 presentence report, a number of attachments and/or exhibits.
15 The government submitted a large number of letters, mostly
16 from people in the community that was the subject of the
17 defendant's actions.
18 The defendant also submitted a number of letters,
19 including one from himself, and also from relatives and other
20 people that know him. And there is a lot of medical materials
21 that have been submitted, also. The Court has had a chance to
22 review the voluminous information that was submitted.
23 The Court will now inquire of the defendant whether
24 he has received a copy of the presentence report.
25 Mr. Doggart, did you receive a copy of the

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1 presentence report?
2 THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir, I did.
3 THE COURT: Did you have a chance to read that
4 report?
5 THE DEFENDANT: Yes, I did.
6 THE COURT: And did you have adequate time to discuss
7 the report with your attorneys?
8 THE DEFENDANT: I have, sir.
10 Ms. Cory, did you receive a copy of the presentence
11 report on Mr. Doggart?
12 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor.
13 THE COURT: And did you have adequate time to read
14 and review the report?
16 THE COURT: Did you have adequate time to discuss it
17 with Mr. Doggart?
19 THE COURT: The Court, then, having inquired of the
20 defendant whether he's received and read the presentence
21 report, and of his counsel the same, and the both having
22 replied that they have, the Court will make the presentence
23 report and the attachments a part of the record and order that
24 the report and attachments be sealed.
25 Mr. Piper, does the government have any objection to

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1 the presentence report?
2 MR. PIPER: We have two brief objections, Your Honor.
3 THE COURT: Okay. Would you state the objections.
4 MR. PIPER: The first objection is to whether the
5 defendant should receive a role enhancement for aggravating
6 role. I had that as Paragraph 22 through 24, but let me make
7 sure I have the -- I've got the revised PS- -- second revised
8 PSR now, Your Honor -- make sure I have the paragraphs right.
9 It's 23 through 25, Your Honor, are the paragraphs that the
10 aggravating role is contained in. We have objected to the lack
11 of the aggravating role enhancement.
12 And we've also objected to the fact that the people
13 of Islamberg were not designated as official victims. As the
14 Court is well aware, under the MVRA, the Mandatory Victim
15 Rights Act, being designated as a victim gives victims rights
16 independent of what the government or the defense would
17 request. And I do think it's an issue, because we believe we
18 will have a brief allocution or victim impact statement, oral
19 statement, here before the sentencing is over. The victims
20 wish to do that. Now, I will say they have chosen just one
21 person, and we believe that she will keep that very short.
22 THE COURT: Well, let's take them one at a time,
23 then.
24 The first objection is to the presentence report not
25 giving the defendant an aggravated role pursuant to Section

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1 3B1.1 of the United States Sentencing Guidelines. These
2 guidelines provide that the defendant's role in the -- based
3 upon the defendant's role in the offense, his offense level
4 under the guidelines should be increased by (1) if the
5 defendant was an organizer or leader of a criminal activity
6 that involved five or more participants or was otherwise
7 extensive, then the offense level would be increased by four;
8 if, rather, the defendant was a manager or supervisor, but not
9 an organizer or leader, and the criminal activity involved
10 five or more participants or was otherwise extensive, then the
11 offense level is increased by three; and then, lastly, if the
12 defendant was merely an organizer, leader, manager, or
13 supervisor in any criminal activity other than what's
14 described in (a) or (b), increase by two levels.
15 Inherent in this particular guideline is the
16 understanding that we're talking about concerted criminal
17 activity. So if you have a one-person crime, then there would
18 be no way that this particular guideline could apply.
19 So, with that being said, Mr. Piper, why don't you
20 make your argument with regard to the aggravating role in the
21 presentence report.
22 MR. PIPER: Thank you, Your Honor.
23 We believe there is at least one other person who is
24 criminally responsible in this case. As we noted in our
25 objections to the PSR, we believe that person is Mr. Tint.

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1 Mr. Tint clearly-- As the Court is aware, the essence of
2 conspiracy is agreement. Tint made it abundantly clear from
3 his statements to the defendant over the wiretapped
4 conversations that he was going to assist him, that he was
5 going to help him --
6 THE COURT: Well, let's talk about it. We're also
7 talking about the offenses of conviction, are we not? And the
8 two offenses of conviction are what?
9 MR. PIPER: Are solicitation to commit Civil Rights
10 Act and solicitation to commit arson. But, Your Honor, I don't
11 believe that the criminal participant prong is limited merely
12 to Counts 1 and 2. I believe someone could be a criminal
13 participant without being a solicitor, for example, the two
14 counts of conviction which remain on Mr. Doggart at this point.
15 THE COURT: Explain that to me. We have a-- We have
16 two crimes --
17 MR. PIPER: Yes, sir.
18 THE COURT: -- that are offenses of commission.
19 MR. PIPER: That's right.
20 THE COURT: And the argument is that someone can be a
21 participant in those crimes even though they could not have
22 been convicted of solicitation.
23 MR. PIPER: That's-- Well, I-- We don't have any
24 evidence that Mr. Tint was soliciting anyone, Your Honor, but
25 we certainly have evidence that he is a criminal participant in

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1 the enterprise. Mr. Tint --
2 THE COURT: And the enterprise is the enterprise of
3 soliciting.
4 MR. PIPER: No, sir. The enterprise would be a
5 conspiracy to burn the buildings at Islamberg, burn the mosque
6 or burn the buildings in interstate commerce.
7 THE COURT: Conspiracy to burn the buildings --
9 THE COURT: -- at Islamberg, to burn the mosque --
10 MR. PIPER: Yes, sir. Those are the same-- Those
11 are what are in Counts 1 and 2. It's actually inverted.
12 That's Count 2 and Count 1, Judge.
13 THE COURT: And was Mr. Doggart charged and convicted
14 of conspiracy to burn?
15 MR. PIPER: No, sir. No, he was not. But I don't
16 believe that prevents the Court from considering that others
17 would have been criminally culpable or criminal participants.
18 THE COURT: Okay. Continue.
19 MR. PIPER: And certainly the evidence showed that
20 Tint was, in fact, in agreement with Doggart; told him he would
21 be there for him, would not leave him alone; arranged for other
22 items that the defendant would need to outfit him or supply
23 him; and indeed talked about recruiting and soliciting others
24 to join the endeavor, other militia members. And we've cited a
25 number of passages in our objection to that point, Your Honor.

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1 THE COURT: So we have a conspiracy. And a
2 conspiracy in federal law requires, Number 1, an agreement
3 between two or more -- two or more parties. So the agreement
4 was to burn the town and burn the mosque. Then we must have a
5 meeting of the minds by these two individuals. Third, their
6 actions must be an underlying crime that's the object of the
7 conspiracy. And, fourth, there must be an overt act.
8 MR. PIPER: Um-hmm.
9 THE COURT: So the underlying crime would be the
10 arson of the mosque and the town. I'm assuming that there is a
11 federal statute that would encompass that. Now, how about the
12 overt acts?
13 MR. PIPER: The overt act could merely be the
14 telephone call, Your Honor; certainly could be a telephone call
15 between Doggart and Tint. If I were charging a 331 conspiracy
16 in this case, that would be my first overt act, the telephone
17 conversations between the two.
18 THE COURT: And the telephone conversation took place
19 after the agreement was reached?
20 MR. PIPER: At least some of them did, Your Honor,
21 yes.
22 THE COURT: Well, if they took place prior to the
23 agreement was reached, they could not be overt acts.
24 MR. PIPER: Overt acts, that's correct, Judge. I
25 think the agreement was reached over the telephone, and then

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1 telephone calls continued after that point.
2 THE COURT: And the --
3 MR. PIPER: As a matter of fact, after Tint-- I
4 didn't mean to cut the Court off. I'm sorry.
5 THE COURT: The forming of the agreement cannot be an
6 overt act, can it?
7 MR. PIPER: I agree with that, Judge.
8 THE COURT: Okay. So we have to have an independent,
9 subsequent overt act.
10 MR. PIPER: And we have that.
11 THE COURT: Okay. And you can identify that?
13 THE COURT: Okay. Where is it?
14 MR. PIPER: It would be April 9th, would be the phone
15 call where the defendant calls Tint. That's the day before he
16 was arrested. It was the night of April 9th, where——the Court
17 may remember this——Mr. Doggart said, "Well, we're getting
18 closer to the cutoff date, so now we should start using code,
19 we should not be so overt with our conversation," and they
20 start calling the explosives "fireworks." The Court may
21 remember that conversation, but I can pull it up very quickly
22 if the Court would like.
23 THE COURT: Well, that's fine. I think you've argued
24 that there is one other person; you've argued there is an
25 agreement, there's an underlying crime, and you've now

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1 identified the overt act.
2 MR. PIPER: Yes, sir. And I do think there is a
3 manifestation of the mutual intent, what the Court calls the
4 "meeting of the minds." I'm not trying to correct Your Honor.
5 It's just what I learned in contracts is the shorthand for the
6 necessity of having an agreement.
7 There's certainly an agreement. It is a criminal
8 act. Tint makes it abundantly clear to Doggart that he is
9 with him, he is going to do this. "I will not leave you
10 alone. I will do these things for you." He says it on
11 numerous occasions. We include it in our brief. We believe
12 that is enough.
13 And I would also invite the Court's attention to one
14 other case that we cite in our brief. That's United States
15 vs. Anthony that says, "The guideline offers no further
16 definition of participant or what it means to be criminally
17 responsible, but cases applying the guideline uniformly count
18 as participants persons who were (1) aware of the criminal
19 objective, and (2) knowingly offered their assistance." And
20 certainly Tint did both of those.
21 An argument could be made it's also aiding and
22 abetting, but I think the conspiracy argument is stronger for
23 us, Judge, candidly, because they do -- they have an
24 agreement, and Tint makes it abundantly clear to Doggart that
25 he will protect him, he will help him, he will assist him with

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1 this endeavor.
2 THE COURT: Can you share with us why Mr. Tint was
3 not sitting at the defense table during the trial?
4 MR. PIPER: Yes, Your Honor. We had actually done a
5 complaint and warrant on Tint and Doggart for the conspiracy.
6 And Mr. Doggart went to Greenville, South Carolina, to meet
7 with his daughter. And at the same time-- It was a
8 dual-purpose meeting. And this was all intercepted and, I
9 think, played at trial. Mr. Doggart told Mr. Tint that he was
10 going to meet with his daughter -- going to see his daughter
11 and grandchildren in or around Greenville. And that's where
12 Mr. Tint lives as well. I forget the name of the exact town.
13 (Off-the-record discussion between counsel for the
14 government and the case agent.)
15 MR. PIPER: Taylor, South Carolina.
16 Thank you.
17 And Mr. Tint is-- It's a Sunday night that they're
18 going to meet, and I can't -- it's a date in March, late
19 March, 29th or something like that. I could pull that up,
20 Judge. But Mr. Doggart attempted to find Mr. Tint's house,
21 and could not. He was having difficulty with the directions.
22 Agent Smith could testify to this. This probably inures to
23 the defendant's benefit, but Mr. Tint was inebriated and
24 either wouldn't answer his phone or had misplaced his phone or
25 something like that. And subsequent conversations reveal that

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1 Doggart had called Tint to try to find him, but -- at least I
2 think they do, Judge.
3 But certainly Mr. Doggart made the attempt to find
4 Mr. Tint. It's just that Mr. Tint, we think, was over-served,
5 and did not answer his telephone, Judge. And that's the
6 reason why he was not arrested on a conspiracy charge. That
7 does not mean we don't have a conspiracy charge. And I will
8 also --
9 THE COURT: After the complaint was filed, though,
10 there was a lot of communication that the Court is aware of
11 between the government and Mr. Doggart, because at some point
12 an agreement was reached between the government and Mr. Doggart
13 concerning a bill of information that was filed.
14 MR. PIPER: There is no question.
15 THE COURT: Sometime later on there was an indictment
16 in the case, and then even subsequent to that there was a
17 superseding indictment filed.
19 THE COURT: So that's a long time that Mr. Tint could
20 have been charged. But he was not charged.
21 MR. PIPER: He was not charged, Your Honor. And
22 we -- and the real simple reason is that we believe Mr. Doggart
23 to be far more culpable than Mr. Tint. Mr. Tint did say some
24 horrible -- horrific things on the telephone, talking about
25 burning down the buildings, providing an EOD contact, and then

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1 claimed he was the EOD contact. But we believe that
2 Mr. Doggart was driving the train here. And there is an
3 element of prosecutorial discretion. And certainly we bandied
4 about charging conspiracy -- charging Tint in the conspiracy or
5 just charging Mr. Doggart with a conspiracy with others known
6 and unknown.
7 But having said that, the reason why Tint was not
8 charged here is because he lied to the FBI there, he lied
9 about having these conversation with Mr. Doggart, he pleaded
10 guilty to a 1001 count. And as the Court is aware, it's a
11 very minor federal felony, if such a thing exists. But the
12 reason why Mr. Doggart was not charged in a conspiracy is
13 because we -- we bandied that about for quite some time. We
14 also talked about aiding and abetting and a 924(c), candidly,
15 Judge, the trip to Nashville and that -- an attempt.
16 We talked about a number of different options here.
17 It seemed that solicitation was our strongest two counts. So
18 that's the reason why Mr. Tint was not charged here.
19 THE COURT: You would concede, though, that your case
20 would be stronger had Mr. Tint been charged as a conspirator in
21 the case or named as an unindicted conspirator?
22 MR. PIPER: No question. And I also would say that
23 that's unquestionably true, that if he had been -- even if we
24 had just charged Mr. Doggart with conspiracy and not named
25 Mr. Tint, just others known and unknown, my position would be

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1 stronger. However, I would say in response to that as well
2 that for the purposes of the guideline the government need only
3 prove by a preponderance of the evidence that this existed,
4 that the person was a criminal participant, that Tint was,
5 which he was.
6 I would also say to the Court Shane Shielein was
7 close as well, Your Honor. It's just that Mr. Shielein has a
8 habit of saying -- at the end of every conversation, he
9 qualifies his involvement; he says, "Well, I'll get back to
10 you," or something like that. And Your Honor's had a number
11 of jury trials, and can remember how difficult these things
12 may be to prove. And that's one reason why Mr. Shielein also
13 was not brought into this, even though he too said some
14 horrific things at the City Café and also on Facebook.
15 THE COURT: Okay. Thank you. Do you have anything
16 else, then, on the role enhancement?
17 MR. PIPER: No, Your Honor.
18 THE COURT: Let me hear, then, from the defense.
19 Ms. Cory, you'll be making the argument?
20 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor. Thank you.
21 (Brief pause.)
22 MS. CORY: Your Honor has my written response to the
23 government's objection in Document 222. And Your Honor touched
24 on a couple of the matters that I addressed in my objection,
25 most specifically U.S.S.G. 1B1.1, the guideline that covers how

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1 you apply all of the other guidelines. I think it's quite
2 clear that the Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 adjustments are based on
3 the crime of conviction. And in this case the crime of
4 conviction is not conspiracy, it's solicitation. So I think,
5 from that point of view, the government can't get where it
6 wants to go to applying a Chapter 3 leadership role.
7 THE COURT: Could we consider this, though, relevant
8 conduct? The idea there was some sort of conspiratorial
9 agreement or conspiratorial actions, even if they did not
10 constitute a crime, could not this be considered relevant
11 conduct?
12 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I think that relevant
13 conduct -- I mean, relevant conduct, in some form, applies to
14 every case and to every circumstance. But in this case I think
15 if you go to 1B1.3, you are left with the fact that you're not
16 talking about a crime where the various acts can be grouped
17 together under 3D1.3 or 3D1.2(d) where you look at everything,
18 all of the harms combined; you are just looking at the specific
19 acts charged in the offense of conviction.
20 So, yes, 3B1.3(a) applies --
21 THE COURT: But --
22 MS. CORY: -- and you're looking at --
23 THE COURT: But didn't the solicitation involve a
24 course of conduct? The solicitation took place over a number
25 of months, it involved the Internet, telephones, traveling to

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1 different locations?
2 MS. CORY: And all of that's relevant conduct, Your
3 Honor.
4 THE COURT: Well, I'm --
5 MS. CORY: But --
6 THE COURT: Well, I was thinking of just Mr. Doggart.
7 So it wouldn't be relevant conduct to him. It would be his own
8 actions. It would be things that he did, himself, in
9 commission of the solicitation offenses. If someone else was
10 involved, though, in some parts of that, could not that be
11 relevant conduct, then?
12 MS. CORY: Not to a charge of solicitation, because I
13 believe, Your Honor, under relevant conduct, 3B1.3(a), you go
14 back to the crime of conviction, and that's going to be the
15 solicitation, and not the conspiracy.
16 A secondary aspect of this would be the probation
17 officer's own response, which is fact-specific. And if you
18 look at her addendum, which is Document 224, she says -- she
19 comments, "The evidence must show that Doggart managed or
20 supervised the criminal activities of Tint, organized the
21 criminal activities of Tint, or recruited Tint to a criminal
22 enterprise. While the conversations provided do evidence
23 Tint's desire to participate in the offense and provide his
24 support, they do not evidence how Doggart recruited Tint to
25 the offense," because, in fact, Your Honor, there -- there

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1 never was agreement. There are Mr. Doggart's conversations,
2 Mr. Tint's conversations. They are going in different
3 directions. They agree on some things, but they do not agree
4 on a conspiracy to commit an offense. And, factually
5 speaking, Mr. Doggart had a lot of ideas, he suggested a lot
6 of things. He never got anybody interested enough to commit
7 to any of his proposals. So I think factually there aren't
8 other criminal participants. And legally you have to base the
9 decision of leadership role on the crime of conviction, which
10 is the solicitation.
11 THE COURT: Okay. Thank you.
12 Mr. Piper, any response?
13 MR. PIPER: Yes, Your Honor. I'd invite the Court's
14 attention to Page 4, it's -- of Document 216, Page ID
15 Number 3424. And if I may put it on the presenter, Your Honor?
16 THE COURT: You may.
17 And, Ms. Lewis, would you-- I'm sorry. You already
18 have. Thank you.
19 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: It delays a minute.
20 MR. PIPER: You'll see here at the top of the page,
21 Your Honor, the defendant, talking to Mr. Tint, states, "by
22 golly, if I have to go up there by myself with my designated
23 weapons I had specified and start a ruckus so there is a local
24 response and national coverage, that will stop it, and only one
25 guy dies, that would be me, and that's okay."

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1 Tint responded, "No, it's not okay. I gave you my
2 word that I would stand by you."
3 Later when he talks -- Doggart talks about being a
4 patriot, must be willing to give his life for his country,
5 Tint replies, "I'm not going to send you somebody that will
6 leave you standing there alone. If I send somebody out there,
7 I'm going to send somebody I know will die for you -- I know
8 for a fact will die by your side. And I will be there when
9 the time comes."
10 That's -- to me, Your Honor, that's an agreement.
11 That is a criminal agreement to commit a violation. They're
12 clearly talking about Doggart's attack on Islamberg. And
13 certainly-- And the Court may find that I have to -- should
14 have charged conspiracy. And that -- if the Court finds that,
15 I'll move on. But clearly Mr. Tint is a criminal participant.
16 The case that we cited——I think it was Anthony——has
17 the two prongs. He meets both of those prongs, and he does
18 more than that. He joins in this agreement. The parties
19 never even need meet to do that. They're talking on the
20 telephone. I've cited the Court's well-worn conspiracy
21 pattern instruction, and it seems to me that Tint's actions
22 meet all of those prongs. So we would urge Your Honor to
23 apply the two-point enhancement under the aggravating role.
25 The Court has read the pertinent guideline. The

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1 government objects to the failure of the probation office to
2 include the role enhancement for the defendant being an
3 organizer, leader, manager, or supervisor in the calculation
4 of the defendant's guidelines.
5 The Court has considered the arguments of counsel.
6 The Court has considered their written filings. The Court has
7 carefully studied them and given considerable thought to it.
8 This is a close issue. It's a close question. So the Court
9 could see where reasonable minds could reach different
10 results.
11 Based upon the evidence that's been presented to the
12 Court and that the Court saw at trial and the Court's
13 understanding of this defendant's role and the offense of
14 conviction, the Court will deny the government's objection.
15 The Court concludes that the probation office was correct in
16 not applying the aggravating role to the defendant; although,
17 as the Court said, it's a closer question than one might have
18 thought initially.
19 I think, Mr. Piper, you said there was another
20 objection. What is that objection?
21 MR. PIPER: It's very brief, Your Honor. The
22 probation officer, Ms. White, found that the people of
23 Islamberg were not victims for the purposes of this offense,
24 Judge, and we objected to that. And it's not a huge deal, Your
25 Honor, but we do believe that somebody-- A representative of

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1 the community of Islamberg would like to offer a sentencing
2 statement. I know that well over a hundred letters have been
3 sent to the Court regarding this. And we -- and Mr. Mody and I
4 have discussed this with a couple of the folks yesterday and
5 today. And, candidly, I think the meat of the nut has been
6 mined on this issue.
7 But as the Court is aware, if someone is a victim in
8 a violent crime case, they have the right to allocute, to give
9 a statement at sentencing. And I do believe that they want to
10 have -- they want to designate one person and to give an
11 allocution that's very brief, Judge, today or tomorrow,
12 whatever the case may be.
13 THE COURT: Thank you. The Court's decision on this,
14 though, would have no effect on the calculation of the
15 guidelines. Is that right?
16 MR. PIPER: It will have no effect, Your Honor, no,
17 that's correct.
18 THE COURT: It's just an issue of whether someone
19 should be allowed to speak or not speak. And the government
20 represents it will only be one person and it will be brief.
23 Ms. Cory?
24 MS. CORY: Your Honor, again, in the memorandum
25 response to the government's objections, I cited 18 U.S.C.

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1 Section 3771(c), the definition it provides for what
2 constitutes a victim. It says, "For purposes of this chapter,
3 the term crime victim means a person directly and proximately
4 harmed as a result of the commission --"
5 THE COURT: Suppose the Court agrees with you,
6 though, that the statute does not cover the residents of this
7 community. That would just mean that there is no statutory
8 right for them to speak. But there is nothing that precludes
9 the Court from allowing them to speak, is there?
10 MS. CORY: Your Honor, it's my belief that Your Honor
11 runs the courtroom and will conduct it any way he sees is
12 appropriate. I don't think there is a statutory prohibition
13 from your allowing anyone to speak in the courtroom who has
14 something relevant to say.
15 THE COURT: I go to conferences across the country,
16 and there are fellow judges there from all over. And I'm
17 always surprised when federal judges tell me when they have
18 sentencing hearings that take two or three days and they hear
19 from the mothers, the brothers and sisters, the grandparents,
20 the Sunday school teachers, the high school teachers, they all
21 take the stand and all testify for hours and hours on end.
22 Those jurisdictions have much fewer criminal cases than we do.
23 And I've always thought that if we did that, then we would
24 spend our entire week just having sentencing hearings and
25 listening to the parents and best friends and Sunday school

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1 teachers talk about people. And as a rule, I have limited
2 outsiders speaking, other than the lawyers, to circumstances
3 where I thought it was necessary.
4 So if that testimony was necessary to determine the
5 guidelines, of course the Court would entertain the testimony
6 or statement; and if the statute covered it, then of course
7 the Court would.
8 I've never had a philosophical objection to people
9 speaking. It was more a time management issue. And we've
10 been blessed in this district to have outstanding lawyers who
11 accurately represent what people say to them. So if an
12 attorney tells me that the Sunday school teacher says that
13 this is one of the best students that Sunday school has ever
14 had, then I will take that statement to the bank; I see no
15 reason that the Court should disagree with that. So the same
16 thing is accomplished. It just is a lot more efficient to
17 have the lawyer do it instead of having people take the stand
18 and say it.
19 In this case, because we've set aside a special time
20 for this matter and there is such a strong interest and the
21 Court has been told that only one person will be speaking and
22 it's going be very, very brief, the Court is going to grant
23 the government's request.
24 I'm not finding, though, that the speaker or other
25 residents of the community meet the definition of victim in

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1 the statute. I'm just saying I'm exercising my discretion in
2 this case to allow one person to speak. And I'm asking the
3 government to make sure that whatever is said is respectful
4 and that the tone is appropriate for a federal court.
5 MS. CORY: Thank you, Your Honor. And this might be
6 a good time for me to mention that the defense does have four
7 witnesses who are friends and family members, but all of them
8 have testimony that I believe is directly related to our
9 objections to the calculation of the guidelines.
11 Mr. Piper?
12 MR. PIPER: Yes, Your Honor. That's all the
13 objections we have, Judge.
14 THE COURT: Ms. Cory, does Mr. Doggart have any
15 objection to the guidelines?
16 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor, he does.
17 THE COURT: Okay. Would you state the first
18 objection?
19 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I might say our first
20 objection is not an objection to the guidelines; it's an
21 objection to the presentence report finding that there is a
22 minimum mandatory penalty attached to Count 2. I think, if you
23 read the solicitation statute, there very plainly is no minimum
24 mandatory five years attached. 18 U.S.C. Section 37(3)
25 provides that the defendant shall be imprisoned not more than

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1 one-half the maximum term of imprisonment. It does not say
2 anything about, "And, oh, by the way, he also gets whatever the
3 minimum mandatory is of the underlying offense." So I think
4 the plain reading of the statute is, there is no minimum
5 mandatory, so the penalty here would be zero to ten years, not
6 five years to ten years.
7 THE COURT: And why should the Court decide this
8 mo- -- this issue?
9 MS. CORY: Well, Your Honor, it is our hope you will
10 be sentencing Mr. Doggart to something below five years; hence,
11 a five-year minimum mandatory would preclude Mr. Doggart
12 receiving the sentence we think he merits. And in terms of
13 what constitutes an appropriate decision of the Court, I think
14 deciding the statutory meaning is an appropriate decision for
15 Your Honor to make.
16 THE COURT: Well, as I sit here now, I have no idea
17 what sentence Mr. Doggart is going to receive, and I'm assuming
18 it could be anywhere from zero to whatever the statutory
19 maximum is. After the Court has heard from the parties or
20 heard from Mr. Doggart, the Court will arrive at a decision.
21 The Court will consider the guidelines, of course, but the
22 Court will also consider other factors.
23 And it seems to me that there are two decisions the
24 Court could make. One decision would be that the sentence
25 will be higher than what the probation office considers the

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1 mandatory minimum, or the sentence could be lower than what
2 the probation office considers the mandatory minimum to be.
3 In the first case, it's higher, why does the Court need to
4 make a decision?
5 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I brought this up because it's
6 on the first page of the presentence report. If Your Honor
7 would prefer to wait until the very end of the sentencing
8 hearing to make the decision, that's fine with me. I have
9 expressed the objection. So there is no way that I have
10 forgotten to add it.
11 THE COURT: Does that seem like a more efficient use
12 of our time, though?
13 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I think either way would be
14 fine. If you want to wait until the end, I have no objection
15 to your doing that.
16 THE COURT: Well, why don't we see where we are. And
17 I think it would be more appropriate if we took this up later
18 on. We're just getting started. The only thing that's
19 happened so far is, the Court has denied an aggravating role,
20 and the Court has decided to allow one person to speak. And
21 nothing that has happened so far, I don't think, is going to
22 have much, if any, effect on the Court's ultimate sentencing
23 decision.
24 MS. CORY: Thank you, Your Honor.
25 THE COURT: Okay. So what is the next objection?

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1 MS. CORY: All right. The first objection to an
2 actual guideline calculation would be, the probation officer
3 determined that the base offense level under U.S.S.G. Section
4 2K1.4 would be 24 rather than 20. When I first read this, I
5 thought the distinction she was making was about whether a
6 church constitutes a public use facility. But she later
7 clarified that she gives him the Offense Level 24 as the base
8 because she believes that Mr. Doggart knowingly created a
9 substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.
10 And, Your Honor, what I will be addressing over and
11 over in this hearing, I know, is that he has been convicted of
12 solicitation. He has not been convicted of completing a
13 crime. Mr. Doggart did not create, knowingly or otherwise, a
14 substantial risk of death or bodily injury to anyone, because
15 all he ever did was talk.
16 I think if you look at the default provision, the
17 Offense Level 2 -- the Offense Level 20, it takes into
18 consideration the conviction itself, the attempted -- or,
19 rather, the solicitation to commit an arson; that in an arson,
20 and particularly the one cited by the government in the
21 indictment, there is going to be a threatened use of
22 explosives. So 20 covers it. But in terms of a knowing
23 creation of a substantial risk of death, Mr. Doggart did no
24 such thing. He never did anything but talk.
25 THE COURT: Well, let's discuss that a little bit

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1 further. The solicitation involved more than just him orally
2 stating words, didn't it?
3 MS. CORY: I may be misunderstanding you, Your Honor,
4 but I don't think it involved anything other than his speaking.
5 THE COURT: Wasn't he involved in putting things on
6 the Internet?
7 MS. CORY: That would be another expression of his
8 free speech, yes, Your Honor. But --
9 THE COURT: And were some of the words or his free
10 speech as exercised as free speech on the Internet, was he
11 looking for patriots to join him in this great effort?
12 MS. CORY: Your Honor, throughout the evidence the
13 government presented, Mr. Doggart says a million different
14 things. And, yes, he considered himself a patriot. He was
15 looking for other patriots. He was very concerned that there
16 might be a terrorist camp up in Islamberg, New York. He wanted
17 to go there and check it out. But in terms of his ever
18 creating a substantial risk of death, he did no such thing. He
19 only --
20 THE COURT: And people who were receiving his free
21 speech on the Internet, some of those would have been people
22 who he never met before, had no idea who they were, had no idea
23 how well-balanced they were, had no idea what capabilities they
24 had to commit violence. Is that right?
25 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I don't think you can argue he

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1 created a substantial risk of death from an absence of
2 evidence. We don't know who these people were. That's true.
3 We don't know what they thought. We don't know anything about
4 them, except that he put some speech out there that people
5 would have responded to mentally one way or the other. But we
6 don't know.
7 THE COURT: And we know some people did respond to
8 his speech, because they got back in contact with him, didn't
9 they?
10 MS. CORY: They did, Your Honor. Nobody did
11 anything. My point is, you can't --
12 THE COURT: I think what the guideline says is, it's
13 not that the person must inflict serious bodily injury or
14 inflict death, it says that there must be a risk.
15 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor, it says——pardon me while
16 I dig up the guideline——he has to have created, past tense, a
17 substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury to any
18 person. And it is our position that you cannot have created a
19 substantial risk of death——that's a high standard, Your
20 Honor——if you did nothing but talk, which is what Mr. Doggart
21 and his compatriots did.
22 I think there has to be a line drawn when you're
23 talking about a solicitation. Yes, he solicited an offense.
24 He's been convicted of, at one time in history, at least, he
25 had the intent that someone commit this crime. That's what

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1 the jury decided. But in terms of his ever having done
2 anything that would have created a substantial risk of death,
3 nothing happened. That's why it's a solicitation and not a
4 completed crime, because he didn't do anything.
5 I think this guideline is looking at situations
6 where there is a completed crime or, at the very least, a
7 conspiracy or an attempt. And here there is neither, there is
8 just Mr. Doggart talking.
9 THE COURT: So we have someone on the sidelines. And
10 we see that there are some parties that have exchanged some
11 harsh words. And the party on the sidelines says, "I'll tell
12 you what, I'll hold your coat, and I want you to go, and I want
13 you to hit that person on the head." So the person on the
14 sideline has not created a risk of serious bodily injury,
15 because the only thing he's done is just said things, right?
16 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I would think, in that
17 picture, yes, because the next step would be, did the person
18 offer him the coat, did he actually accept the coat. If all he
19 says is, "I'm going to take the coat," and then he walks away
20 and doesn't do anything, he has not created a risk. He has to
21 follow through by exhibiting that he is going to do something.
22 THE COURT: And since we're talking about a risk, I
23 think what we're talking about is, how substantial is the
24 possibility of people doing it, not whether they do it or not,
25 aren't we?

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1 MS. CORY: We're talking about whether he created a
2 substantial risk; did he. Your Honor, it's our position-- We
3 have no reason to believe Mr. Doggart was ever going to drive
4 up to Islamberg.
5 THE COURT: Well, we're not talking about him now.
6 MS. CORY: No, I --
7 THE COURT: We're talking about the people who
8 heard --
10 THE COURT: -- who were the subject of the
11 solicitation.
12 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor. But my thought here is,
13 had he actually taken that trip, he would have gone to
14 Islamberg, he would have found a peaceful community just like
15 the community in Dover --
16 THE COURT: Why --
17 MS. CORY: -- he would have put an e-mail --
18 THE COURT: Why do we think that? What evidence is
19 there that he would have gone up there, looked around, and
20 said, "Oh, everything I've heard is wrong, everything I've
21 thought is wrong, everything I've done for the past few weeks,"
22 or months, or whatever, "is all wrong. So I'm happy to see all
23 these peaceful, loving people. I'm going to walk away and live
24 my life." What makes us think that would happen?
25 MS. CORY: Your Honor, Number 1, that's exactly what

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1 he did with Dover, Tennessee. He had heard rumors about a
2 community in Dover, Tennessee. He drove to that community, he
3 talked to people, he decided that was a peaceful community, he
4 left, and he put a message up saying that this isn't a problem.
5 All of his hateful speech was directed to the
6 terrorist problem out there, the Internet posting so much of
7 it --
8 THE COURT: Well, I don't think, at least in most
9 parts of the United States, people walk around with signs that
10 says, "I'm a terrorist." They look like us. Sometimes because
11 they're from different communities or different religions or
12 whatnot, they may wear something that makes some people see
13 something in them that is not there.
14 I understand your argument that he could have gone
15 up there and he could have seen things and that would have
16 changed him completely. But the Court -- from the evidence
17 the Court heard, the Court sees no basis at all for that
18 conclusion. Unfortunately most times what we see confirms our
19 thoughts, even if what we're seeing is not an accurate
20 reflection of our thoughts, but our minds work in such a way
21 that we're confirmed in our beliefs.
22 So going up to the community of people that dress
23 differently, that live a different type of life, they come
24 from different places, I think it is more likely to confirm in
25 the defendant's mind that the people were who he thought they

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1 were, and they're just hiding the guns, they're hiding the
2 poison, they're hiding the bombs, and they're hiding other
3 things. I think that is a more likely scenario.
4 MS. CORY: Well, Your Honor, you are getting into
5 Mr. Doggart's mind right now.
6 THE COURT: And I think we got into this because
7 someone said that he would have gone up there and he would have
8 seen that these were peaceful, law-abiding citizens --
10 THE COURT: -- and he would have abandoned the
11 effort. I think that's how we got into what was in his mind.
12 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor. And you're saying you
13 don't think that's what was in Mr. Doggart's mind. I have four
14 witnesses that I was planning on putting on to testify about
15 how Mr. Doggart's mind works. And I think that testimony would
16 throw light on the very issue you're considering——is
17 Mr. Doggart the kind of person that, when he examines a
18 situation, refuses to believe what his eyes show him.
19 I think the evidence that these people will present
20 will show Your Honor that when Mr. Doggart looks at something
21 for himself, finds out for himself, he is, in fact, perfectly
22 willing to listen to information that contradicts any
23 preconceived notion he had, and is perfectly willing to change
24 his mind. And we do have the evidence that that's exactly
25 what he did in Dover, Tennessee. He went over there expecting

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1 to see one thing. He saw something else. He told people what
2 he saw.
3 I would like to go ahead and put on my witnesses, if
4 I may, that can discuss what -- exactly how Mr. Doggart's mind
5 works, based on their experience with him over years.
6 THE COURT: Well, let's see if we can finish with
7 this particular objection, then. The base offense level in the
8 guideline is 24; and your argument is, it should be a 22. So
9 unless you want to add something else to what you've already
10 said, let me hear from the government.
11 (Brief pause.)
12 MR. PIPER: Thank you.
13 I think Ms. Cory is arguing, Your Honor, the base
14 offense level is a 20.
15 THE COURT: Right.
16 MR. PIPER: I'm sorry.
17 Your Honor, when Ms. Cory says all the defendant did
18 was talk, that's not true. He went to Nashville and carried
19 the -- quote, "the baddest shotgun on Earth," or "the shotgun
20 that would rip a man in half, a human being in half." He
21 carried his "battle-tested M4, battle-tested at 350 meters."
22 He carried maps of Islamberg. He carried a map on how to
23 drive to Islamberg. He did all this with the CI in Nashville.
24 So there was more than just talk here.
25 He had a small arsenal——and I don't even believe

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1 small is the right word——a medium arsenal, Judge, in his
2 house. He had the M4, the shotgun, numerous handguns, tracer
3 ammunition. I don't know why anyone has tracer ammunition for
4 legitimate purposes. It is legitimate to possess, Judge. But
5 Mr. Doggart bragged time and again about those two weapons,
6 about the shotgun and about the M4, and, sure enough, they
7 were found. 5000 rounds of ammunition found in his house.
8 5200 rounds. Heavily disputed by the -- vigorously disputed
9 by the defendant at trial, but there's no question that's what
10 it was.
11 Ms. Cory says it's his free speech right. I think
12 we're beyond that, Your Honor. I don't think that threatening
13 to go up and kill innocent people, to burn their buildings, to
14 shoot sentries, or guards, or lookouts, is just free speech.
15 He talks about using silencers to take out the two guards.
16 That's what he talked about. And he talks about this with
17 more than just one person; it's not just with the CI. He
18 talks about it with Tint, with a number of other people, talks
19 about it at the City Café with Shane Shielein and Sally
20 McNulty.
21 Ms. Cory argues about the absence of evidence. I
22 say there's abundant -- there is a plethora of evidence in
23 this case, Judge, to show that the defendant was soliciting
24 other people. And I think the Court's already hit on this
25 before, but I'm going to say it now again. Solicitation is

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1 more dangerous than attempt, and it's more dangerous than a
2 conspiracy, in some sense, and that sense is this: When
3 Mr. Doggart solicits somebody else to go do this, and gets
4 them all worked up, and makes them believe that Islamberg is a
5 dangerous community, then it's -- he's -- he lights a fuse and
6 then walks away from it, is, in essence, what he's doing, and
7 does nothing to put out the fuse, and, candidly, could not put
8 it out if he wanted to, especially with the anonymity of the
9 Facebook post and the people he's talking to on the phone. So
10 that's why it can be considered to be more dangerous, Your
11 Honor, than merely attempt. Attempt, at least he would have
12 some control over it, were he still involved in it. Now,
13 admittedly he talks about being involved in it.
14 I think the Court makes a point about, "Well, how do
15 we know what he's going to do?" He always makes a
16 differentiation on the tapes between Dover and Islamberg. The
17 only reason why we know he went to Dover is because he said he
18 did. But we'll take him at his face value there that he went
19 to Dover, Tennessee, and saw nothing wrong.
20 But how would he know, when he gets to Islamberg,
21 that they haven't hidden a 55-gallon drum of poison, which he
22 keeps talking about, that they're going to poison this
23 reservoir and the Delaware River -- what's going to make him
24 believe, when he's up in the -- the Catskills, I think it is,
25 in New York, near it, at least -- what's going to make him

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1 believe, when he sees all these residences, and some are
2 mobile homes and some are frame houses, what's going to make
3 him believe that there's not a 55-gallon drum of poison there,
4 or that there are vans and young men -- he is going to confirm
5 his suspicions.
6 When he sees young men that are, in fact, around the
7 neighborhood, around the community, it's going to confirm his
8 suspicions. They don't look like him. They don't sound like
9 him. He's going to believe that these people are, in fact,
10 terrorists. He never came off that. Ms. Cory said he had no
11 plans to go to Islamberg. He told the FBI when he was
12 interviewed that he was going to go the next day. He keeps
13 talking about going. It's like he-- How many times does
14 somebody have to tell you he's going to kill somebody before
15 you start to believe it?
16 So we believe that the 24 for the serious bodily
17 injury is -- it's really understated, Judge. The arson
18 guideline understates his criminal culpability. We're happy
19 to apply that if the Court sees fit, we state in our
20 sentencing memo. But he talks about first-degree murder. He
21 talks about killing people beforehand, killing people who come
22 to the -- put out the fire. He's-- And the proof at trial
23 showed, when we put on both of our witnesses, Mr. Clark and
24 Mr. Brooks, that the mosque, which the defendant showed a
25 picture of it to the CS when they were in Nashville

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1 together——he had downloaded it from Google Earth——the mosque
2 is at the center of the community. There's no question that
3 burning that building alone would create damage. He talked
4 about burning three buildings. He talks about using an
5 explosive device.
6 We know for a fact that he didn't just want to throw
7 a can of gas and a lit match into these buildings, because he
8 says that. He wants something more than that can of gas. He
9 wants something more than a Molotov cocktail. He wants some
10 explosive greater than that. He never specifies what that is.
11 But, Judge, that clearly satisfies the 2K1.4(a)(1)(A), the
12 offense level of 24. We just believe that the 24 is correct,
13 Judge. Unless the Court has any questions-- Oh, I will say
14 this: When he talks about going up to Islamberg and checking
15 it out, he said on more than one occasion he was going to use
16 that for a ruse. He talks about, in one of the conversations,
17 "I am going to get the police officers to go with me. That
18 way I can look around and it will be very innocent activity, I
19 can find out where we are going to attack." And he says that
20 on more than one occasion, Judge. So he talks about using
21 that as a ruse, the so-called trip to determine what's going
22 on. He'd already made up his mind; and the fact that he says
23 differently to other people was a fact that was argued before
24 the jury, and the jury rejected that, and they rejected it
25 beyond a reasonable doubt, Your Honor.

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2 Ms. Cory?
3 MS. CORY: Thank you, Your Honor. I would like to
4 specify again, we are not fighting the jury verdict today. We
5 are fighting a much bigger picture of Robert Doggart than
6 whether at one point he actually solicited an offense.
7 Now, Mr. Piper talks about more than one occasion in
8 which Mr. Doggart talks about going up there to Islamberg as a
9 ruse. Your Honor, there's also multiple occasions where he
10 talks about wanting to go up to Islamberg to see what's going
11 on. Earlier, in March, he's talking about taking one or two
12 people with him. Then he's talking about taking one person
13 with him. Then when he finally decides to go, he's going to
14 go all by himself.
15 And, Your Honor, contrary to what Mr. Piper said, I
16 didn't say we knew he wasn't going to go. I said we don't
17 know whether he really was going to go, because when the FBI
18 searched his place, they found so indication that he was
19 planning to travel anywhere.
20 If you look at his two last conversations on April
21 the 9th, one with William Tint and one with SB, both of them,
22 he talks repeatedly about he's going to Islamberg to do recon.
23 There is no indication he is going to Islamberg for any
24 purpose other than to do recon.
25 And an interesting thing about his conversation with

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1 Mr. Tint, he asked Mr. Tint is it time for him to meet this
2 EOD guy, who's the EOD guy, should they talk. Your Honor, if
3 on April the 9th Mr. Doggart doesn't have a clue who the EOD
4 guy is or whether he should talk to him, I think it's clear
5 that he doesn't have a plan to do anything when he goes up to
6 Islamberg on April the 11th.
7 Again, when he talks to Tint and SB, he talks about
8 how they have really got to sit down and develop a program,
9 they have got to get together, they have got to meet, he talks
10 about all of these things they need to do. None of those
11 things were going to happen before April the 11th or even
12 before April 15. These are all things that are just running
13 around in Mr. Doggart's head and that he is blurting out to
14 people he's talking with on the phone.
15 Your Honor, the government cited the competency
16 report in one of its filings recently. And I would like to
17 read the diagnosis that the Bureau of Prisons psychiatrist
18 provided, because it goes directly to why does Robert Doggart
19 say all these things and none of them materialize. Your
20 Honor, it's on Page 6. It's a sealed document, the forensic
21 report, but what I'm going to read is just the definition of
22 narcissistic personally disorder.
23 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: This takes a second.
24 MS. CORY: Is it --
25 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: There we go.

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1 MS. CORY: Okay. Thank you.
2 According to the DSM-V, narcissistic personality
3 disorder is a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for
4 admiration, and lack of empathy. Features of this disorder
5 include having a strong sense of self-importance, expecting to
6 be recognized as superior. Further, individuals believe they
7 are unique and can only be understood by, or should associate
8 with, other special or high status individuals. Additional
9 criteria include having a sense of entitlement and showing
10 arrogant behaviors or attitudes.
11 "The findings of Mr. Doggart's previous
12 psychological evaluations, phone and e-mails, records,
13 interviews, with collateral contacts, and his behavior at FMC
14 Lexington reflect a pervasive pattern of Mr. Doggart's
15 grandiose sense of self-importance and entitlement, and an
16 impressionistic style of speech."
17 Your Honor, an incident that the psychologist
18 described while Mr. Doggart is undergoing evaluation, the
19 psychologist's note, "Mr. Doggart arrived at FMC Lexington on
20 February 16, 2016. Upon his admission to the institution,
21 during his medical intake with a nurse, he reported, 'I just
22 need to find out where the crazies are.' Another staff member
23 reported Mr. Doggart indicated, 'I'm looking for all the crazy
24 people so I can beat them up.' He was subsequently placed in
25 the special housing unit, whereby an investigation began.

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1 Results from the investigation revealed that Mr. Doggart did
2 not fear for his safety nor did he have any actual intention
3 of harming anyone."
4 Mr. Doggart shocks people. Mr. Doggart -- that's
5 part of his mental processes, it's part of his mental
6 disability, if you would, that he brags, he says grandiose
7 things, he likes to shock people. If he shocks you one time,
8 he will say something more shocking. The evaluating staff
9 realized he did not intend to harm anyone, he was just
10 talking.
11 THE COURT: Did the people who received his
12 communications know that?
13 MS. CORY: The nurse?
14 THE COURT: No, the people on the other end of the
15 Internet communication, the people on the other end of the
16 telephone conversations, the people on the other end of lunch
17 meetings, did they know that he was a narcissistic personality?
18 MS. CORY: Your Honor, people who know Mr. Doggart
19 certainly know that.
20 THE COURT: Were all the people on the Internet --
21 did they all know him?
22 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I don't know what those people
23 knew. None of us know what those people knew.
24 He did not knowingly create. And that is what the
25 24 offense level is all about. Robert Doggart had to

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1 knowingly create a substantial risk of death or serious bodily
2 injury. He talked a lot. He was not knowingly creating a
3 risk. You know, could there have been a risk? Perhaps so,
4 depending on who he was talking to, the way Your Honor is
5 analyzing it. But in terms of his having knowingly done so,
6 he did not knowingly create a substantial risk of death or
7 serious bodily injury.
9 The Court will now address the objection to the use
10 of a Base Offense Level 24 as opposed to a Level 20. The
11 particular guideline we're talking about indicates that a
12 Level 24 is appropriate if the offense created a substantial
13 risk of death or serious bodily injury to any person other
14 than a participant in the offense, and that risk was created
15 knowingly or involved the destruction or attempted destruction
16 of a place of public use.
17 I think it is important for us to focus on the crime
18 of conviction here and the consequences that would reasonably
19 flow from the crime of conviction. Again, we're talking about
20 solicitation; we're not talking about crimes the defendant
21 personally might commit, but it is the solicitation of others
22 to commit the offense.
23 Ms. Cory is correct that the first part of the
24 guideline requires that the risk be knowingly created. And
25 knowingly, as defined in the guidelines, means "(1) if the

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1 element involves the nature of his conduct or the attendant
2 circumstances, he is aware that his conduct is of a nature or
3 that such circumstances exist, and (2) if the element involves
4 a result of his conduct, he is aware that it is practically
5 certain that his conduct will cause such a result."
6 The Court concludes that the defendant created a
7 substantial risk knowingly because he was aware, using the
8 terms of the guideline, that it was practically certain that
9 his conduct would cause such a result. The evidence presented
10 at trial indicates that at one point he discussed using a
11 demolition expert to make sure the buildings in Islamberg
12 burned down. He knew people lived nearby; in fact, he talked
13 about that. He also expected those people to try to fight any
14 resulting fire, and he talked about how slow the volunteer
15 fire department would be to respond because of the nature of
16 the geography in that area.
17 He knowingly solicited people. We don't have a
18 fixed idea of how many people he solicited, but we know it was
19 many people, through various means, to knowingly create a
20 substantial risk of serious bodily to others as required by
21 this guideline.
22 The defendant cites two cases in support of their
23 arguments, United States vs. George and United States vs.
24 Johnson. A close reading of the two cases, though, actually
25 supports the Court's decision that the defendant qualifies for

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1 the higher offense level as opposed to the lower offense
2 level. The first case, United States vs. George, a defendant
3 there burned a church, and the roof of the church collapsed
4 under the weight of two large HVAC units. The church was
5 burned in the middle of the night. And the risk that was
6 involved there was the substantial risk for the responding
7 firefighters. No one lived in the church. The fire took
8 place at night. So the church was not being used at the time.
9 The court of appeals, after conviction, vacated the
10 conviction and sent the case back, finding that the risk was
11 not substantial compared to the usual risk of arson, and also
12 finding the defendant had not knowingly created the risk in
13 the way outside of the norm for arson. It is to be expected
14 that whenever there is a fire, whether it results from arson
15 or otherwise, firefighters will respond. So that should be
16 expected. The court said, "Nearly all of the cases where an
17 appellate court has affirmed the application of this
18 guideline, the circumstance involved one or both of the
19 following two clearly exacerbating circumstances: (1) the risk
20 of a large explosion, more than just from the typical use of
21 accelerants in arson." And we don't have that. The second
22 one, though, is, "the presence of nearby residences," "the
23 presence of nearby residences."
24 All the evidence showed that this community was made
25 up of houses, mobile homes, the mosque, and other buildings.

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1 So it is clear that the defendant would have known that
2 residences were close to the targeted mosque in this case and
3 the defendant was aware of it.
4 The case goes on to say, "Moreover, courts are
5 generally warranted in applying this guideline to cases
6 involving bombs or large amounts of gasoline. Similarly, one
7 who sets a fire in the proximity of a residence will usually
8 be aware that it is practically certain that his or her
9 actions will create a substantial risk of death or bodily
10 injury."
11 The Court also recalls there was testimony in this
12 case regarding the defendant's efforts to recruit or use -- I
13 believe it was an EOD expert, explosive dem- -- let's see,
14 explosive ordnance demolitions expert. I don't think that we
15 consider someone with that type of expertise just planning on
16 getting a can of gasoline to set a fire. I think it is likely
17 that we're looking at something of a more explosive nature,
18 which would also take it out of the norm.
19 The other case, United States vs. Johnson, the
20 defendant there set fire to a church because of the race of
21 the attendees at the church. The court of appeals held that
22 the risk to the firefighters alone did not support the
23 application of this guideline because that risk involved
24 nothing more than just responding to a fire. The court,
25 nevertheless, though, affirmed the conviction because the

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1 parsonage stood only 50 feet from the church, and was
2 occupied.
3 Thus, in both these cases that the defendant uses to
4 support their arguments, both courts decided that this
5 guideline would be correctly applied if there were residences
6 close by the targeted building. And that's the case we have
7 here. So, in fact, both cases support the Court's decision to
8 deny the objection.
9 We've talked about the first part of the guideline.
10 The second part of the guideline talks about if the targeted
11 place was a place of public use, then the higher offense level
12 should be used. The guidelines point to 18 U.S.C. Section
13 2332f for the definition of place of public use, and that
14 definition says that a place of public use means "those parts
15 of any building, land, street, waterway, or other location
16 that are accessible or open to members of the public, whether
17 continuously, periodically, or occasionally, encompasses any
18 commercial, business, cultural, historical, educational,
19 religious, governmental, entertainment, recreational, or
20 similar place that is so accessible or open to the public."
21 The evidence at trial indicated that the mosque and
22 other places in Islamberg would qualify, under this
23 definition, as places of public use. So, as an alternative
24 finding, the Court finds that this part of the guidelines also
25 applies, and would support the offense level being placed at

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1 24 as opposed to 20.
2 So, for the reason the Court has just stated, the
3 Court denies the defendant's motion. The Court finds that the
4 probation office has correctly calculated the offense level at
5 the Level 24, and not 20.
6 What's the next objection?
7 MS. CORY: Your Honor, our next objections are to the
8 hate crime enhancement and terrorism enhancement. And, Your
9 Honor, if I may call my witnesses, I feel that their testimony
10 is going to be relevant, both to these objections and to
11 additional objections, such as acceptance of responsibility,
12 and it's going be relevant to downward departures and downward
13 variances. It just makes more sense to let them speak now, up
14 front, for the next objection.
15 THE COURT: Well, as I understand this objection, it
16 is based upon the Court's conclusion as to what the evidence at
17 trial demonstrated. Is that not right?
18 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I think it's based on what
19 Your Honor concludes both from the trial and what Your Honor
20 concludes based on the testimony at this hearing. I think that
21 there was a significant misapprehension of what Mr. Doggart was
22 like, whether he harbored any racial animus toward anyone,
23 whether there was any terroristic motivation in anything that
24 he did. If you --
25 THE COURT: I think I'm going to need some help on

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1 this. The jury's decision in this case, after instruction,
2 finding beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had
3 engaged in solicitation to intentionally damage and destroy the
4 mosque because of the religious character of that property,
5 isn't that what the Court is confined to?
6 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I don't believe that it is.
7 Our point is, the jury made a decision based on a specific set
8 of facts, and they concluded that at a point in time
9 Mr. Doggart had a particular state of mind and a particular
10 intent. I think that --
11 THE COURT: Well, I-- You're going to have to help
12 me with this. Let's assume that over a month period every day
13 a person has a different intent. On Day 15 they have an intent
14 to intentionally damage or destroy a facility because of the
15 religious character of that facility. On all the other days,
16 the other 29 days, they have a completely different intent.
18 THE COURT: The Court is called upon to decide
19 whether the defendant's actions on that particular day were
20 occasioned because of the solicitation to intentionally damage
21 or destroy a facility because of the religious character of
22 that property. I'm not sure how the other 29 days play into
23 it, then.
24 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I think they give it a context
25 that the jury didn't have. And when Your Honor was ruling on

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1 the Rule 29 motions, you noted that just because a person has a
2 plan or something at one point doesn't mean that that plan is
3 fully developed or that a particular course of action must be
4 in mind. What we're looking at for purposes of this sentencing
5 hearing, I would like to think, is, what is Mr. Doggart's
6 overall state of mind that Your Honor should be informed of.
7 THE COURT: I will give you this. I will assume that
8 at every time other than the time that the jury made this
9 determination Mr. Doggart had an innocent mind. Now, what does
10 that have to do with this Court's determination on this
11 particular guideline, though? I think the Court is limited to
12 what the jury determined. And the jury was looking at either a
13 specific time or a specific time period, and they made a
14 decision based upon the evidence that they heard——Mr. Doggart
15 had a chance to hear all that evidence and respond to it——and
16 they made it by a standard that most of us don't apply in our
17 own lives; that's beyond a reasonable doubt.
18 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I think at the sentencing
19 hearing Your Honor is making the decisions. I believe that the
20 evidence, both at trial and what we can show today, is that
21 Mr. Doggart never harbored racial animus toward anyone, he did
22 not foresee --
23 THE COURT: I don't know that the guideline says --
24 calls for that, though, does it? Does it say that you must
25 have a racial animus? Does it say that anywhere?

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1 MS. CORY: Your Honor, it says, "If the defendant
2 intentionally selected any victim or any property as the object
3 of the offense of conviction because of the actual or perceived
4 race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender,
5 gender identity, disability, or sexual orientation of any
6 person, increase by three levels."
7 We would like Your Honor to look at additional
8 evidence today and draw your own conclusion as to whether
9 Mr. Doggart, in the great scheme of things, in the commission
10 of this offense, was doing it out of -- motivated by the
11 perceived race or religion of any person. And we think the
12 evidence will show that he did not.
13 THE COURT: Let me hear from Mr. Piper.
14 Mr. Piper, I'm still having some difficulty
15 understanding.
16 (Brief pause.)
18 3A1.1, Hate Crime Motivation, Paragraph (a), "If the
19 finder of fact at trial," and then it's in the disjunctive,
20 "or, in the case of a plea of guilty or no contest, the court
21 at sentencing," but we don't have that, we have "If the finder
22 of fact at trial determines beyond a reasonable doubt that the
23 defendant intentionally selected any victim or any property as
24 the object of the offense of conviction because of the"
25 enumerated factors that Ms. Cory has raised.

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1 As the Court has noted on the Count 1, the civil
2 rights violation, the solicitation to commit the burning of
3 the mosque because of its religious nature, the Court
4 instructed the jury that "you must find this beyond a
5 reasonable doubt." I am assuming the Court could disregard
6 the guideline, under Booker, and say, "Well, I find that this
7 guideline is inappropriate," or "I don't want to apply it,"
8 whatever reason the Court wanted to do.
9 THE COURT: I'm not sure that's the argument, though,
10 that Ms. Cory is making.
11 MR. PIPER: I understand that, Judge. My argument
12 is, if the Court wants to disregard it, disregard it. But the
13 guideline has been met. The jury has found this beyond a
14 reasonable doubt. And this is what the guideline says.
15 Ms. Cory does want to argue that, "Well I can put
16 witnesses on who say that he has no racial animus."
17 I'm not sure we're talking about race. I think
18 we're talking about religion, with the mosque. But we can
19 certainly rebut, on a number of occasions, where the defendant
20 has an animus toward Islam.
21 You want to argue with this.
22 Ms. Cory wants to argue with this. But, you know,
23 the first one that comes to my mind is the radio broadcast
24 where he is praying at one minute, and then the next minute he
25 talks about killing them all, "and we will be cruel to them,"

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1 the Inglourious Basterds quote that he uses.
2 But, Judge, I think that the guideline has been met.
3 I'm not sure that -- that -- no matter how much the other
4 intent, as the Court noted on the other 29 days, when the full
5 moon is there -- and the jury has considered it in the light
6 of those facts, they have found him guilty beyond a reasonable
7 doubt on this very issue, and we would ask the Court to apply
8 that guideline.
9 There is another issue with respect to Count 2,
10 which Ms. Cory has not addressed yet, which I would like to
11 address after she does, Judge.
13 And so the only -- the only issue is whether the
14 Court should entertain evidence on this -- on this issue. The
15 Court, of course, will entertain argument. But I think that
16 the only evidence would have to relate to the jury's decision.
17 And I don't think that the Court can do anything at all that
18 calls into question the jury's decision.
19 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I understand the Court's
20 position. We are going to be asking for a downward departure.
21 We are going to be asking for a downward variance. It is going
22 to be on testimony that is relevant to the very question of
23 whether Mr. Doggart had either racial animus or was prejudiced
24 against any group of people because of their religion. That
25 testimony is relevant here because that's what we're talking

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1 about.
2 If Your Honor feels constrained by the jury's
3 verdict to add the three levels, the testimony that I am
4 asking to present is nonetheless relevant to this very
5 question. I would like to present it now so that Your Honor
6 could have it to consider throughout the entire rest of the
7 hearing. It's going to be relevant to the terrorism
8 enhancement. It's going to be relevant to all our downward
9 departure and downward variance arguments. It just seems like
10 a waste of time, to me, for you to not hear any of the
11 evidence until the very end of the hearing, when all of it
12 could be helpful in informing your opinion.
14 The Court, to the best of its ability, thinks it
15 understands the argument here. The Court is being asked to
16 reject the application of Section 3A1.1(a) of the guidelines.
17 The Court instructed the jury, the jury made a decision, and
18 the Court is bound by that decision. The Court will not do
19 anything at all that undermines or will second-guess the
20 jury's decision. So the Court will not permit evidence to be
21 presented on this issue.
22 The defense is correct that one of the
23 considerations in making a decision on a defendant's sentence
24 is the background and character and history of a defendant.
25 And the materials that the defendant is discussing might well

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1 be relevant for that purpose. The Court, though, is somewhat
2 limited in the way it approaches things. The Court's mind is
3 not as flexible as Ms. Cory's mind, and the Court has to take
4 things in a very lateral manner and one thing at a time. And
5 it might make sense to the great majority of people,
6 especially those with flexible minds. They can take in
7 material at one time and then apply it to various things down
8 the road. But the Court's mind, unfortunately, does not work
9 in that way. The Court has to take things one step at a time.
10 So the Court, then, will deny the defendant's motion
11 to not apply Section 3A1.1(a).
12 What is the next objection?
13 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I feel like what you were
14 really saying is that the Court is way more organized than I
15 am.
16 (Off-the-record discussion between opposing
17 counsel.)
18 MS. CORY: Your Honor, Mr. Piper is asking me a
19 question about was I going to bring up the grouping issue. It
20 was my understanding that I won that objection in the way that
21 the final presentence report was written. Was that not the
22 case? I think the way the probation officer prepared the final
23 presentence report took that objection into account. I don't
24 think that's something that the government objected to. If you
25 go to Count 2, it starts out with a base offense level of 21,

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1 it adds 12 levels for terrorism, and then --
2 (Off-the-record discussion between opposing
3 counsel.)
4 MS. CORY: I think that we're okay on that, Your
5 Honor, but if I'm --
6 (Brief pause.)
7 MS. CORY: In the original presentence report, the
8 grouping was done first, and three levels and twelve levels
9 were all added to the base offense level. But in the second
10 presentence report, three levels are added to Count 1 and
11 twelve levels are added to Count 2 and they're not grouped
12 until after that. So...
13 MR. PIPER: Your Honor, may I state what our
14 objection is, please, on this issue?
15 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I didn't think they had an
16 objection.
17 THE COURT: I had already asked the government for
18 objections.
19 MR. PIPER: I understand, Judge. And there's been a
20 mix-up on our part. What happened was, in the revised PSR the
21 defendant was found accountable -- held accountable for a hate
22 crime for both Counts 1 and 2; and in the second revised PSR,
23 which was issued on June 6th, he was only found liable for a
24 hate grime on Count 1. It makes a three-point difference,
25 Judge.

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1 We believe, very simply, that the mosque that's the
2 subject of Count 2 is the same building that's in Count 1.
3 Even though the jury need not have found that beyond a
4 reasonable doubt in Count 2, they certainly found it in
5 Count 1, and we believe it should have applied. I understand
6 we should have objected. It -- unfortunately it got by me,
7 Your Honor. I will say we'll save that argument for our final
8 argument when we have our sentencing issue, Judge.
9 THE COURT: Ms. Cory?
10 MS. CORY: And, Your Honor, the other thing I would
11 point out is, it wasn't the June 6th that made the change, it
12 was the May 24 presentence report that made that particular
13 change. So I think the government has had ample opportunity.
14 But I think the presentence report did correctly -- it
15 separated --
16 THE COURT: Well, my mind is actually on
17 Mr. Doggart's objections now.
19 THE COURT: This is how --
20 MS. CORY: Well, we don't --
21 THE COURT: -- the Judge's mind works. It's hard for
22 him to flip from one issue to the other issue.
24 THE COURT: So we're on this railroad track. Let's
25 try to stay on this track.

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1 MS. CORY: Your Honor, our next objection was, in
2 Count 2 there was a 12-level increase in the guidelines under
3 3A1.4 because this was a terroristic offense. And if you look
4 at the standard for when that applies——it's under 18 U.S.C.
5 2332b(g)(5)(A)——the offense has to be calculated to influence
6 or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion
7 or to retaliate against government conduct.
8 Another thing that this enhancement did——and this is
9 perhaps the most damaging of all——is, it took Mr. Doggart, who
10 has zero criminal history, and it made him a Criminal History
11 Category VI for purposes of calculating the guidelines. We do
12 not believe that the evidence supports the final determination
13 that he committed this offense to intimidate or coerce the
14 government or to retaliate against government conduct.
15 Now, it is true that if you look at all of the
16 tapes, at all of the transcripts, Mr. Doggart says a million
17 different things, but ultimately Mr. Doggart had one of two
18 things in mind, depending upon how sinister you think he was.
19 He wanted to go to Islamberg and see if there was a problem
20 there. If he determined that there was a problem, the
21 question is, what was he going to do about it. The most
22 sinister that you could say of him was that he did not believe
23 that the government could take care of this problem, and he
24 was going to take the matter into his own hands to neutralize
25 the danger. In other words, if you're looking at the worst

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1 things he says, he is never doing anything to intimidate or
2 coerce or retaliate. The very worst comments he makes are
3 that he doesn't trust the government to do its job; if he has
4 to, he will do it.
5 Your Honor, I absolutely do not believe that
6 Mr. Doggart was ever going to do anything. But if you're just
7 looking at statements, he was looking at neutralizing a
8 problem, not intimidating, coercing the government.
9 Now, here again, there is not a jury finding on this
10 issue, Your Honor. This, I believe, is an issue for the
11 Court. I have four people who can testify about the way
12 Mr. Doggart's mind works. To know what he was doing, what he
13 was thinking, requires more than just looking at hundreds of
14 statements, many of which are self-contradictory; it involves
15 understanding Mr. Doggart. And I would like to put those four
16 witnesses on now.
17 THE COURT: Let me hear from Mr. Piper.
18 Mr. Piper?
19 MR. PIPER: Your Honor, Mr. Mody is going to address
20 the terrorism issue, if it pleases the Court.
21 THE COURT: Mr. Mody?
22 MR. MODY: Thank you, Your Honor.
23 (Brief pause.)
24 MR. MODY: Your Honor, before I begin the argument as
25 to when the terrorism enhancement should apply, would the Court

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1 like to hear from the government about whether or not the four
2 witnesses should be allowed to testify first?
3 THE COURT: No. No.
4 MR. MODY: Okay. So, despite Ms. Cory's assertions
5 about what's in the defendant's mind, the best evidence of that
6 is what was proven at trial, and that's the defendant's words.
7 Over and over again we saw that the defendant doesn't have an
8 internal monologue, he has an external monologue. Everything
9 he thinks, he says. And there was more than one occasion where
10 he talked about this not only being a solicitation to burn down
11 a mosque because of its religious character, he also talked
12 about it being a potential threat that he wanted to address.
13 But he also wanted to influence or affect the government's
14 conduct, and he also wanted to retaliate for the government's
15 conduct.
16 The one thing that the defense can't divorce the
17 attack from is this date of April 15th. The evidence at trial
18 showed that the defendant became obsessed with a military
19 operation known as Operation Jade Helm that was supposed to
20 take place on April 15th of 2015. The defendant believed this
21 was a ruse and this was actually the government's attempt to
22 impose martial law. Every time the defendant talked about
23 Islamberg, it always revolved around this date of April 15th.
24 It's one of the most important facts to show that he had more
25 than one motive behind this attack.

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1 And the Sixth Circuit talks about it in both the
2 Stafford case and the Wright case, that you don't have to have
3 just one sole motivation, there can be more than one reason
4 for the conduct. And that's exactly what happened here.
5 With the Court's permission, I'll use the Elmo.
6 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: It just takes a second.
7 It's-- There we go.
8 MR. MODY: So this is a conversation from March 25th
9 with the confidential source. It's Exhibit -- Trial Exhibit
10 118, Page 2. He says, "We either hit New York a week
11 beforehand, okay, it could mess with them. They'll have to
12 move their assets, okay, they'll have to move some of their
13 assets, and it will disrupt their plans in Texas and Utah.
14 Then they might even -- you know, might even call it off, or we
15 could wait, and as soon as the Texas and Utah event occurs,
16 that's the time to hit Islamberg, right then, that exact same
17 day, a few hours after it starts in Texas."
18 So the date of the attack wasn't based on whether or
19 not Islamberg was a threat on April 15th; it was based on what
20 the government was going to do, or what the defendant believed
21 the government was going to do. The defendant's plan was to
22 disrupt the government's military exercise, it was to divert
23 the government's resources and assets, and it was also to
24 create a flashpoint for other militias to rise up.
25 In another conversation, on March 26th, with

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1 Lenny——this is Trial Exhibit Number 120, Page 1——it says,
2 "Now, the other diversionary tactic that I've got is in
3 Hancock, New York. Okay, there's three buildings there that
4 I'm interested in. One's a church, the mosque, okay, the
5 other is the school, and the other is the kitchen." He said,
6 "I've got a team of ten guys. One is a demolition expert.
7 We're going to blow up three buildings. And I've got ten
8 gunners, including me, and we all carry double E's, so we
9 don't miss. What that's going to do is, if they pull that
10 thing off in Texas, we'll stick something up in New York
11 state. They won't know what the hell to do with that. But
12 I've got a bunch of guys ragging my ass big time. They want
13 to go to war now."
14 And, in context, the war he's talking about is not a
15 war with Islamberg, it's not a war with Islam, it's a war
16 against the federal government. And this is very similar to
17 some of the cases that the probation report cites. In United
18 States vs. Stafford and United States vs. Wright, those cases
19 involved five coconspirators who wanted to blow up a bridge.
20 They were part of a rogue Occupy Wall Street group called
21 Occupy Cleveland. And one of the things they wanted to do was
22 to have violent confrontations with federal law enforcement.
23 And they also wanted to disrupt government infrastructure.
24 And that's one of the things the defendant talks about as
25 well. And over and over again he refers to it as a diversion,

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1 like, by the defendant's own account, this was not simply
2 about being a vigilante or protecting the -- the people from a
3 problem that the government failed to address.
4 An exhibit that I'll -- Trial Exhibit 122, a call
5 with William Tint on March 26th, the defendant again says, "To
6 me, it's not just from -- preventing something bad from
7 happening in New York, but it's also a diversionary tactic
8 from the other stuff they'll be pulling elsewhere in the
9 nation."
10 So even though the defense says, "Well, the
11 defendant says a million different things," when it comes to
12 whether or not he was retaliating for the government's conduct
13 at this Operation Jade Helm, whether or not he was intending
14 to influence the government conduct by moving military assets,
15 he repeats it over and over again. So it appears cumulative,
16 but, in fact, it shows the seriousness of his intent.
17 This call with Larry Smith, also on March 26th, he
18 says, "Yeah, there are soft targets, pretext of soft targets,
19 in my mind, religious buildings of the evil type, and that
20 would be our Islamic foes. Okay? And you can go after an
21 embassy -- not -- I'm sorry, not an embassy, but a lower level
22 -- a consulate, okay? Those are the soft targets. And then
23 there's a small military base somewhere in this country, and I
24 know exactly which one it is, and you take it over, okay, and
25 you cause this disruption that takes the attention away from

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1 all these other assets that are out there. But you're right,
2 it's not a bad idea to go after and take over, you know, CNN
3 or NBC in particular. So we've got something coming up here."
4 He's -- not only is he talking about attacking
5 Islamberg, he's also talking about attacking federal
6 buildings, he's talking about attacking the consulate office.
7 In some of his earliest Facebook posts at trial, he talks
8 about attacking facilities run by FEMA, the federal government
9 agency, which he believed were concentration camps. So it was
10 never about just Islamberg; it was about other targets as well
11 that would have affected and influenced the government
12 conduct.
13 Now, this is also a conversation with-- This is the
14 same call with Larry Smith. This is on Page 3 of Exhibit 123.
15 "I think a strike, a preemptive strike of a very specific
16 point-- No, we don't want to go out there and kill 500
17 people, we don't want to kill anybody, but we take out assets
18 and make a statement, and that will take out the government's
19 intentions, you know, and then they'll get worried, because as
20 soon as somebody does that, it's going to be motivational, and
21 you'll have 15 or 20 militias all over the nation doing that
22 stuff, too."
23 So, again, this is the flashpoint the defendant
24 talks about, this will be a flashpoint for the uprising of the
25 militias to -- to attack the government that he sees as

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1 imposing martial law. And although the defendant never
2 explicitly talks about a violent confrontation with federal
3 agents, like the defendant does in the Graham case, or in the
4 case of Stafford and Wright, he implies it. He says, "We're
5 going to take out assets." Either that's people or that's
6 infrastructure.
7 And the other thing he talks about is, by creating a
8 flashpoint, he'd distract the government's attention, for
9 these other militia groups to rise. And what that means is
10 that these other militia groups, in his mind, can then attack
11 the government, can attack the military, in a way that might
12 create the civil insurrection.
13 Ms. Cory mentioned one of the last calls we have
14 before his arrest, with Steve Branca on April 9th, and he
15 said, "These people are sick, and they're not going to bring
16 that stuff to our country. There will be a point, Steve, I
17 think that we will have no choice but to start civil
18 insurrection. Now, whether that's April 15th or, you know,
19 before this crazy President gets out of office, I don't know."
20 So in the defendant's own words, he believed this
21 was a way to start a civil insurrection, to start a
22 flashpoint. And he discusses the flashpoint in the Nashville
23 meeting with the confidential source on March 17th. And he
24 continues that talk about a flashpoint up until the last
25 meeting at the City Café with the confidential source, Shane

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1 Shielein, and Sally McNulty. This idea of a flashpoint, of
2 disrupting the government's conduct, is key to one of his
3 motivations.
4 The other thing that the Sixth Circuit talks about
5 in the Wright and Stafford case is this idea of more than one
6 motive. And it doesn't matter that one of his motives was
7 benign or good-intentioned, that he was trying to stop
8 something bad from happening. The reality was, his other aim
9 was focused on blowing up the building because of its
10 religious character, and also influencing government conduct
11 or retaliating for the government's conduct in that military
12 operation.
13 And then the Sixth Circuit references a case from
14 the Seventh Circuit, United States vs. Christianson, and it's
15 586 F.3d Reporter 532. It's a 2009 case. And it says, "3A1.4
16 looks at the crime involved and the perpetrator's motive. If
17 the act is among a litany of crimes listed in 2332b(g)(5)(B),
18 which include a bevy of the most horrible and odious acts in
19 the criminal code, including everything from murder and
20 torture to the destruction of government property, and it was
21 calculated to influence or affect the conduct of the
22 government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate
23 against the government's conduct, then it is a federal crime
24 of terrorism, and for all intents and purposes at sentencing,
25 that person is a terrorist."

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69
1 And that's exactly what we have here today, Your
2 Honor. The defendant had more than one motive, but one of his
3 motives was clearly to influence the government or harm the
4 government, as well as to retaliate for the government's
5 conduct. There's also no question that the in code offense of
6 solicitation to commit arson is considered by the enhancement,
7 because the enhancement specifically calls for -- extends to
8 the felonies that involved or intended to promote a crime of
9 terrorism.
10 The Court's instruction on solicitation to the jury
11 was that the defendant solicited, commanded, induced, or
12 endeavored to persuade someone else to burn down the building.
13 All these were forms of promotion. And the urging of someone
14 to carry this out was a way to promote this type of crime. So
15 for these reasons the probation report is correct that the --
16 the enhancements should apply and it's important.
17 THE COURT: Would you now like to speak to the
18 request of the defense to call witnesses?
19 MR. MODY: You know, the best evidence of what the
20 defendant believes is in his own words. The government doesn't
21 believe that someone else can talk about what's in the
22 defendant's own mind as best as the defendant can. And we have
23 ample evidence of what the defendant wanted, what the defendant
24 believed, and what the defendant desired, based on these
25 recorded calls.

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70
Gaunt - Direct Examination
2 Ms. Cory, the Court is going to compromise. The
3 Court will permit you to call -- I think you said four
4 witnesses?
6 THE COURT: I'm going to ask that you limit yourself
7 to five minutes each on direct.
9 THE COURT: Okay. It's almost noontime now. Why
10 don't we break for lunch, then. And why don't we try to resume
11 at 1:15, 1:15.
12 (Luncheon recess.)
13 THE COURT: Ms. Cory, are you ready for your first
14 witness?
15 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor. Thank you.
16 Annita Gaunt.
17 (Brief pause.)
18 MS. CORY: And, Your Honor, I will do my best to keep
19 it to five minutes, but I'm not the greatest timekeeper in the
20 world. I'm sure you're going to tell me when my time is up.
21 THE COURT: Well, we have the greatest timekeeper in
22 the world sitting in front of me in the person of Ms. Lewis.
23 So Ms. Lewis will keep track of the time and let us know when
24 five minutes expire.
25 (Brief pause.)

5409
71
1 ANNITA GAUNT,
2 called as a witness at the instance of the defendant, having
3 been first duly sworn, was examined, and testified as
4 follows:
5 DIRECT EXAMINATION
6 BY MS. CORY:
7 Q Would you please state your name.
8 A Annita Gaunt.
9 Q And where do you live?
10 A I live in Florida.
11 Q Okay. What is your relationship to Robert Doggart?
12 A Robert Doggart is my brother.
13 Q And I believe you've had some connection with the
14 case in the past. Did you write a letter to the Court in
15 connection with sentencing?
16 A Yes, I did.
17 MS. CORY: And, Your Honor, that's Exhibit Number 1
18 of Document 218.
19 BY MS. CORY:
20 Q Did you attend your brother's trial?
21 A I attended the second week of the trial.
22 Q The second week?
23 A Yes.
24 Q All right. You're aware that he was convicted.
25 What is your understanding of what Robert Doggart was

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72
1 convicted of doing?
2 A My understanding is that he was convicted of talking
3 with other people about destroying a building in the subject
4 community.
5 Q In the what?
6 A In the subject community at hand.
7 Q And that was?
8 A Islamberg.
9 Q Okay. Knowing your brother as you do, do you
10 believe he would ever have followed through with having
11 someone help him destroy the building?
12 A Absolutely not. There's no possible way.
13 Q Now, give us a little background on your brother,
14 such as how long you've known him.
15 A Sure. So my brother and I grew up in a fairly
16 humble home. You know, my parents didn't have a lot of money,
17 so worked -- they worked very, very hard to send my brother
18 and I to Catholic school. We went to Catholic school Grades 1
19 through 12.
20 I can tell you that Catholic schools -- between the
21 Catholic schools and our parents' upbringing, we were taught
22 to respect everyone, work hard for what we want, and treat
23 everybody fairly. And I don't think he's varied from those
24 core values in any way.
25 Q Now, since your childhood have you maintained a

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73
1 close relationship with your brother?
2 A Yes, I have.
3 Q So during the course of a year, how often do you
4 think you usually talk to him?
5 A Oh, gosh. Once a week.
6 Q Now, I believe that at least one of the
7 conversations that was played during the trial was a
8 conversation your brother had with you. Is that correct?
9 A That is correct.
10 Q So would you describe your brother's strengths, both
11 professional and personal?
12 A Sure. My brother is very accomplished in his work
13 career. He's had a very successful career. He worked hard
14 for that career. He went to school for many, many hours,
15 along with working. He's had a lot of accomplishments. He
16 was president of ASNT. And there's been many, many other
17 things along the way. He's been-- He traveled
18 internationally representing ASNT.
19 Q Let me stop you for just a second. What is ASNT?
20 A American Society of Nondestructive Testing.
21 Q And do you know what testers do, what nondestructive
22 testers do?
23 A I can't say that I do.
24 Q Okay. We'll have another witness who can tell us
25 that.

5412
74
1 A Okay.
2 Q In terms of your brother's weaknesses, I would say
3 you've had an opportunity to see those, too. If you were to
4 describe Robert Doggart's personal weaknesses, what would you
5 say they were?
6 A I would say that, due to his diagnosis of
7 narcissistic, he has a tendency to embellish and exaggerate
8 every story he tells or everything he's trying to tell you,
9 you know, more for shock value than anything else. I would
10 say that's his weakness.
11 Q Now, during the conversation that you had with your
12 brother that was played during the trial, your brother said
13 some incredibly mean and hateful things, and yet your response
14 was generally, "Uh-huh," "Uh-huh," "Okay," "Yeah." Can you
15 explain how you understood that conversation that you had with
16 your brother on March the 17th of 2015?
17 A Sure. So I paid it no mind, to be quite truthful.
18 I was used to my brother talking in exaggerated stories and
19 embellishing things with lines from movies and quotes from
20 books and -- more for shock value than anything else. So I
21 really paid it no mind, because it was something that was
22 typical.
23 Q So when he says something like, "That camp up there,
24 they're either going to try and poison the Delaware River, the
25 Delaware River, you can just imagine that, or poison the

5413
75
Gaunt - Cross-Examination
1 reservoir that supplies water to New York, or take 40 men into
2 New York City in four vans, with guns, and kill as many people
3 before they're killed."
4 And you respond, "Yeah."
5 A Well, that's because I honestly felt that whoever he
6 was talking to was convincing him of this. And I don't think
7 he ever really even believed it.
8 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: Ms. Cory, it's five minutes.
9 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I'm going to have to object,
10 that I need more than five minutes to finish the questions.
11 I'm going as absolutely fast as I can on this. My first two
12 witnesses are going to take a little more time than the second.
13 THE COURT: Is that her five minutes, Ms. Lewis?
14 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: Yes. I counted. I'm watching
15 the clock.
17 Is there any cross-examination?
18 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I do object to being cut
19 short. I think that --
20 MR. PIPER: Judge, can you give her two more minutes?
21 I tell you what, Your Honor, if Your Honor's going to give me
22 five minutes, give Ms. Cory two of mine.
23 THE COURT: I was only going to give the government
24 two minutes.
25 (Brief pause.)

5414
76
1 CROSS-EXAMINATION
2 BY MR. PIPER:
3 Q Ms. Gaunt, good afternoon.
4 A Hi.
5 Q How long has Mr. Doggart been talking about killing
6 people?
7 A He's never talked about killing people.
8 Q Well, he talked about that in the phone call with
9 you, didn't he?
10 A Yes, he sure did.
11 Q And was that the first time he'd ever talked about
12 killing people in a phone call?
13 A Absolutely.
14 Q It caused you a little concern, maybe, did it not?
15 A No, it did not, not talking --
16 Q Never caused you any concern?
17 A No, it did not.
18 Q Talking about going up to Islamberg and cutting
19 somebody in half with a shotgun, that didn't cause you any
20 concern?
21 A No, because --
22 Q Okay. Go ahead.
23 A -- my brother's a very nonviolent person. He never
24 has been violent --
25 Q Okay.

5415
77
1 A -- and he never will by violent.
2 Q You understand he was convicted of solicitation to
3 have other people do this with him. Is that right? Do you
4 understand that?
5 A I do understand that.
6 Q And you do understand how you could fan the flames
7 of this for somebody who may have been either weak-minded or
8 had a propensity to do it? Do you understand that?
9 A I do understand that.
10 Q Your brother's a persuasive person, isn't he?
11 A Sometimes.
12 Q He's very verbal, is he not?
13 A Yes, he is.
14 Q Has a penchant for using grandiloquent speech,
15 perhaps? Highfalutin? Purple prose?
16 A Exaggerated, yes.
17 Q All right. You could see where that could be --
18 somebody could take him as being serious and learned. Is that
19 right?
20 A You mean someone else --
21 Q Yes.
22 A -- other than those people that know him the best?
23 Q Yes, ma'am.
24 A Yes, I can see that.
25 Q No question about that. Is that right?

5416
78
Gaunt - Redirect Examination
1 A That's correct.
2 MR. PIPER: That's all I have. Thank you.
3 THE COURT: We'll give you a minute for redirect.
4 REDIRECT EXAMINATION
5 BY MS. CORY:
6 Q Ms. Gaunt, your brother was arrested on April
7 the 10th, before he had gone to Islamberg. Had he not been
8 arrested on April the 10th, do you have an opinion of what he
9 would have done?
10 A Yes, I do.
11 Q And what's that?
12 A I don't think anything would have happened. I think
13 he would have been in bed until about noon on that day that he
14 was supposed to go there. My brother has many medical
15 disabilities, as well as the mental disabilities that we've
16 talked about. Oftentimes he didn't even get out of bed before
17 noon each day, and that's fact. And I don't think he was
18 going to go anywhere. I had-- I don't think he had any
19 intentions of going there.
20 Q Did you have any qualms, after hearing the testimony
21 at trial, that you might be wrong, that perhaps your brother
22 was capable of violence?
23 A No. I still don't believe it.
24 Q All right. Thank you.
25 A I don't think he is capable of violence.

5417
79
Lee - Direct Examination
1 MS. CORY: Thank you.
2 THE COURT: And, Ms. Gaunt, what part of Florida are
3 you from?
4 THE WITNESS: St. Petersburg.
5 THE COURT: St. Petersburg.
6 THE WITNESS: Yes.
8 (Witness excused.)
9 THE COURT: Call your next witness.
10 MS. CORY: Our next witness, Your Honor, is Terry
11 Lee.
12 (Brief pause.)
13 THERESA LEE,
16 follows:
18 BY MS. CORY:
19 Q Would you state your name, please.
20 A It's Theresa Lee.
21 Q And do you live here in Chattanooga?
22 A I live in Hixson, Tennessee.
23 Q Okay. And what is your relationship to Robert
24 Doggart?
25 A He's my father.

5418
80
1 Q And were you raised by your father?
2 A Yes.
3 Q And what kind of relationship do you have at this
4 point?
5 A A close relationship.
6 Q Are you in touch with him multiple --
7 A Multiple times a week.
8 Q Okay. And you wrote a letter for the Court, did you
9 not?
10 A I did.
11 Q It's Exhibit 2 of Document 218. And you attended
12 the trial. Is that correct?
13 A Yes.
14 Q Okay. What was your understanding of what he was
15 convicted of?
16 A Solicitation to burn down a mosque, and solicitation
17 to commit a crime.
18 Q And having heard the testimony at the trial-- Did
19 you attend the whole trial?
20 A Yes. I think I was absent the first day, due to
21 work.
22 Q Okay.
23 A Um-hmm.
24 Q Did you draw a conclusion, from listening to the
25 evidence and knowing your father as you do, as to whether he

5419
81
1 ever would have committed an act of violence against
2 Islamberg?
3 A I do not believe he would ever have committed an act
4 of violence to Islamberg or any other place.
5 Q And why do you say that?
6 A Because I know him. He has demonstrated a most
7 giving spirit, a most generous spirit. However, he does
8 embellish and talk a lot, and so he uses a lot of verbiage
9 that most would roll their eyes at.
10 I'm sorry, Dad.
11 But I don't believe he would have ever hurt any
12 individual.
13 Q In the years that you've known your dad, has he ever
14 given any indication of being opposed, in particular, to a
15 specific religion?
16 A No. Quite the opposite.
17 Q What has he said?
18 A I'm wearing today a necklace that he gave me when I
19 was 17. I'm going to try not to cry. He was raised Catholic.
20 My mother was Baptist. And he taught me to research and read
21 for myself, not what other people tell me, what I believe to
22 be my own truth as -- in a spiritual way. This necklace he
23 gave me is a cross and a Lotus flower and a Star of David. To
24 me, this is a testament of who he wanted to raise his children
25 to be, and I think he is the same way.

5420
82
1 Q Growing up, did he ever talk to you about Islam?
2 A Yes.
3 Q What did he say?
4 A That they go through their own truth to God, there's
5 many paths to God, there's not one single way to God, and --
6 and that would include the Islam faith.
7 Q Did he ever give any indication to you that he
8 harbored any animosity toward Muslims?
9 A No, not at all. We actually had dinner guests that
10 were Muslims, black African-American -- not -- they're not
11 Americans, actually, they were black Africans that he worked
12 with, that would come to dinner with us and we would greet and
13 have great -- great friendship with.
14 Q So he spoke to you about racial matters as well --
15 A Of course.
16 Q -- while you were growing up?
17 A Of course.
18 Q What did he say about relationships among the races?
19 A He embraces -- or he taught us to embrace people who
20 are different from us, that everyone has their own story, and
21 that everybody should be judged on their fruits of labor.
22 Q Had your dad not been arrested April the 10th, do
23 you believe he would have gone to Islamberg or ever committed
24 an act of violence against that town?
25 A No. Absolutely not.

5421
83
Lee - Cross-Examination
1 Q And why do you think that?
2 A I think that because he's not a violent person. He
3 had-- He loves guns. He's got lots of guns. Although, he
4 hasn't bought a gun since 2013, so he doesn't -- he hasn't
5 stockpiled guns recently, over the last few years. But-- So
6 I wanted to correct that. But he's not a violent person. He
7 uses it for recreational use, target practices, things like
8 that.
10 CROSS-EXAMINATION
11 BY MR. PIPER:
12 Q Ms. Lee, even though you say your father's not a
13 violent person, were you surprised by the violent language
14 that he used?
15 A No.
16 Q You were not?
17 A No.
18 Q So talking about killing Muslims on the radio
19 show -- you heard that one, did you not?
20 A I did.
21 Q "They shall know us by our cruelty. We will be
22 cruel to them. We'll leave their broken, dead bodies for
23 their brothers to recover." You weren't surprised by that?
24 A I was surprised that he did it on a radio show.
25 Q Okay. So the whole public could hear it. The whole

5422
84
Lee - Cross-Examination
1 universe could hear that. Is that right?
2 A Yes.
3 Q You also say in your letter that your father told
4 you that you do what's right, stand up to bullies. Is that
5 correct?
6 A That's correct.
7 Q Do you think it's a little bit of a bully move to
8 talk about gunning two people down at 1:00 in the morning
9 using silencers? Does that feel like it's maybe more than
10 bullying?
11 A No. Actually he was trying to understand the
12 terroristic -- terrorist threat that our country faces today.
13 Q Uh-huh.
14 A He never did any of those things --
15 Q I understand. Do you --
16 A -- and nor did he go up there. So I don't feel like
17 that was bullying.
18 Q Okay. Let me ask you, do you think it's a bully
19 move, bully speech, to say that, "I'm going to kill two people
20 at 1:00 in the morning use a silencer so nobody will know
21 they're dead"?
22 A Yes, I think that probably would be considered --
23 Q Okay.
24 A -- but, however, I would like to just note that he
25 typically does not think that of Muslims.

5423
85
Lee - Redirect Examination
1 Q Okay.
2 A He thinks that of terrorists.
3 Q Okay.
4 A And so I think he had a misconception of who those
5 people were.
6 Q Okay. Were you surprised he went to Nashville to
7 meet with the CI?
8 A Yes, I am surprised about that.
9 Q Carried his shotgun with him, and his M4. Were you
10 surprised by that as well?
11 A No, I'm not surprised he brought his guns.
12 Q Were you surprised that he had maps of Islamberg
13 when he went there?
14 A Yes.
15 Q Okay. And a route to get to Islamberg? That
16 surprised you as well?
17 A Yes.
18 MR. PIPER: That's all I have. Thank you.
20 BY MS. CORY:
21 Q You weren't surprised by his violent speech?
22 A Correct.
23 Q Does your dad have a propensity for speaking in
24 grandiose terms?
25 A Yes. That's the nature of part of his diagnosis.

5424
86
Lee - Redirect Examination
1 Q And can you give me an example from your life of
2 something your dad said that just flabbergasted you, that he
3 said to you, not that you've witnessed.
4 A So one thing he said to me a few years -- it was
5 probably 15 years ago, it was right after my parents divorced,
6 and he called me at work and said that he had just slit his
7 wrists and he had called an ambulance and that he was going to
8 hang up. So of course I immediately become alarmed and -- but
9 I know Dad, I know he says a lot of things to get attention.
10 Sorry, Dad.
11 But he says a lot of things to get attention.
12 That's just the nature of him. And so I decided to call the
13 ambulances first -- the local ambulances first, to find out if
14 anybody has been scheduled to go out to his home.
15 And they said, "No, nobody. Do you want us to go
16 out there?"
17 And I said, "No. Don't worry about it."
18 And so I left work, just to make sure, and I went
19 back to his house. And he was at home. He was fine.
20 Q Did you ask him why he had called you and told you
21 that he had just slit his wrists?
22 A He said-- He didn't act like he knew what I was
23 talking about.
24 Q So did he deny that he had called you?
25 A Yes.

5425
87
Seay - Direct Examination
1 Q All right. Was that typical of the kind of
2 conversations that you had with your dad?
3 A Yes.
4 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: Time.
8 MS. CORY: Ed Seay.
9 (Brief pause.)
10 ED SEAY,
13 follows:
15 BY MS. CORY:
16 Q Mr. Seay, would you spell your last name, please.
17 A S-E-A-Y.
18 Q I wanted to make sure I had that right.
19 A Diphthong.
20 Q And what-- Where do you reside? Not your --
21 A Signal Mountain.
22 Q Okay. Signal Mountain, Tennessee.
23 A Chattanooga.
24 Q And what is your relationship with Robert Doggart?
25 A I was -- worked with him at the Tennessee Valley

5426
88
1 Authority.
2 Q And during what period of time was that?
3 A Somewhere around '98 to 2007.
4 Q And since then have you remained in contact with
5 him?
6 A Occasionally. He and I -- I want to say we're not
7 real close friend-friends, but we were more of a professional
8 type friends. But I did stay in contact. I helped him when
9 he moved to Signal Mountain and things like that, yeah.
10 Q So, when you were working, what were the two of you
11 doing at TVA?
12 A We were shop supervisors. Tennessee Valley has a
13 huge repair facility in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. And I had an
14 extensive turbine repair background as a mechanical engineer.
15 Bob had an extensive background as a metallurgist. So we --
16 our professions complemented each other. And he ran one shift
17 and I ran another shift at the service shop.
18 Q And so during that period of time, did you see each
19 other every day?
20 A Every day. We had about a 30-minute overlap in our
21 two shifts, that we discussed what had been accomplished in my
22 shift, and we would lay out and determine how he would try to
23 perform his duties on his shift.
24 Q And were those conversations ever surprising?
25 A Oh, yeah. Every day.

5427
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1 Q Can you give me an example of what kind of
2 conversation you're talking about where it didn't proceed just
3 like a normal business conversation?
4 A Well, it was -- it was a lot of -- I keep using the
5 term "shock value." He would come in and make a thing like,
6 "Boy, you ought to see this gun I got today," you know. And
7 like the prosecution's been referring to this shotgun that'll
8 cut people in half, that would be the type terminology Bob
9 would use. He'd say, "This thing's capable of cutting people
10 in half, and I got one of them." But he would do that to give
11 the shock treatment, just to see what an individual's reaction
12 was.
13 And another example I can think of was, he was on
14 Ambien because he was having trouble sleeping. I think this
15 was about the time his divorce was going. And he told me that
16 he had-- This was on a weekend, because he and I both came
17 back to Chattanooga on weekends. He was coming back and forth
18 to Chattanooga every day from Muscle Shoals, which I wasn't
19 aware of at the time, because it -- he wanted to be with his
20 children. But he told me he woke up in the middle of the
21 night-- And Ambien has got one bad side effect that his
22 doctor had not told him, and one of them was sleepwalking.
23 And he got up -- he told me he built a fire in the middle of
24 his living room and cooked a steak, put the steak on a platter
25 in the kitchen, and went back to bed.

5428
90
1 And after I talked with you about it, Bob says he
2 doesn't remember telling me that story, he does remember
3 getting up and cooking a steak, but he cooked it on a frying
4 pan in the... So that could have been another example of him
5 telling me a story about something that he did, which he
6 cooked a steak, but he just didn't tell me the way he did it.
7 Q But you wondered at the time, didn't you, how
8 somebody would start a fire in their living room?
9 A Oh, I could understand it, because my wife was on
10 Ambien at the same time. I mean, she had all kinds of
11 delusions, pink elephants and all kinds of things like that.
12 But it also points out the fact that he would tell
13 stories and embellish them just to see what my reaction would
14 be to him building a fire in his living room.
15 Q Did you ever observe Robert Doggart doing anything
16 that you considered violent?
17 A No. I --
18 Q Did you ever see him get angry?
19 A I don't ever recall him being angry at all.
20 Q So what was his demeanor when he faced problems?
21 A He would sit down and analyze it, and I think he
22 would even go so far as to make steps, just like a lot of
23 engineers do, "Step 1, I'm going to define the problem; Step
24 2, I'm going to come up with the many -- step-by-step process
25 that I'm going to solve the problem." So he never got upset.

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91
1 He never got mad. He looked at everything as an opportunity
2 to solve a problem, rather than a problem being a problem.
3 Q And while he was at TVA, did he solve problems?
4 A Many. And he was very, very capable and
5 accomplished, not only as an NDE and NDT but also as an
6 engineer.
7 Q And during your conversations with Mr. Doggart, did
8 racial matters or religious matters ever get discussed?
9 A No, not that I recall. One tale he told me, which I
10 didn't know whether or not -- I still don't today -- was
11 that -- I think one of his daughters was getting married, and
12 he was -- he'd already been through a divorce, so he went
13 online for a dating service, and found a black lady that he
14 said was really attractive, really smart, because he told me
15 he would not date anybody that was not really smart, and he
16 took her to the wedding. So today I sit here and say I don't
17 know if that's true or not, but that's just another story that
18 Bob Doggart would tell.
19 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: That's time, Ms. Cory.
21 MR. PIPER: No questions, Your Honor.
22 THE COURT: Thank you, sir. You may step down.
23 THE WITNESS: Um-hmm.

5430
92
Hellier - Direct Examination
1 MS. CORY: Charles Hellier.
2 (Brief pause.)
3 CHARLES HELLIER,
6 follows:
8 BY MS. CORY:
9 Q Mr. Hellier, would you please give us your complete
10 name and let us know where you live.
11 A My name is Charles Hellier. And I live in a place
12 you've probably never heard of, Big Canoe, Georgia.
13 Q I've heard of Big Canoe.
14 A Good.
15 Q And what is your relationship to Robert Doggart?
16 A A friend and a fellow professional practitioner of
17 our technology, nondestructive testing.
18 Q And could you tell us just a little bit about what
19 nondestructive testing is and what Mr. Doggart did in that
20 realm?
21 A I give lectures on NDT, and I've never been able to
22 describe it in five minutes or less, but it basically is the
23 technology which is -- includes about 80 different methods
24 where we apply the technology to different materials and
25 products, looking for flaws, looking for defects, and

5431
93
1 therefore averting any kind of potential failure.
2 In fact, our society we're both members of and both
3 past-presidents, is -- the by line is, "Making your world a
4 safer place."
5 Q So would it be correct to say your job and Bob
6 Doggart's job is to make sure bad things don't happen?
7 A In general terms, yes. It's really -- it's, like I
8 say, a number of different methods, like X-ray——I think
9 everybody understands X-rays and ultrasound——where we --
10 instead of examining bodies, we're examining materials and
11 structures. And it's -- virtually is applied to every type of
12 industry where any kind of potential failure could be
13 catastrophic.
14 Q So you've observed Mr. Doggart, both professionally
15 and in connection with the society that you both were
16 presidents of. Is that correct?
17 A Yes, that's correct.
18 Q Did you ever observe any idiosyncrasies in
19 Mr. Doggart, just out-of-the-ordinary characteristics?
20 A Well, it -- we really go back a long way, because
21 the first time I met Mr. Doggart was in a classroom. I was
22 teaching a materials inspection course at the local community
23 college, and Bob was one of the students. And I think it was
24 at that time that he was introduced to nondestructive testing.
25 So, going back as a student, I can't say that I noticed

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1 anything different, any idiosyncrasies.
2 From there, I know that he went to work for
3 Northeast Utilities, a nuclear utility, and then maybe a few
4 other places, but TVA, and then eventually became an assessor
5 for the British Institute of Nondestructive Testing, where he
6 was actually going out and assessing companies and personnel.
7 Q So in connection with the society of which you-all
8 were both presidents, you held meetings. Did you ever observe
9 any unusual conduct by Mr. Doggart at any of the meetings?
10 A Well, in our society, American Society for
11 Nondestructive Testing, where we did have many meetings, it
12 wasn't unusual for a lot of folks to show their
13 idiosyncrasies, because there were many decisions that had to
14 be made, and there were major activities that influenced the
15 technology and the direction it was going.
16 Bob, I can honestly say, not as a friend but as an
17 observer, was always looking to do things better. And even
18 though he disagreed with the majority, he would stand up and
19 be very adamant about his position. And sometimes he changed
20 minds, and sometimes he didn't.
21 I just recall one thing, when you say out of line.
22 We were having a major business meeting. By the way, this
23 ASNT group, we have about 15,000 members, so it's big. And in
24 this meeting, the person up on the platform, who was trying to
25 perform as the parliamentarian, did things wrong, obviously

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Hellier - Cross-Examination
1 didn't understand Roberts' Rules. Bob did. And he stood up.
2 Eventually he ended up on the platform, straightening the
3 whole meeting out about what parliamentarian process was. And
4 that, I thought, was unusual. But it was not out of line for
5 Bob. Always spoke for what he believed was the right thing,
6 even though he was not popular.
7 Q And in this case he believed in following Robert's
8 Rules of Order. Is that correct?
9 A That's absolutely right.
10 Q And he was going to do what he thought necessary to
11 make sure that people did what the rules required. Is that
12 correct?
13 A Absolutely. I'll tell you, I'm a pretty brave guy.
14 I wouldn't have done it.
15 Q And did you ever observe him doing anything violent?
16 A Violent?
17 Q Yes.
18 A I never thought for one moment that he would be
19 capable of doing anything violent, based on all the years that
20 I've known him.
21 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: It's time, Ms. Cory.
22 MS. CORY: So you-- Pardon me.
23 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: It's time Ms. Cory.
24 MS. CORY: All right. Thank you.
25 THE WITNESS: Wow, that was fast.

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Hellier - Cross-Examination
1 CROSS-EXAMINATION
2 BY MR. PIPER:
3 Q Mr. Hellier, good afternoon.
4 A Good afternoon.
5 Q You say that it's part of you-all's job to make sure
6 bad things don't happen. Is that right? As an NDE person,
7 nondestructive tester.
8 A Yes, sir.
9 Q You're also aware-- Have you heard any of the
10 transcripts in this case, any of the tapes?
11 A No, sir.
12 Q It wouldn't just be idiosyncratic, to you, to talk
13 about killing innocent children, would it?
14 A No.
15 Q That would be something that you would be mortified
16 by, would you not?
17 A Absolutely.
18 Q And you do not -- you haven't really had a lot of
19 contact with Mr. Doggart in, say, the past seven or eight
20 years. Is that correct?
21 A Well, maybe less than that. I think I spoke to him
22 maybe a year or two ago. He actually asked if I would be able
23 to come for the trial. And I was out of the country. So I
24 couldn't do that. So that was the most recent.
25 Q My point is, you say in your letter you've lost

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Hellier - Redirect Examination
1 contact with him in the recent past. Is that correct?
2 A Yes, sir. That's correct.
3 Q So what you're talking about here was when you-all
4 were working together, and that's probably -- ended in, what,
5 '08 or '09?
6 A Maybe later than that. '11.
7 Q Okay.
8 A 2012 at the latest.
9 Q All right.
10 That's all I have. Thank you.
12 BY MS. CORY:
13 Q Mr. Hellier --
14 A Oh, sorry.
15 Q -- I was going to ask you one quick question, just
16 to reiterate, based on what Mr. Piper was asking you. You
17 haven't kept in close contact, but do you feel like you know
18 the man Bob Doggart.
19 A I really do. I believe I know him. He's a very
20 passionate, very patriotic person, believes in doing things
21 right. And some of the things that I have become aware of
22 recently is not the Bob Doggart that I know.
23 Q Are you comfortable in saying, as you did, that he
24 is not a violent person?
25 A Yes. Absolutely.

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1 MS. CORY: All right. Thank you.
2 THE COURT: You may step down.
3 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
5 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I think we were on our
6 terrorism objection. And you allowed me to get in my four
7 witnesses that I think are going to be relevant to all of the
8 objections and arguments here on out. Would you like me to go
9 ahead and proceed?
10 THE COURT: You're correct. I deviated from my
11 standard practice of not taking testimony unless that testimony
12 is necessary for the calculation of the guidelines. And as I
13 heard the witnesses, I do not see that anything that they said
14 would assist the Court in determining what the proper
15 guidelines are in this case. As Ms. Cory indicated earlier,
16 they might be helpful to the Court in looking at the
17 defendant's background, history, and characteristics. So, in
18 determining the 3553 factors, they might be helpful. But from
19 what I saw and heard, I did not see or hear anything at all
20 that would affect in any way the Court's calculation of the
21 guidelines.
22 Although the Court did make an exception in this
23 case to allow the witnesses to be heard, the Court did put
24 limitations on the time that would be expended doing it. I
25 don't think we got started exactly at 15 minutes after the

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1 hour. I think we got started somewhere after that. It's
2 about ten minutes after the hour now. So I suspect we spent
3 about 45 to 50 minutes on the witnesses.
4 Okay. Proceed.
5 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I don't think we spent that
6 long, because I don't think we started back to court until
7 after 1:30. But, anyway, I --
8 THE COURT: Well, that's 40 minutes, then. It's
9 1:30. That's 40 minutes, then.
10 MS. CORY: I appreciate your allowing me to do that.
11 I regret that you don't find it relevant, because our argument
12 over and over is going to be, solicitation required an intent
13 at some point, it does not mean that Robert Doggart was ever
14 going to do anything in regard to Islamberg.
15 So, in terms of the terrorism guideline, what we're
16 looking at is, was the offense calculated to influence or
17 affect the conduct of government by intimidation, coercion, or
18 to retaliate against the government. And Mr. Mody went
19 through a transcript and pointed out some things that
20 Mr. Doggart said that he said could be evidence that this was
21 designed to coerce or intimidate the government. And, Your
22 Honor, I don't think the quotes he gave do that. But I would
23 note one of the quotes, for instance, the 3/26/15 conversation
24 with Mr. Doggart and whoever Lenny is, Mr. Doggart starts out
25 --

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1 THE COURT: Ms. Lewis, would you turn --
2 MS. CORY: Oh, I'm sorry.
3 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: It's okay. You're able to do
4 it. You know that. So, sorry.
5 MS. CORY: Well, not-- I've got a clock on right
6 now.
7 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: Oh, do you?
8 MS. CORY: Yes. I think somebody wanted to be sure I
9 knew what time it was.
10 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: Sorry about that. Sorry about
11 that.
12 MS. CORY: Okay. So are we good now?
13 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: Yes.
14 BY MS. CORY:
15 Q Mr. Doggart goes on about, "I've got ten gunners,
16 including me, and we all carry double Es, so we don't miss.
17 What that's going to do is, they pull this thing off in Texas
18 and Utah," and he goes on about this.
19 Well, Your Honor, he didn't have ten guys. We know
20 from his later conversation with Mr. Tint on April the 9th he
21 had himself as somebody he was relying on, he thought he had
22 Mr. Tint, he thought he may have Shane Shielein, and he
23 thought he might have the confidential source. But he is
24 lamenting with Mr. Tint that they don't have anybody unless
25 Mr. Tint can raise six people.

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1 He goes through these-- Well, here's another one
2 that Mr. Mody mentioned. And if you look at the part that
3 I've highlighted there, "That makes the determination on when
4 we should divert their attention up to Hancock, New York,
5 because, to me, it's not just from -- preventing something bad
6 from happening in New York, it's also about a diversionary
7 tactic from the other stuff they're pulling elsewhere in the
8 nation."
9 Well, Your Honor, on April the 9th, when Mr. Doggart
10 is talking to Mr. Tint, he says he's out of communication with
11 anybody else, he has no idea what anybody's planning to do on
12 April the 15th. He likes to brag. He likes to talk about his
13 close contacts with these people. And, in fact, he doesn't
14 have that kind of relationship with them. It's just something
15 that puffs up him, it puffs up Mr. Tint, to talk about plans
16 that they have not, in fact, formulated.
17 If we go to Mr. Tint's conversation with Robert
18 Doggart on April the 9th——it was Government's Exhibit 135——I'd
19 like to point out just a couple of what the government had
20 previously highlighted, really just to show you that
21 Mr. Doggart is all over the place, but, wherever he's going,
22 it is not toward retaliating against the government, coercing
23 the government, or intimidating the government. What I've
24 highlighted there, "Okay, good. You know, bottom line is
25 this, I'm going to hit the road here in a minute, well, I

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1 don't mean right now, but I'm going to go up there and, you
2 know, hang around for a day or two or three, take some photos,
3 talk to people, not disclosing why I'm there, just, uh,
4 looking around the area, just thought I'd -- uh, might retire
5 there, something like that. I'll make up a story for being
6 there."
7 Then later on, when he's talking about who he has,
8 "So the conversations we had today," that would have been, I
9 guess, at the City Café, "you know, so, you know, I know
10 three. And you and I talk on the phone a lot, so I consider
11 there's a fourth," which would be Mr. Tint, because he talks
12 on the phone to him, "absolute confirmations right now. I
13 know you already stated you're committed to it if we pull --
14 if we have to pull this off. So we've got four right now.
15 We've got to figure out who the other six are." So on April
16 the 9th they have four people, they don't know who the other
17 six are that he's been talking about having.
18 Page 8 of the same transcript, "Yeah, well, you
19 know, that's the one thing that I kind of wish we had a little
20 bit more of. The best -- the cleanest way to do this would be
21 to establish a formal charter for an interstate militia,
22 because there's three types of militias recognized in the
23 United States Code, and that first is the organized militia,
24 and that could be the National Guard, but it also could be a
25 different group of folks and that organized -- that organized

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1 themselves, then that could be the naval militia. And we're
2 not going to have one of those. And then there's the
3 unorganized militia. Okay. So this -- this is kind of like
4 an unorganized group of folks who have somehow gotten involved
5 and know about each other, uh, and are thinking about
6 undertaking a patriotic duty that we have to our children and
7 grandchildren. So -- but I worry about the political party.
8 Okay? We do not want to be perceived as instigators or haters
9 of any race or religion. You know, that's not what this is
10 about. This is about our country."
11 A little later he says, "Yeah, yeah, I'm going to
12 write up a report and try to figure out the best way to send
13 it to everybody, you know, without getting it stuck somewhere
14 in the news or something. Uh, but I'll come up with a
15 program, uh, for, uh, you know, but at some point, if there
16 are ten of us, or whatever the number, we're going to have to
17 meet. We can't just walk in there, you know, just one guy
18 having done a recon. That doesn't work for me. On the other
19 hand, you and I talked about this and -- more than once, you
20 know, if -- that if it comes to it, if it's necessary, I'll go
21 alone."
22 And then Mr. Mody, I think, quoted this part, "That
23 doesn't bother me, but I think if it -- if there -- if it
24 comes to it, if it's necessary, I'll go alone, it doesn't
25 bother me, because I think the key is to let the country know

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1 there is a threat, that our value system is under siege, you
2 know, and that it's a President's issue. And it's hard to
3 believe -- I -- I got to tell you, William, it's hard to
4 believe that one guy could mess up so much stuff as him."
5 And, Your Honor, I think clearly here he is not
6 talking about coercion, intimidation, or retaliation; he's
7 talking about doing something that wakes up the country.
8 THE COURT: I read that differently. I think he's
9 talking about the former President of the United States,
10 President Obama's messing up the country --
11 MS. CORY: Oh, at the end he is, Your Honor.
12 THE COURT: -- and he needs to wake the people up to
13 resist the government and overturn the government, so we have a
14 government more to his suiting, more to his liking.
15 MS. CORY: Well, Your Honor, on the April 15th thing,
16 he talked at times about it was going to be a militia rising
17 up, he talked -- at other times it was going to be the
18 government declaring martial law, and that was going to
19 precipitate something happening. But on April the 9th he
20 admits he doesn't have any idea what's going on with all these
21 other people, he is interested in going up to Islamberg to find
22 out if there's anything going on.
23 And I think the last quote I have here is where he
24 talks about what he's going to do. "Well, one of the
25 questions I will be asking the mayor is, have there been any

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1 complaints, is there a belief that there's a threat up there,
2 because a reason to investigate with local law enforcement, or
3 regional or federal, whatever, is accusations coming from
4 citizens."
5 So, Your Honor, he is concerned about a problem. I
6 don't think there's any question that he thinks it's very
7 possible that there are terrorists in Islamberg. But all he
8 is talking about on April the 9th is going up there, talking
9 to the mayor, talking to police, finding out what's going on
10 for himself. He has not talked to any of the people who
11 supposedly are planning things for April the 15th. He says he
12 doesn't know what they're doing and he doesn't know what he's
13 going to do. He says they have to sit down, when he gets back
14 from this recon, and decide what to do. There simply is no
15 plan to do anything. And whatever he's doing, it isn't for
16 the purpose of coercion.
17 THE COURT: What part of 3A1.4 requires a plan?
18 MS. CORY: Your Honor, none of it requires a plan.
19 THE COURT: It just requires intent, right?
20 MS. CORY: It has to be calculated. And I suppose
21 you could argue you can't calculate something without making a
22 plan. I think that's understood. "The offense was calculated
23 to influence or affect the conduct of the government by
24 intimidation or coercion."
25 THE COURT: "Or to retaliate against government

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1 conduct."
3 THE COURT: And it appears that he has an animus
4 against the previous government of the United States.
5 MS. CORY: It appears, Your Honor, that he is very
6 unhappy with the way the country is going. But for what he is
7 doing, he is planning on going to Islamberg to find out if
8 Islamberg is a threat.
9 THE COURT: And the uprising he was hoping to inspire
10 or thinking might come about was to retaliate against the
11 unpopular government.
12 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I don't think so. But the
13 other thing is, he is hearing rumors. He is not plotting the
14 April 15th uprising. He is hearing rumors of what's going on.
15 He's talking to people. He's wondering how --
16 THE COURT: Well, Islamberg cannot put the value
17 system of the United States under siege, could it? I mean,
18 someone else has to be putting our value system under siege,
19 right?
20 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I think that's a comment about
21 the state of the country as a whole. And I don't think he has
22 any intention of attacking the whole country. He's very
23 disappointed in the way the country was going. He was very
24 disappointed in the government. He talks repeatedly about how
25 he can't understand how so many government officials didn't

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1 have the backbone to stand up to the President and do what was
2 right.
3 THE COURT: So he wanted to influence or affect the
4 conduct of government.
5 MS. CORY: Not by intimidation and not by coercion.
6 Your Honor, I like to influence the government, and like to
7 think I'm influencing the government every time I go to vote.
8 I mean, all Americans hope to influence the government one way
9 or the other.
10 Mr. Doggart did not do anything that was for the
11 purpose of intimidation or coercion of the government. He
12 thought there could be a threat in Islamberg. And I've said
13 it again, there's clearly not a threat in Islamberg. We had
14 witnesses who discussed the fact that Mr. Doggart's whole
15 career was looking at situations, analyzing the facts, and
16 then deciding what needed to be done. Had he gone to
17 Islamberg, he would have seen that there was not the problem
18 that he had heard about, he would have conducted his
19 reconnaissance, and he would have come back, he wouldn't have
20 done anything.
21 But as of the date he was arrested, he hadn't done
22 anything, he had not made any decisions, he had engaged in a
23 lot of talk, because that's what Robert Doggart does, he talks
24 to make himself look good. And to this particular audience,
25 talking a lot of violence and trash made him look good, or at

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1 least he thought it did.
2 But the inconsistencies in all of these -- between
3 when he's talking about violence and then he's saying, "Well,
4 I need to come back, and I need to develop a plan," and then
5 he's like, "We really need a formal charter to form a
6 militia." Well, Your Honor, if they were going to do
7 something on April 15th, they wouldn't be coming back to
8 formalize a charter so that they could have an organized
9 militia that was legal under the United States Code.
10 THE COURT: Well, I'm not sure that's the type of
11 militia he was talking about. I think he was talking about the
12 unorganized militia. The organized militia is the National
13 Guard.
14 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor. He recognizes that there
15 are three types of militias. He wants to form an -- you could
16 call it a disorganized militia --
17 THE COURT: Unorganized.
18 MS. CORY: -- unorganized militia --
19 THE COURT: Unorganized.
20 MS. CORY: -- but he says he wants to write up a
21 program and actually institute a sort of organized militia.
22 That's his goal, is to formulate a militia so that they've got
23 an organization so that they can start meeting. None of that
24 is going to happen. It's just -- he talks about one bizarre
25 possibility and another bizarre possibility.

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1 One thing Mr. Mody said that is very correct is,
2 whatever comes into Mr. Doggart's head, he says it, he doesn't
3 think about it, he doesn't analyze it, he doesn't figure out
4 how it fits into his overall idea, it's just -- it pops into
5 his mind and he says it. And that's why when you're reading
6 these things there's a million different discussions of what
7 might happen on April 15th. His conversation with his sister,
8 all of a sudden he stops and says, "By the way, I've already
9 filed my income tax return," which of course we all know is
10 due on April the 15th.
11 He just says whatever pops into his head. And,
12 here, yeah, you could pull out things that are very
13 evil-sounding, but what you get when you read the whole
14 transcript is something that just doesn't make sense, it's a
15 jumble of words that come out of Mr. Doggart's mouth that do
16 not add up to wanting to intimidate or coerce or retaliate
17 against the government. It's just not there.
19 I think, Mr. Mody, I gave you a chance before lunch
20 to respond to the argument. This was actually rebuttal. So
21 the Court does not see the need to give you a chance to
22 respond further.
23 The objection that's on the floor now is to the
24 12-level enhancement provided in the guidelines for
25 terrorism-related actions. Section 3A1.4 is the guideline

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1 that covers this. The starting point for the Court's
2 analysis, of course, is the jury's decision. The jury made a
3 decision after hearing the evidence in this case and after
4 hearing the Court's instructions and, I might also add, after
5 hearing the arguments of counsel for the defense. Counsel put
6 on a very, very vigorous defense. They made very vigorous
7 arguments. And some of the same points they're making to the
8 Court today were made to the jury. The jury, however, after
9 being told that what the defendant was doing was just mouthing
10 off and making an awful lot of disjointed statements, rejected
11 that argument and found the defendant guilty of four separate
12 federal crimes. So the Court has to keep in mind that we have
13 a jury decision in this case. And the Court is not in a
14 position to undermine that jury decision.
15 Taking this to its logical extreme, Mr. Doggart's
16 argument is that in committing these acts he had no intent at
17 all. The jury found to the contrary. The jury found that the
18 defendant did, in fact, have an intent. So that's what we
19 will focus on, then, is, what is inherent in the intent that
20 the jury necessarily found that the defendant had in order for
21 him to commit this -- commit this crime.
22 A federal crime of terrorism, for the purpose of the
23 guidelines, is an offense that is both calculated to influence
24 or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or
25 coercion or to retaliate against government conduct. A

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1 defendant need not be convicted of a listed crime of terrorism
2 for this enhancement to be appropriate. He, instead, may have
3 intended the crime of conviction, or relevant conduct, to
4 promote a terrorism crime. If that's the case, though, the
5 Court must identify which enumerated federal crime of
6 terrorism the defendant intended to promote, satisfy the
7 elements of, and support its conclusion by a preponderance of
8 the evidence with facts from the record.
9 There must be proof of the defendant's specific
10 intent, that is, proof that he acted with the purpose of
11 influencing or affecting government conduct, and planned his
12 actions with this objective in mind. That specific intent
13 need not, however, be the defendant's only intent. So long as
14 the defendant intended to influence the conduct of government,
15 the terrorism enhancement would apply, even if he had other
16 motivations, such as the intent to gain financial rewards, or
17 impress a sweetheart, and, the Court will also add, whether
18 that intent was to gain favor with others or to build the
19 person's image up with others.
20 The Court makes a finding that the requirements of
21 this enhancement are met by a preponderance of the evidence,
22 including defendant's specific intent to influence or affect
23 government conduct. His solicitation of others to damage or
24 destroy the mosque at Islamberg using explosives intended to
25 promote the federal terrorism crime of arson for the purpose

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1 of intimidating or coercing the government. During the trial
2 there were frequent references by the defendant, in the
3 recordings, concerning his disdain for the United States
4 government, including his animus toward the former President
5 of the United States. He stated that the government that we
6 have was no longer willing or able to protect its citizens,
7 and that patriots and militias need to rise up and take over
8 the government's responsibilities in that regard. Taking over
9 the government would appear to the Court to be more than
10 sufficient to demonstrate an effort to influence or affect the
11 conduct of the government.
12 The portions of the transcript that were displayed
13 by Mr. Mody and by Ms. Cory also contain some language
14 regarding that the defendant felt that "the American value
15 system is under siege. One guy has messed things up so much."
16 This is a further demonstration of the defendant's disdain for
17 not only the government of the United States at that time,
18 which was the previous government, but also for American
19 society in general, and the need to replace that society with
20 something else. So, much of the defendant's language can be
21 interpreted as an effort to punish or to retaliate against the
22 government for putting the American value system under siege
23 and for the fact that "one guy has messed things up so much."
24 The defendant also frequently discussed the probable
25 coverage by the media of the attack on Islamberg and his hope

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1 that it would draw attention to the problem the government was
2 trying to cover up or ignore, and bring about some action. He
3 thought that the attack on Islamberg would be a flashpoint for
4 other attacks in violation of the laws of the United States.
5 He also discussed making an attack in response to the
6 government's supposed future imposition of martial law. He
7 discussed his belief that state law enforcement or the
8 military would not be willing to fire on the patriots. And we
9 can take it from this that he saw that state law enforcement
10 and the American military and patriots would be on one side
11 and the forces of the United States government would be on the
12 other side. The defendant was talking about setting in motion
13 an armed insurrection against the government of the United
14 States that would force the government of the United States
15 either to respond to the attacks or to give in and capitulate.
16 The Court concludes that the evidence in this case
17 is more than sufficient to demonstrate that the probation
18 office correctly applied Section 3A1.4(a) to the defendant's
19 conduct and the 12-level enhancement to the offense level for
20 Count 2 is applicable. So the Court will deny that objection.
22 MS. CORY: Your Honor, the next objection is in
23 regard to acceptance of responsibility, 3E1.1. Pardon me while
24 I dig it up here. Mr. Doggart went to trial, was convicted of
25 two counts, and therefore he didn't get a reduction for

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1 acceptance of responsibility. And it was our belief he should
2 get a two-level reduction. And we basically base this on three
3 different factors, and the one that I think is hard to
4 overestimate is the impact on Mr. Doggart of his having pled
5 guilty -- or entered into a plea agreement to plead guilty to
6 something, at his lawyers' recommendation, which was a threat,
7 and then having Your Honor reject the plea agreement because it
8 did not state an offense, the facts that were presented in
9 favor of it did not support the crime.
10 Mr. Doggart's attorney and the prosecution both
11 tried very hard to convince Your Honor that you should accept
12 that guilty plea and let him be sentenced on that threat
13 charge. That really set the wheels in motion, because it
14 convinced Mr. Doggart that he was right, that, legally
15 speaking, he wasn't guilty of anything, he may have engaged in
16 reprehensible conversation, he may have said terrible things,
17 but he was not guilty of a crime under the law because all he
18 did is talk a lot.
19 Then, Your Honor, the government eventually charged
20 four counts, the two solicitation counts which he's going to
21 be sentenced on today, and then the two different threat
22 counts. But Mr. Doggart looked at those threats as being the
23 exact same thing, he was being charged with an offense that he
24 had not committed because Your Honor had told him he hadn't
25 committed it.

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1 The two solicitation counts go back to the argument,
2 Your Honor, that I do feel is falling on deaf ears, but it is
3 Mr. Doggart's point throughout that he wasn't going to do
4 anything. There is a vast difference between solicitation and
5 solicitation that has an actual anticipated end of committing
6 that crime. Mr. Doggart never had the end in mind of
7 committing the crime that he's convicted of soliciting; and,
8 from his point of view, that should have guaranteed his
9 acquittal. He was convinced the jury would understand that
10 although he did and said reprehensible things, it did not fit
11 his understanding of what the law required for conviction.
12 So, Your Honor, in terms of the facts, Mr. Doggart's
13 disagreements weren't with the facts. He wasn't objecting to
14 statements being made in court, saying, "Oh, I never said
15 that." He admitted that he said everything the government
16 said he said. He admitted the Facebook postings. His whole
17 problem was, he could not understand how saying things,
18 expressing beliefs, became a crime, because in his mind it
19 wasn't.
20 I met with Mr. Doggart at one point during the
21 preparation for the trial, and he said, "Look right here at
22 this statute, this 373. It gives my defense right there."
23 And he said, "It's renunciation. I renounced it, because I
24 was never going to do anything."
25 And, you know, I explained to Mr. Doggart that this

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1 is what the jury was going to be deciding, but it was not
2 going to be based on the renunciation defense as written in
3 the law. But that's how he saw it. He wasn't going to do
4 anything. He had, in effect, renounced it because he had no
5 intention of doing it.
6 So our argument for two levels of acceptance is, he
7 tried to plead. Your Honor turned down his first effort.
8 Rebuffing that is what set in motion his -- well, it confirmed
9 his belief that he really wasn't legally guilty of anything.
10 Then he got charged with two of the same offenses, which Your
11 Honor since has acquitted him of. That vindicated him again.
12 He's of the opinion, "Look, I went to trial because I really
13 wasn't guilty."
14 And then, Your Honor, the last two counts, he didn't
15 deny the facts, he denied that he was guilty under the law;
16 and from our point of view, he accepted responsibility because
17 he agreed with the facts.
18 He has also -- in a letter, I think, Your Honor, has
19 commented on how much he regrets the fear and concern he
20 created in the minds of the people of Islamberg, because that
21 wasn't what he was intending at the time he was talking. He
22 never thought they'd hear about it.
24 Mr. Piper?

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1 The defendant says, well, he's not arguing with the
2 facts. There's a reason why. He couldn't. The facts are on
3 tape. He can't argue with that, Judge. What he's arguing,
4 what Ms. Cory is, in essence, arguing today is, the defendant
5 would not plead guilty to Counts 1 and 2 because he didn't
6 have the intent. "I didn't have the intent to do anything
7 wrong. Nothing was going to happen." He's even all over the
8 map on that, Your Honor. In his forensic evaluation he claims
9 he knew the CI was a CI, he was just placating him, which is
10 nonsense. That's not true. But more nonsensical is that he
11 didn't have the intent to do something here. Respectfully,
12 Your Honor, the jury found beyond a reasonable doubt that he
13 had the intent to do what he was charged with.
14 As I noted in our sentencing memorandum, his intent
15 was an issue before the jury, it was an element of the offense
16 that we had to prove. We did. Apparently 12 of his fellow
17 citizens agreed that we proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.
18 And that's why he should not get acceptance of responsibility,
19 Judge.
21 MS. CORY: Your Honor, the only thing I would
22 comment, and I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but he was
23 convicted of having formulated the intent. That was never what
24 Mr. Doggart thought the trial was about. We can understand the
25 legal terminology. To him, the point was, he wasn't going to

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1 do anything, how could he plead guilty and say that he was
2 going to do something when he wasn't. That's just how he saw
3 it. He considered what he said reprehensible; he did not
4 believe it made out a crime.
5 The government can say he couldn't have fought the
6 facts. Well, he could have fought the facts. He didn't fight
7 the facts because they accurately represented the things he
8 said. They did not present what was on his heart or in his
9 mind. That's what he argued at the trial. That's why he went
10 to trial. That's what he continues to argue today, not that
11 the jury didn't convict him, not that he didn't say
12 reprehensible things, but that from his point of view he was
13 making the legal argument that he did not have -- not the
14 intent to solicit, but the intent to carry through with it,
15 which is what he thought was the hub of the issue.
16 THE COURT: This objection to the calculation of the
17 guidelines is based on Section 3E1.1 of the sentencing
18 guidelines. This provision allows for a reduction in the
19 guideline level when a defendant, and I'm quoting here,
20 "clearly demonstrates acceptance of responsibility for his
21 offense." This places the burden on the defendant to
22 demonstrate that the defendant is entitled to the adjustment.
23 And the guideline says that the demonstration must be clearly.
24 The application notes, which instruct us in how to
25 use the guideline, tells us a number of things to look for

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1 here. One of the things, which is found in Application Note
2 Number 2, is that "This adjustment is not intended to apply to
3 a defendant who puts the government to its burden of proof at
4 trial by denying the essential factual elements of guilt, is
5 convicted, and only then admits guilt and expresses remorse.
6 Conviction by trial, however, does not automatically preclude
7 a defendant from consideration for such a reduction.
8 "In rare situations a defendant may clearly
9 demonstrate an acceptance of responsibility for his criminal
10 conduct even though he exercises his right to a trial. This
11 may occur, for example, where a defendant goes to trial to
12 assert and preserve issues that do not relate to factual
13 guilt, make a constitutional challenge to a statute, or a
14 challenge to the applicability of a statute to his conduct.
15 In each such instance, however, a determination that a
16 defendant has accepted responsibility will be based primarily
17 upon pretrial statements and conduct."
18 The Court would note that in looking at this
19 application note, even though the trial is over and the
20 defendant stands convicted, there is still no admission of
21 guilt. There has been an expression of remorse to the
22 residents of Islamberg through his counsel, but I don't
23 believe there is an admission of guilt, nor do I expect there
24 to be an admission of guilt. I expect that Mr. Doggart will
25 appeal his sentence, and therefore he needs to preserve his

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1 position that he's not guilty of this crime. So any admission
2 of guilt would be inimical to that goal.
3 The Court does understand that the government and
4 the defendant, early on in this case, entered into an
5 agreement whereby the defendant would plead to a nonexistent
6 offense. That, to the Court, amounted to the government and
7 the defendant agreeing that he was a duck. And although they
8 may have an agreement that he was a duck, the law places the
9 burden on the Court to determine whether something is a crime
10 or not. And being a duck is not a crime. So the Court was
11 not in a position to accept the defendant's and the
12 government's agreement that he would plead guilty to being a
13 duck.
14 Now, once the Court said, "I'm sorry, but I cannot
15 agree that you are a duck," that put the defendant back in the
16 position that he was in before, and it put the government back
17 in the position they were in before. There were many options
18 that they had. One option was to find that the defendant was
19 in fact a human being. And that might have been something
20 they could work with. The government chose to charge the
21 defendant with some other crimes. And the defendant chose to
22 go to trial on those crimes.
23 The fact that the defendant was willing to plead
24 guilty to a nonexistent crime, though, the Court is having a
25 hard time understanding how that would indicate an acceptance

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1 of responsibility. Had the Court not been paying attention
2 and had shut its eyes and closed its ears and determined that
3 the defendant was a duck, and the defendant had been sentenced
4 to jail, the defendant would merely have to tell the appellate
5 court, "Oh, by the way, I am not a duck."
6 And the appellate court would say, "You're correct.
7 Get out of jail. You have no right being in jail."
8 So, that would not, to the Court, indicate an
9 acceptance of responsibility for anything. It was just a
10 fortuitous set of circumstances.
11 So, what we have, then, are the charges in the
12 indictment that led to the trial. The defendant, at some
13 points -- and if I'm incorrect on this, I would ask counsel to
14 correct me, but I recollect that at various times during the
15 trial there were either explicit statements or insinuations
16 that the confidential informant in this case had planted some
17 of these ideas in the defendant's mind, and that the
18 confidential informant was leading the defendant along the
19 primrose path, and the defendant was merely following him, at
20 some points just agreeing to things that the informant was
21 trying to get him to do. And I think at some points there may
22 even have been suggestions that the government was putting the
23 informant up to what to say. As I say, the trial was very
24 long, and this has been quite some while ago, so the Court may
25 be mistaken on that. But if the Court is not mistaken on

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1 that, this would suggest to the Court this is not merely a
2 case of someone who does not think the law applies to his
3 conduct and just wanted to go to trial to have the jury look
4 at the legal issues and make a determination of that. So I
5 call upon counsel to state for the record whether the Court is
6 incorrect in its recollection that there were some
7 insinuations or statements that the confidential informant led
8 the defendant astray.
9 MR. PIPER: Your Honor's correct. There was-- The
10 defendant moved for an entrapment instruction, which the Court
11 granted. But I do distinctly remember on redirect examination
12 pointing out to Agent Smith at one point that the defendant had
13 reached out to other people on Facebook around the end of
14 January of 2015, and I think the first contact that he had with
15 the CS on Facebook was around -- I think February 13th of 2015,
16 but I could be wrong. Could have been February 6th.
17 (Off-the-record discussion between agent and
18 government counsel.)
19 MR. PIPER: It was the early February, I'm sure. But
20 he certainly reached out to other people on Facebook prior to
21 the first contact with the CS on Facebook, even, Judge. But
22 that -- Your Honor's absolutely correct, that was -- part of
23 his defense was that the CS had swayed him into this. And even
24 the defendant's own letter, to this day, his letter of
25 allocution, talks about the CS, in an intrepid manner, pulled

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1 him along in this endeavor.
2 MR. BEST: That's correct, Your Honor. But one thing
3 is, we didn't request the jury instruction. I believe the
4 Court provided that instruction at some point after they heard
5 Agent Smith testify, because that was part of my
6 cross-examination, was, was that happening. And I believe the
7 Court stated it accurately, but that was based on the
8 government's proof, Judge.
9 THE COURT: Okay. Well, thank you.
10 So, based, then, upon the Court's analysis of the
11 law and the Court's recitation of the relevant facts here, the
12 Court concludes that the defendant has not clearly
13 demonstrated that he accepted responsibility for the two
14 offenses of conviction. Therefore the Court will deny the
15 objection to the presentence report on this basis.
17 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I think that concludes the
18 objections to the guideline calculations. The other matters
19 are arguments for downward departures and downward variance.
20 THE COURT: Okay. Very well. So we got through that
21 in, what, about two, three -- a little less than three hours?
22 That's amazing. So why don't we start, then, on just the
23 motions, then. We won't need evidence for the motions, will
24 we?
25 MS. CORY: Your Honor, we won't need any evidence

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1 that the Court doesn't already have with the documentation in
2 terms of the mental health evaluations that Mr. Doggart's had
3 and medical reports, those kinds of things.
4 THE COURT: Very well. You may proceed.
5 MS. CORY: I'm always a little bit in a quandary as
6 to whether to approach things as a downward departure or
7 downward variance, but I think the one argument that we have
8 that would constitute clearly a motion for a downward departure
9 as well as subsequently for a downward variance is
10 Mr. Doggart's mental health situation. And I think that could
11 be approached either under 5K2.13 or under 5H1.3, Your Honor.
12 Your Honor, I don't think there is any question that
13 Mr. Doggart's mental health problems contributed substantially
14 to his commission of the instant offense. Had he not had
15 these ailments, he would not have committed the instant
16 offense. And, here again, I am in the difficult position of
17 saying he didn't commit an offense. He didn't-- He should be
18 excused from the commission of an offense that I don't think
19 he committed to start with.
20 But on the assumption that he, in fact, committed
21 Counts 1 and 2, the solicitation, if you look at his mental
22 health history——and I have provided, I think, all of the
23 documents to you——when the probation office sent him to Joseph
24 Johnson, when they sent him to Volunteer Health up in Bradley
25 County, one of the diagnoses that -- the July 11 diagnosis was

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1 "psychotic disorder." Then the December 22, 2016, diagnosis
2 was "bipolar disorder; current and most recent episode,
3 hypomanic." Now, both of those diagnoses were, of course,
4 after he had been arrested and he was on pretrial supervision
5 and they had these tests performed.
6 Back in 2006——and Your Honor has a copy of this
7 medical evaluation——Dr. Lee Solomon, who is a very respected
8 psychiatrist, did an evaluation, and he agreed with earlier
9 evaluators that Mr. Doggart does show all the symptoms of
10 having narcissistic personality disorder. He said he believed
11 that it very possibly was kind of a hidden aspect of bipolar
12 disorder, that what people perceive as Mr. Doggart's speaking
13 so grandiosely and making up stories about himself could very
14 well have been a symptom of a hypomanic stage of bipolar
15 depression.
16 And then Your Honor is very familiar, and I just
17 read to you, the evaluation from the Bureau of Prisons where
18 they diagnosed him with narcissistic personality disorder,
19 which they describe not as a severe mental illness. That
20 isn't to say it's not a mental illness. It is a mental
21 illness. But it is a pattern of the way a person's mind works
22 that -- that he can either do -- he can continue in -- with
23 his entire life with some degree of success and never be
24 treated, but he is never going to be a whole person if he has
25 this disorder -- or, excuse me, this personality disorder.

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1 And, Your Honor, if you look at what his family and
2 his friends testified to, if you look at his conversations
3 over and over again, what Mr. Doggart is doing is making
4 himself look good to his audience, it is being the center of
5 attention. His coworkers talked about the things he would say
6 for shock value. And on the phone, when he's quoting from the
7 Brad Pitt movie Inglourious Basterds and making that sound
8 extremely violent and evil, it's for shock value.
9 He is 66 years old. In his entire life he has never
10 done anything violent. He has spent his life following the
11 rules, obeying the law. On April the 9th he's still wondering
12 if they can form some kind of a charter for their militia
13 because he'd like to have it done right. He's talking about
14 how "we need to do things the right way." His family talked
15 about what a nonviolent person he is.
16 The disorder that he has, the personality disorder,
17 causes him to say the first thing that comes in his mind that
18 makes him look big, superior, whatever. That is his way. But
19 it never goes beyond saying things. If the FBI had not been
20 taping all of these conversations, nothing would have
21 happened, there would have been no case. Mr. Doggart talks.
22 That's what he does. He tries to impress people. Nobody in
23 this courtroom is impressed with what he said. We don't like
24 what he said. But to the audience he was dealing with, he was
25 making a big impression. And that's what he does. Your

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1 Honor, he was -- I think it was --
2 THE COURT: Ms. Cory, let me ask you a question here.
3 Let's assume that you are correct that the defendant suffers
4 from a narcissistic personality disorder and it's something
5 that's going to be with him for the rest of his life. So he
6 will have this urge to make himself look big and important to
7 certain segments of the people. Why don't you go to the
8 University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to make yourself a big
9 person --
10 MS. CORY: Why doesn't Mr. Doggart?
11 THE COURT: -- or to Nashville to the Titans stadium
12 and make yourself a big person? Why get on the Internet, in
13 the dark recesses, to reach out to people that have an interest
14 in doing harm to other people? Why is that your audience?
15 MS. CORY: Well, I'm going to answer in two ways.
16 THE COURT: And I think this is true, is it not?
17 Many people suffer from narcissistic personality disorders, but
18 it is rare for them to reach out to an audience such as this to
19 make themselves look good. I don't know whether this is true
20 or not, I don't believe there's been a diagnosis, but many
21 people say that our present President suffers from narcissistic
22 personality disorder.
23 MS. CORY: I've heard that rumor.
24 THE COURT: And there are some actions that I think
25 you could say would support that, but we don't see him going

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1 into the dark recesses and appealing to people that might be
2 interested in hurting others. What is it about this audience
3 that appeals to the defendant?
4 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I think we start with where
5 Mr. Doggart was when things started to unfold.
6 THE COURT: He had his friend, Mr. -- not Mr. Seay,
7 Mr. -- the other friend.
8 MS. CORY: Mr. Hellier.
9 THE COURT: Mr. Hellier. He had Mr. Seay. He had
10 people around him that I don't think are involved in this
11 segment of society.
12 MS. CORY: You're right, Your Honor. I mean, this --
13 this was him branching off into something else. It happened
14 after he retired. He was working, you know, a few weeks out of
15 the year. He moved up to Signal Mountain where he was living
16 by himself, and he got this great idea of --
17 THE COURT: In a very nice neighborhood.
19 THE COURT: In a very nice house.
20 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor. And it is unusual for a
21 person to decide to run for Congress. I think you would have
22 to be a masochist to want to run for Congress. But that's what
23 he did. And it is not a crime to want to run for Congress and,
24 in fact, to run for Congress. And he took it on
25 wholeheartedly, like he did everything before then. He

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1 campaigned very vigorously. He went all over the place. In
2 the course of running for Congress, he came into contact with
3 people who were not the kind of people that he had been
4 involved with at earlier points in his life.
5 Was he really, really worried about the state of
6 this country? Now, Your Honor may be very, very pleased with
7 the state of the country. But there are other people who
8 think we are making mistakes, who would like to see things
9 being done differently. And as long as they do these things
10 in a politically acceptable way, it's not a crime to disagree
11 with the President, it's not a crime to disagree with your
12 Congressmen or with how the government's going, it's not a
13 crime, you know, to think society's going to hell in a
14 handbasket if that's what you think.
15 But what happened to Mr. Doggart is, he got involved
16 in a totally different element of people. Now, one of them
17 was the confidential source. It is true that Mr. Doggart was
18 already going down that road, you know, he was going to Texas,
19 he was getting all excited and worried about illegal
20 immigrants crossing the border. That became a big issue for
21 him.
22 All of these things were a total change in what he
23 had cared about at earlier points in his life, but it was sort
24 of a natural consequence of his having decided to run for
25 office, which he decided to do because he had time on his

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1 hands at this point in his life. He wanted to make another
2 contribution to society, because this is a big thing with
3 Mr. Doggart. He has to feel like he's making a difference in
4 the lives of those around him. If he can help people, he
5 does.
6 You know, it was a terrible mistake. The people
7 that he became involved in, it was a terrible mistake on his
8 part. But those people fed into the same neediness that he
9 had when he was doing these other things in his earlier life.
10 He said things for shock value to his former friends. He said
11 things for shock value with these people. Was he very
12 concerned about the country? Yes. But was he just saying
13 whatever he thought he could say that would impress people,
14 only now it's, you know, a class of people we wish he wasn't
15 trying to impress? But that's where he slid into it, Your
16 Honor. But for 66 years he had never done anything violent.
17 There is no indication that just because he has a
18 personality disorder, just because Dr. Solomon thought he was
19 probably bipolar -- and we have a recent diagnosis of bipolar.
20 So he either has a severe mental illness or a mental illness
21 that disrupts your life. None of that ever made him be a
22 violent person. It did lead him to say a lot of things that
23 he shouldn't have said, because whoever he's in the room with,
24 he wants to impress that person. That's what his disorder
25 does.

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1 THE COURT: Mr. Piper?
2 MR. PIPER: First I would note for the Court and
3 invite the Court's attention to the forensic report in which
4 the psychologists at the BOP say that the personality disorders
5 are not severe mental illness, which Ms. Cory said, "but are
6 enduring patterns of thinking about one -- oneself and one's
7 environment. They note a number of factors which the defendant
8 displayed to show that he, in fact, was suffering from a
9 narcissistic personality disorder.
10 On Page 7 of my sentencing memo, Your Honor, we
11 note——I should say "our," Mr. Mody's and mine——that
12 narcissistic personality disorder is volitional. The
13 defendant has the ability to control his malady, unlike a
14 mental disease, which would indicate a lack of discretion over
15 its control. In other words, it's something that he has at
16 least more control over than if he, in fact, were bipolar, as
17 Ms. Cory suggests.
18 The BOP gave no diagnosis of bipolar disorder. The
19 Social Security doctor who examined him gave no diagnosis of
20 bipolar disorder, as I recall. Now, that was some years ago,
21 Judge. But the point is that I believe that the narcissistic
22 personality disorder, if that is in fact his diagnosis, is not
23 a basis for departure. We have relied upon the guideline,
24 both prongs, which we believe the defendant cannot meet——that
25 he was suffering from a significantly reduced mental capacity,

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1 and that the significantly reduced mental capacity contributed
2 substantially to the commission of the offense.
3 You heard the defendant's sister and the defendant's
4 daughter testify here today, Your Honor. And he had a normal,
5 good upbringing. He's well-educated. He was raised in a
6 healthy, happy, loving home. He was a good father, and I'm
7 certain that -- and a good grandfather, and at some point he
8 was a good husband. Unfortunately, like many marriages, it
9 fell apart, but that's not -- that's not unusual. But the
10 defendant has functioned well in society. And this
11 narcissistic personality disorder, after he ran for Congress,
12 Ms. Cory claims, was -- all these things were feeding into his
13 ego, causing him to do these things. And it's like Your Honor
14 says, if we're going to -- if we want to be narcissistic,
15 let's go out and do something else to bring our attention --
16 bring attention to ourselves, let's be positive, let's do
17 something that's nondestructive. I find it ironic that the
18 defendant has spent his career and his life in nondestructive
19 testing and then this was so violent and so destructive. So
20 it's just unusual to me that we would be considering the
21 personality disorder.
22 And we would also note, Your Honor, that the
23 guideline talks about whether it's a violent offense and, you
24 know, whether it contributed to the commission of it. But it
25 certainly is a violent offense. Solicitation to commit arson

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1 is a violent offense. Arson is an enumerated crime. So we
2 would respectfully submit that the -- whatever mental disease
3 and defect that the defendant says he's suffering from, we
4 don't believe it's as serious as he claims it is; but if it
5 is, the Court should not depart based upon that.
6 THE COURT: I think your last argument is that the
7 guideline makes an exception if the crime was a crime of
8 violence, and it says basically even if someone is suffering
9 from a mental problem, if it's a crime of violence, then this
10 departure should not apply. Is that right?
11 MR. PIPER: That's correct.
13 MR. PIPER: Thank you.
15 MS. CORY: Thank you, Your Honor. First of all, in
16 terms of the Social Security Administration's diagnosis, they
17 did not diagnose him with bipolar, they diagnosed him with a
18 severe mood disorder; and as I'm sure Your Honor knows, bipolar
19 is one of those, chronic severe depression is another. So they
20 didn't distinguish between whether he was severely depressed or
21 whether he was bipolar, but they did diagnose him with a severe
22 mood disorder. And of course they also diagnosed him with the
23 narcissistic personality disorder.
24 In terms of the BOP report, I'd have to correct what
25 the prosecutor said in regard to the nature of the

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1 intentionality and volitional aspect of narcissistic
2 personality disorder. What they said was, it is seen as more
3 intentional or volitional than are symptoms of a psychotic
4 disorder. It's not as severe as a psychotic disorder. That
5 does not mean it is not a mental health disorder. It is
6 called a mental health disorder. The enduring pattern is
7 something that -- you know, is it treatable? Yes. If
8 Mr. Doggart were to be treated for narcissistic personality
9 disorder, it would be very hard to cure him of it. He would
10 have to want to work at it. But it can be done. And the --
11 this report says, "Regarding his prognosis, personality
12 disorders are not expected to change significantly over time,
13 but can respond well to increased structure coupled with
14 consistency and predictability of interpersonal contacts."
15 It is a treatable illness, but it is a serious
16 illness when you put it in the context of Mr. Doggart's life
17 over the last couple of years. So, Your Honor, if you want to
18 say it doesn't-- Let me get the 5K2.13 out.
19 (Brief pause.)
20 MS. CORY: Your Honor, that guideline reads, it "may
21 be warranted if the defendant committed the offense while
22 suffering from a significantly reduced mental capacity"——Your
23 Honor, I think you just have to listen to Mr. Doggart to know
24 that he was suffering from a significantly reduced mental
25 capacity, especially when you put those conversations in the

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1 context of his entire life and what he had done
2 before——"significantly reduced mental capacity contributed
3 substantially to the commission of the offense. However, the
4 court may not depart below the applicable guideline range if
5 (1) the significantly reduced mental capacity was caused by
6 voluntary use of drugs," well, it wasn't, "the facts and
7 circumstances of the defendant's offense indicate a need to
8 protect the public because the offense involved actual violence
9 or a serious threat of violence."
10 Your Honor, it doesn't matter what he was convicted
11 of; it is whether his crime involved actual violence or a
12 serious threat of violence. And, Your Honor, it's our
13 position he was not going to do anything. There is no
14 evidence that he was going to do anything. When they searched
15 his place, there was no indication that he had begun doing
16 anything to get ready for any kind of attack. He had never
17 met with anybody to form a group, other than, you know, the
18 people that he met at the Scenic City, which was -- excuse me,
19 the City Café, which was -- if it had not been such a tragic
20 discussion, was a laughable event. I mean, it was ridiculous
21 that this group of people were getting together to talk about
22 doing anything. So, Your Honor, I think that this guideline
23 can apply to him because he was not doing anything violent,
24 there was not a risk of violence.
25 The other guideline that can apply is the 5H1.3.

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1 "Mental health and emotional conditions may be relevant in
2 determining whether a departure is warranted if such
3 conditions, individually or in combination with other offender
4 characteristics, are present to an unusual degree and
5 distinguish the case from the typical cases covered by the
6 guidelines."
7 Your Honor, Mr. Doggart's case is beyond-the-bounds
8 different from the average kind of guidelines case that would
9 be covered by these guidelines. And it is because of this
10 personality disorder that he just doesn't fit the category.
11 He had the mental disability. It led to this
12 offense. He was not going to do anything violent. The entire
13 guideline that Your Honor has come up with is an extremely
14 high-- You've got him at 235 to 293 months. That is for
15 someone who never did anything but talk. And, Your Honor,
16 talk is not violence; it's something that people in this
17 country think they are free to do. Mr. Doggart went too far,
18 because of his mental disability. He didn't know he had
19 crossed the line into a crime.
20 THE COURT: Ms. Cory, I don't have the DSM in front
21 of me. The DSM defines personality disorder, but doesn't it
22 say something about the onset of the disorder, or the -- I'm
23 sorry, not the onset, but the first obvious manifestation of
24 the disorder?
25 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I don't know specifically

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1 about this personality disorder, but I know generally that's
2 one of the considerations, is, when did the symptoms first show
3 up.
4 THE COURT: And for personality disorders, they
5 generally show up in your late teens or early twenties.
6 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I would say it has been a
7 lifelong problem with Mr. Doggart. He's handled it better in
8 the past than he did after his retirement.
9 THE COURT: So assuming that's correct that it shows
10 up in your late teens or early twenties, that means it's, what,
11 some 45 years that he's suffered from narcissistic personality
12 disorder, but, as far as we know, it's only the past few years
13 that that disorder has caused him to solicit people to engage
14 in criminal behavior?
15 MS. CORY: Your Honor, what led him to this point was
16 his retirement, was his involvement in running for office, was
17 getting -- I hate to say a whole new category of friends, but a
18 whole new group of acquaintances that stroked his ego, yes.
19 THE COURT: So it wasn't the narcissistic personality
20 that drove him, it was the retirement from his job, it was
21 running for Congress. Those are things that drove him.
22 MS. CORY: Well, Your Honor, I'm not going to say
23 that you cannot get a downward departure unless the first time
24 you exhibit a symptom you commit a crime. I mean, you can have
25 the mental disorder for years and years.

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1 THE COURT: For 45 --
2 MS. CORY: Something --
3 THE COURT: For 45 years.
4 MS. CORY: -- is going to precipitate your getting
5 involved in bad behavior. There are plenty of people who have
6 emotional issues that wreck their lives, and at some point it's
7 like the straw that broke the camel's back, and, yes, that
8 mental illness coupled with circumstances pushes them over the
9 edge.
10 THE COURT: But those mental illnesses are not
11 personality disorders.
12 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I don't think what kind of--
13 I mean, if you are psychotic, or if you are schiz- --
14 THE COURT: Psychotic is not a personality disorder.
15 Psychosis is --
16 MS. CORY: No, it's not, but I'm -- Your Honor,
17 whatever the illness is. You can be bipolar your entire life,
18 you can be schizophrenic from teenage years all the way to old
19 age, you may never commit a crime, or you may be presented with
20 a set of circumstances in which you -- your mental illness
21 combined with those circumstances push you over the edge into a
22 criminal activity. That's what this guideline is designed to
23 deal with. It's not saying the only reason this person
24 committed the crime was his mental disorder, and had he -- you
25 know, that it was beyond -- you know, it was a hundred percent

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1 probability he was going to commit a crime because he had the
2 disorder. It is saying if you -- that mental illness had an
3 influence on your criminal conduct. If the Court can see that
4 his behavior was influenced and resulted in large part from the
5 mental illness, then Your Honor should grant him a departure,
6 either under 5K2.13 or 5H1.3.
7 THE COURT: Personality disorders, unlike other types
8 of mental diseases or mental disorders, are a lifetime way of
9 seeing things and addressing the world and doing things. I'm
10 just having some difficulty understanding how someone who at
11 age 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, who's facing the world in such a
12 manner, after 45 years faces the world in a completely
13 different manner.
14 MS. CORY: Well, Your Honor, I don't think it was a
15 completely different manner. It was a response to different
16 circumstances.
17 Now, let's say we're talking with a person who
18 retires from TVA in 2006. He has a nice home. He has a nice
19 yard. He has nice grandchildren. He has sports that he's
20 involved in. He volunteers for good activities. This person,
21 without narcissistic personality disorder, would find all of
22 the things he can do in his retirement gratifying. He would
23 be happy to live out his retirement doing those things.
24 THE COURT: But it doesn't sound like that person has
25 any personality disorder at all. Let's --

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1 MS. CORY: That's right, Your Honor. I'm making --
2 THE COURT: Let's assume we have someone with a -- a
3 -- is not -- is a sociopath. What is that disorder? What is
4 it called? The person's a sociopath.
5 MR. PIPER: Antisocial personality disorder, Your
6 Honor?
7 THE COURT: Antisocial personality disorder. That's
8 one that we see all the time. Now, what is there in that
9 person's life that is going to allow them to respond to things
10 differently? They grow up rebelling from authority; if not
11 violating the law, living on the borders of the law, having an
12 unstable life. They've done that from the age of 20 until they
13 get to be 65. What do they do at 65 that's different?
14 MS. CORY: Well, Your Honor, you have just described
15 somebody who is breaking the law his entire life.
16 THE COURT: But that's the definition of an
17 antisocial personality. That's the definition --
18 MS. CORY: That's not what Mr. Doggart was doing.
19 THE COURT: It's a different type of personality
20 disorder. What I'm trying to find out is, how does a
21 personality disorder that we see over a long time period all of
22 a sudden, especially late in life, lead someone in a different
23 direction?
24 MS. CORY: It --
25 THE COURT: Now, we have more familiarity with the

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1 antisocial personality. It's been studied a lot. Books have
2 been written about it.
3 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor. It's --
4 THE COURT: I'm using that as an example. So we have
5 a lifelong -- lifetime history of this person's actions and
6 behavior that's all consistent with an antisocial personality.
7 So then they reach 65.
8 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I'm afraid you've lost me on
9 the comparison that -- that you want to make. The person who
10 has antisocial personality disorder and does not receive
11 treatment, unless he has a dramatic life-changing event, when
12 he turns 65 is probably going to continue on in that same
13 destructive pattern. It is certainly a treatable ailment, but
14 it does need to be treated or addressed some way, just as
15 Mr. Doggart's problem should have been addressed and treated
16 years ago and wasn't. He was diagnosed with it back in 2006.
17 He could have followed through with treatment. He got
18 treatment. He did not deal with it adequately.
19 The comparison I was trying to make before between
20 someone who has narcissistic personality disorder and someone
21 who doesn't is, the person who has it, such as Mr. Doggart,
22 when he reaches that point in his life of retirement, is going
23 to look around for something else that will make his life so
24 meaningful that he can feel really, really important. What
25 Mr. Doggart stumbled across was running for office. That is

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1 what precipitated his getting involved with all kinds of
2 people who -- I don't want to say were bad influences on him,
3 but they fed into the weakest part of his nature, which was
4 bragging, boasting, trying to show off, trying to be the
5 smartest man, the most concerned person, whatever it is. But
6 the point for Mr. Doggart is, he never was going to do
7 anything other than talk. He was not violent when he was 20,
8 30, 40, 50, 60, 70. He is not a violent person. He is a
9 person that, whoever he's with, he needs to prove he knows
10 more than they do about whatever it is they think they know
11 something about.
13 The defendant is asking for, in the alternative, a
14 downward departure or a variance from the guidelines based
15 upon the defendant's mental health and diminished capacity.
16 And they rely upon Section 5K2.13 and 5H1.3 of the guidelines.
17 They argue that the defendant suffers from narcissistic
18 personality disorders and he also has received diagnoses of a
19 psychotic disorder and bipolar disorder.
20 And from looking at the medical records in this case
21 and hearing from counsel, the Court has no doubt that the
22 defendant does suffer from narcissistic personality disorder.
23 And as Ms. Cory stated, these personality disorders are pretty
24 much lifetime occurrences. So the Court will also assume that
25 he's suffered from this disorder from the time he was a late

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1 teen or his early twenties and it has manifested itself since
2 that time in him.
3 The guidelines we're looking at indicate that a
4 departure may be warranted if the defendant was suffering from
5 a significantly reduced mental capacity when he committed the
6 offense and the reduced mental capacity contributed
7 substantially to the commission of the offense.
8 After having examined the evidence in support of the
9 defendant's motion, the Court cannot find that the defendant's
10 mental issues constitute a significantly reduced mental
11 capacity. The defendant exercised very good power of reasons,
12 at least with respect to the recorded conversations. From
13 hearing about him in the various letters that have been
14 written, they talk about a person who was fully competent and
15 engaged. They over and over talk about the defendant's
16 propensity to exaggerate. I think that goes, though, with the
17 defendant's narcissistic personality disorder, but, to the
18 Court's way of thinking, does not suggest a significantly
19 reduced mental capacity.
20 The Court also makes a finding, though, that there
21 is still a need to protect the public, because of the
22 defendant's offense of conviction and also certain other
23 circumstances regarding the defendant. At the conclusion of
24 the trial in this case, the government made a motion to have
25 the defendant taken into custody. The Court heard arguments

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1 from the defendant and the government on that, and the Court
2 made a finding that the Court was not able to make a finding
3 that the defendant did not pose a risk to society. In fact,
4 the Court, I think, found to the contrary, that there was a
5 significant risk to society, that based upon the defendant's
6 statements of the need to take some action, and that he was
7 willing to lay down his life to see that those actions were
8 taken, and because of the possibility that he might be
9 imprisoned, that this could be his last chance to make sure
10 that his wishes and his efforts were carried out.
11 The Court also heard today from some of his family
12 members and friends who talked about the defendant's very
13 elevated since of right and wrong and how he would stand up
14 and do what -- in support of what he believes is right and
15 wrong. The Court also finds that the defendant's conception
16 of what is right and what is wrong does not necessarily
17 comport with the requirements of the law. So the Court finds
18 that his compulsion to do what in his own mind he thinks is
19 right might also cause him to take actions that would
20 jeopardize the safety of the public. So the Court finds that
21 there is a need in this case to protect the public from the
22 defendant and the defendant's efforts. So the Court finds
23 that the exception to this departure applies. So the Court
24 will not grant the defendant's motion to depart from the
25 guidelines on this basis.

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1 The other aspect of the motion was based upon a
2 variance. And in a variance the Court does not look at the
3 guidelines themselves or the particular provisions of the
4 guidelines; rather, the Court looks at the language in Section
5 3553(a) of Title 18 of the United States Code. This section
6 requires the Court to look at various factors in determining
7 what is an appropriate sentence. If, looking at those
8 factors, the Court determines that a sentence other than the
9 guidelines is the most appropriate sentence, then the Court
10 must impose that sentence as opposed to a guidelines sentence.
11 That section tells us to look at the defendant's background
12 and history and character, it tells us to look at the facts of
13 the case, it tells us to look at the needs of society, for a
14 punishment, including the needs of deterrence, the needs of
15 incapacitation, the needs of retribution, and the needs of
16 rehabilitation.
17 Looking at those factors, the Court is going to talk
18 about them more later on, but the Court does not see that
19 those factors, the 3553(a) factors, suggest to the Court at
20 this point that a guidelines sentence would not be the correct
21 sentence. Therefore, based both upon the departure within the
22 guidelines and a variance from the guidelines, the Court will
23 deny the defendant's motion based upon his mental health and
24 diminished capacity arguments.
25 What's the next motion?

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1 MS. CORY: Your Honor, there are several items that I
2 brought up as possible grounds for a downward variance. Just
3 briefly, one of them was his medical condition, which we
4 believe——and Your Honor's familiar with everything from my
5 arguments from bail——the primary problem is his heart
6 condition. But we're not talking about just the fact that a
7 person with a heart condition can be better treated by his own
8 physicians. But a person with a severe heart condition is less
9 of a threat and danger to society. I think his sister
10 mentioned the fact that between his shoulder problems, which
11 Your Honor is aware of, his heart problems, he is not in the
12 physical shape that a person needs to be in to be a danger to
13 anyone. So one of our arguments was that his medical condition
14 made him less of a threat and more in need of the kind of
15 treatment he would receive in his own home.
16 THE COURT: And what's the next one?
17 MS. CORY: All right. Other one, Your Honor -- and I
18 was hoping I wasn't going to have to get to this one, but it's
19 basically a policy argument. Mr. Doggart was committed -- was
20 convicted of one count of soliciting someone to burn down a
21 mosque for religious reasons and one count of soliciting
22 someone to burn down a mosque that was engaged in interstate
23 commerce. And our argument would be that when Congress decided
24 that the punishment for solicitation was going to be no more
25 than half of what the punishment for the underlying crime was,

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1 they didn't do that so that the government could stack offenses
2 against a person and get it back up to where it would be if it
3 hadn't been solicitation.
4 So our request would be——and this kind of goes with
5 our request that the Court deem that there is no minimum
6 mandatory——that no sentence should go above 120 months, simply
7 because Congress decided that solicitations are punished less
8 severely. The maximum for a solicitation is ten years. And
9 the fact that he was convicted of asking somebody to burn down
10 the same building and it resulted in two convictions should
11 not result in his receiving punishment for both of those
12 offenses. He should be punished for one of them.
13 THE COURT: I will label that as a stacking. Okay.
14 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor. And we are not making
15 the argument that it's double jeopardy. We are making the
16 argument that under these circumstances, and given the purpose
17 of the statute, running the sentences consecutively would be
18 inappropriate.
19 Your Honor, the final thing -- you know, there are
20 several other arguments that we presented in here that I'm
21 sure the Court has read, but the biggest one, to me, remaining
22 is Mr. Doggart's character, which Your Honor has -- I don't
23 want to say made light of, or denigrated, but devalued.
24 Mr. Doggart's character was exhibited not just in
25 the four witnesses but in the letters of all of these people.

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1 Your Honor, I think, received 16 or 17 letters from people who
2 know him very well, who told of things that Mr. Doggart had
3 done for them, the input he had had in their lives that made
4 an enormous difference in how their lives turned out. One was
5 the Sea Cadet Brindle Jones, who talked about the extra care
6 he gave to her to make sure that she was motivated to
7 continue. And she did indeed join the Navy eventually. You
8 know, relatives who talk about the things that he did for them
9 that-- I love my nieces and nephews, but I can't imagine
10 doing some of the things that Mr. Doggart did for them.
11 Helping people move. Buying things for them that they could
12 not afford for themselves that they needed. His lifelong
13 commitment, day after day, to his children. I think Mr. Seay
14 mentioned that he drove from Muscle Shoals to Chattanooga
15 every day during a period of time when he believed he needed
16 to be at home with his daughters. Your Honor, these letters
17 tell about a person who's truly a wonderful person.
18 You know, did he have this mental disorder? Yes, he
19 did. But, by and large, throughout his life he rose above it.
20 When you read these letters and you think that Mr. Doggart is
21 in many ways a damaged person emotionally, he struggles
22 against a mental problem, but he is able to overcome it and
23 have a really exceptional input in the lives of people around
24 him, that should make a difference. To me, what it says is,
25 why do we all believe that he was going to step out of the

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1 character that he had had for 64 years and do something
2 violent when for 64 years he had done nothing but serve and
3 help the people around him. It just makes no sense to believe
4 that Mr. Doggart was going to do anything violent when you
5 look at what these people say about him. It is grounds for a
6 downward variance that he has spent his whole life trying to
7 have a good impact on people, not just his family, not just
8 his friends, but volunteering. You know, he talks about the
9 amount of blood that he's given. These are things that, to
10 him, are just the signs of what a person is supposed to do
11 with his life, have a positive influence. The fact that he
12 got messed up with a group of people that he then tried to
13 portray himself as being a really bad character should not
14 overcome all of the good that he has done throughout his life.
15 And, Your Honor, in terms of my arguments for
16 variance, as I said, there are a couple others, but that's the
17 big one that I wanted Your Honor to think about. He is just
18 not a man who would have done anything to hurt anyone. His
19 whole life has been helping people.
20 I know Mr. Doggart wants to be able to allocute. I
21 don't know if Your Honor wants to make the final variance
22 decisions after you hear from him or before you hear from him.
23 THE COURT: Well, let me hear from the government
24 first. So if we-- I have three issues in support of a
25 variance; there's a medical condition, what I've called

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1 stacking, and also the defendant's good character.
3 THE COURT: So those are the only things the Court
4 will consider, then, in connection with the variance, just
5 those three.
6 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I had mentioned two or three
7 others in my filing. If there was anything that really caught
8 your fancy, I would be happy to talk about it. But those are
9 the ones I thought were the important ones.
10 THE COURT: Well, if you want the Court to consider
11 it, why don't you state it now. Why don't you pick up your
12 memo and look through it and see if you may have left anything
13 out.
14 (Brief pause.)
15 MS. CORY: Well, Your Honor, the role of the
16 confidential source, I think we've already covered. And here
17 again, I don't think the defense ever put forth the idea that
18 the confidential source led Mr. Doggart down the primrose path.
19 The confidential source knowingly or unknowingly fed into
20 Mr. Doggart's desire to impress people. And his conversations
21 with the confidential source, as with everyone else, were
22 conversations to try to prove what a really impressive bad dude
23 he was. And he said things he thought would accomplish that
24 end. And if there had not been a confidential source, if there
25 had not been tapes that we said -- you know, we wouldn't be

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1 here today, there would not have been any crime to prosecute.
2 Your Honor, I think I also had already touched on
3 the fact that we think an appropriate sentence is the one Your
4 Honor would have imposed had you allowed Mr. Doggart to plead
5 guilty initially, because at that point, Your Honor, none of
6 this was on the horizon at all. He was someone who was
7 willing to come in and say, "Yes, I've done wrong." The
8 guidelines would have been either 6 to 12 months or 18 to 24
9 months. And, Your Honor, given Mr. Doggart's nature, the kind
10 of person he is, I think that's an appropriate sentence.
11 That's the sentence we asked for, the 18 to 24 months. You
12 know, it punishes him. It serves as a deterrent, not to
13 terrorists. It serves as a deterrent to people like
14 Mr. Doggart. People will look at him and say, "My gosh, that
15 guy's life was ruined because he couldn't keep his mouth
16 shut." And that's what this case is all about. It is a
17 completely atypical case. It does not fit the guidelines at
18 all.
19 I've looked at some other solicitation to commit
20 arson cases, and, by and large, they're people who want to
21 burn down their store to make money. And those people get
22 sentences of, like, 12 months, 18 months, as long as the store
23 wasn't burned down. Mr. Doggart's crime doesn't fit into that
24 category, it doesn't fit under that kind of guideline, but nor
25 does it fit under the terrorism guideline, Your Honor, because

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1 a terrorist is somebody who is going to destroy people and
2 things, and, Your Honor, that is not the case with
3 Mr. Doggart.
6 With respect to the defendant's health issues, Your
7 Honor, like many of us, as the defendant ages, he is suffering
8 from numerous maladies. I respectfully submit that the
9 defendant can get adequate health care within the Bureau of
10 Prisons, and, candidly, Your Honor, may get as good a health
11 care as one can get. And I have noted that in our sentencing
12 memorandum, Judge, that the Court should consider placement,
13 at least initially, in a Federal Medical Center, if the Court
14 deems that to be appropriate.
15 THE COURT: The Court addressed this at the time of
16 the defendant's conviction by the jury, and I recommended that
17 the defendant be placed at a medical facility. Do you know if
18 that took place or not?
19 MR. PIPER: He went to DeKalb County, Your Honor,
20 which is a local facility in Alabama. I'm told that it's
21 better there than perhaps some of our local facilities.
22 THE COURT: And his treatment was okay there?
23 MR. PIPER: That would better be answered by
24 Ms. Cory, Your Honor. I've heard nothing-- Initially I heard
25 some bad things from Ms. Cory, just off the record, that he was

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1 having a difficult time with something, but I don't know beyond
2 that. That was probably a week or two after the verdict.
3 THE COURT: It's common for jails to not accept
4 medication that people already have. And it takes a while for
5 the medication to start coming. Was there something more
6 serious than that?
7 MS. CORY: Your Honor, what was the last question?
8 MR. PIPER: It's common for jails not to accept
9 medication from outside. Was there something more serious than
10 that.
11 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I think Mr. Doggart was
12 eventually able to get his medication issue settled. There's
13 always been a problem with the medications they're giving him
14 not combining well. And he was getting sick from it. They
15 were going to take him to his heart doctor once. I don't think
16 that ever happened. He went to the emergency once -- room
17 once, and they treated him there for a problem. He was going
18 to get physical therapy for his shoulder, but I don't think
19 that ever happened.
20 Had I thought that complaining would have improved
21 the situation, I would have done that. But after Your Honor
22 denied bail, I just decided Mr. Doggart was going to have to
23 stick it out. He's never going to be able to use his shoulder
24 like he should have anyway. And his heart has certainly
25 survived. And I would say DeKalb County Jail is a better jail

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1 than any of the facilities up here.
2 THE COURT: Well, I'm pleased to hear that, then.
3 Mr. Doggart looks very, very good. I don't see any
4 deterioration in his condition from the time that he was at
5 trial. And as he was sitting there, my assumption had been
6 that he was at a federal medical facility undergoing treatment,
7 but that apparently was not the case.
8 MS. CORY: No, Your Honor.
9 MR. PIPER: So, Your Honor, with respect to that,
10 whatever the Court's decision is, we believe that the health
11 issues are not sufficiently serious to where it should preclude
12 the Court from giving the defendant a serious sentence of
13 imprisonment.
14 With respect to the stacking issue, Your Honor,
15 multiplicity, as the Court is well aware, is defined as
16 charging a single offense in more than one count of an
17 indictment. That's not-- Ms. Cory concedes that Counts 1 and
18 2 are not double jeopardy. They do not fulfill the
19 Blockburger test. Each has an element that the government had
20 to prove that the other did not; one, that it was a religious
21 structure was the nature of the target, and had to prove
22 beyond a reasonable doubt that that's the reason why it was
23 targeted, and the second one was that the building was used in
24 interstate commerce.
25 Now, there is also an interstate commerce aspect to

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1 Count 1, but that's merely using an instrumentality of
2 interstate commerce. On Count 2, the arson, under
3 solicitation to commit the 844(i), we had to prove that the
4 building itself affected interstate commerce. And the jury
5 found that it did. So we respectfully submit that the
6 stacking is appropriate in this case, and the statutory
7 maximum is 240 months, not 120 months.
8 With respect to the defendant's good character, Your
9 Honor, there's only one thing worse than seeing a defendant
10 facing sentencing with -- having loved ones and family members
11 in the courtroom, and that's seeing a defendant face
12 sentencing without it, Judge. So it's fantastic that his
13 family and friends and coworkers have come out in support of
14 him. And I do know for the two years this case has been
15 pending that especially his daughters have been by his side,
16 have tried to do what they could to help his condition. And
17 they should be commended for that.
18 It's very possible that the defendant does have 64
19 years of good character. I'm always reminded of the play
20 Every Man, Your Honor, where one takes his good deeds with him
21 to the gates of Hell. And I'm fairly confident I quoted that
22 line when I was a public defender before the Court, and I
23 doubt that it ever made any difference. Having said that, the
24 Court should consider that his good character may, in fact,
25 inure to his benefit.

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1 What we asked the Court to do, in our written
2 submission, was to juxtapose that, the numerous letters the
3 defendant has received on his behalf, with the equally as
4 numerous, if not more so, of the people who were threatened,
5 intimidated, horrified by the defendant's statements, by the
6 defendant's actions in this case. As the Court is well aware,
7 the people from Islamberg came to the trial. There were 35 or
8 40 of them during closing arguments, Your Honor, that I
9 remember seeing. And again today, they have been down here
10 today. They have-- Somebody from the community has been at
11 every hearing in this case. And I would ask the Court to
12 consider -- indeed, consider Mr. Doggart's good character, but
13 juxtapose that with the victims in this case, look at what's
14 happened here, and make a decision based upon that, Your
15 Honor.
16 Finally, with respect to the-- Ms. Cory said that
17 with the CS, there would have been no crime. And she claims
18 that she doesn't know where the government got the idea that
19 we were stating that the CS was driving the train here. But
20 it's from Ms. Cory's own submission. "Both the government and
21 the presentence writer ignored the significant role of the CS
22 in pushing the defendant into uncharacteristic behavior."
23 That's where we got the idea, and also from the defendant's
24 own letter of allocution. And also today, I think, the Court
25 heard from some character witnesses that talked about the CS

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1 initiating the phone calls. I think Ms. Lee, one of her
2 letters, if that was Ms. Lee's letter, I think, said that the
3 CS initiated all the phone calls. Well, that's not true,
4 Judge. The defendant initiated a lot of phone calls. To most
5 of the other folks, he initiated all of them. The CS was
6 tape-recording the phone calls, and there was a system they
7 went through to do that.
8 But, respectfully, Your Honor, the CS was not the
9 issue here. It's never been the issue. The defendant wants
10 to complain that the government, you know, pushed him into
11 going to Nashville. Well, it was the defendant's idea to
12 meet. We were accelerating the timeline. We had four teams
13 of FBI agents camped out on the property next to
14 Mr. Doggart's. We had round-the-clock surveillance on him.
15 We had a 30-day wiretap; of course we're going to try to
16 expedite the matter. But the defendant certainly never shied
17 away from any of his conversation, any of his talk with other
18 people. And, as we noted, he did it over the Internet. Even
19 on the Internet radio program he talked about -- one of the
20 most flagrant things he said, about killing Muslims and
21 leaving their dead bodies for their brothers to find.
22 So, Judge, I don't believe that the CS was the --
23 pushing the defendant into uncharacteristic behavior. If the
24 defendant exhibited uncharacteristic behavior, certainly the
25 CS didn't push him into it, it was something he came to of his

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1 own accord. So -- and I respectfully submit that even if it
2 is uncharacteristic-- And the defendant makes a good argument
3 that for 64 years he was a fairly decent, law-abiding citizen.
4 I don't mean to demean him. But when he went off the rails,
5 he went off hard, Your Honor.
6 THE COURT: Mr. Piper, I know you don't know all the
7 details of this, but I understand that there was a shooting
8 this morning of some Congressmen in the D.C. area.
9 MR. PIPER: Mr. Mody told me about it just as we were
10 headed over here, Judge. I just briefly saw it, Your Honor.
11 THE COURT: Have you heard the age of the person who
12 committed -- who allegedly did that?
13 MR. PIPER: He was in his --
14 AGENT SMITH: 67.
15 MR. PIPER: 67.
16 Thank you.
17 67. I knew he was older, Your Honor.
18 THE COURT: Do you know if that person had been
19 involved in criminal activity in the past?
20 MR. PIPER: I think that they said that he had no
21 criminal record, is my understanding. And I think that he died
22 in a shootout with Capitol police, is what Saeed told me at
23 lunch, Your Honor.
24 THE COURT: And there was a young man who grew up in
25 our community and went to our local schools and went to

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1 Tennessee at Chattanooga. I believe he studied engineering a
2 few years ago. And I believe it was July 11th --
3 MR. PIPER: I think it was July 15, Your Honor --
4 THE COURT: July 15th.
5 MR. PIPER: -- of 2016.
6 THE COURT: Okay.
7 AGENT SMITH: July 16th.
8 MR. PIPER: July 16th of 2015, Your Honor.
9 THE COURT: Okay. Was there any indication in his
10 background that he might do anything like that?
11 MR. PIPER: None whatsoever, I think, Your Honor. He
12 had gone to Hixson High School. He had been completely-- He
13 was an American citizen, Your Honor. And I think that he, too,
14 had just wandered off the rails in a big way, unfortunately,
15 and killed five service members, four marines and a sailor.
16 And that's what I want to say to Ms. Cory's
17 argument, "Well, without the CI, there would be -- this case
18 wouldn't have happened." That may be true, Judge. But it may
19 have been that the defendant convinced somebody to go up and
20 to bomb Islamberg and to kill people. The other crime was
21 going to be far worse. The defendant can still insist that
22 nothing was going to happen here. But the most dangerous
23 thing we can have is the lone wolf, the two people -- the two
24 examples you've given, people who don't have any criminal
25 history and, for whatever reason, they're just hell-bent on

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1 destruction, and they do it. And fortunately for us,
2 Mr. Doggart liked to talk, and he talked about his plans and
3 his scheme and his destruction, and therefore we were able to
4 stop it before anything may have happened.
5 I know that the defendant and defendant's lawyers
6 and the family members all disagree with this, but, in
7 reality, Judge, one only need tell us so many times he's going
8 to kill people before we start taking it seriously. And
9 that's what the FBI did in this case. So, yes, I do think
10 that, at 67 years old, it's a good example. I don't like to
11 generalize from the specific, Your Honor, but as the Court
12 noted previously and we say in our written submission, the
13 defendant felt like he had little to lose. There's a clock on
14 all of us, and my time is running, and that is true, Judge.
15 There is a clock on all of us. But I don't-- I think the
16 defendant wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and orchestrate
17 his own exodus, unfortunately. At least that's what the proof
18 shows us. And that's why we initiated the case and why we
19 went after it, Your Honor.
21 It's about ten minutes until the hour now. Why
22 don't we take our afternoon break. Let's try to get back at
23 4:00.
24 And, Mr. Piper, you can call the person you would
25 like to either make a statement or give testimony. You

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1 indicated it would be brief, and I would hope that it will be
2 brief. Then the Court will take the allocution from the
3 defendant and his counsel, then the allocution from the
4 government. Then the Court will announce its decision on the
5 motion for a variance, and then the Court will announce
6 sentence.
8 (Brief recess.)
10 MR. PIPER: Thank you, Your Honor. Khadijah Smith
11 would like to allocute for the people of Islamberg.
12 Come up, Ms. Smith.
13 Can she remain at the lectern, Your Honor?
14 THE COURT: I'll leave it up to you. If she remains
15 at the lectern, then she cannot be examined. If you put her on
16 the witness stand, then she can be examined, she can be
17 cross-examined. So I'll leave it up to you.
18 MR. PIPER: Well, I don't have any problem for her
19 being cross-examined, Judge. She's got a very brief statement
20 to read.
21 THE COURT: Very well.
22 MR. PIPER: Go ahead. And spell your first name for
23 us, too, please, ma'am.
24 MS. SMITH: Khadijah, K-H-A-D-I-J-A-H.
25 May it please the Court. My name is Khadijah Smith.

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1 I live in Islamberg, New York. This Court received over 100
2 pages of letters from Islamberg community and members of the
3 public who have taken an interest in this case. What
4 Mr. Doggart has done is a crime against the entire country.
5 These letters are from all ages, races, ethnicities,
6 geography, and faiths. The jury has spoken. The people have
7 spoken.
8 Your Honor, our community consists of law-abiding
9 American citizens. Our fathers are military service members.
10 Our sisters, brothers, mothers, and daughters are educators,
11 nurses, engineers, physicians, and lawyers. We are patriots.
12 We serve our country. We have participated in and respected
13 this judicial process. We are grateful to the Court and to
14 the jury for execution of a smooth administration of justice.
15 We trust Your Honor will make the best determination. Thank
16 you.
18 Ms. Cory, would you and your client please come to
19 the lectern.
20 (Brief pause.)
21 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I may have one or two things
22 to say when Mr. Doggart is finished with his allocution, but
23 Mr. Doggart wants to speak first.
24 THE COURT: Very good.
25 THE DEFENDANT: Good day, Judge Collier. As you

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1 know, my name is Robert Rankin Doggart. I am 65 years 7 months
2 old. I was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, of middle class,
3 working family, with both parents at home. My primary
4 education was as a Roman Catholic Christian.
5 Today's allocution is intended to explain my actions
6 in this case and to petition you for a punishment commensurate
7 with the relative seriousness of the convictions thereto. I
8 shall not attempt to restate the arguments of my or the
9 government's attorney, except where corrections, additions, or
10 clarifications might be helpful to this honorable Court. This
11 is, after all, the very first time that all present have the
12 opportunity to hear from me and details not stated at trial.
13 And that was because of tepid defense.
14 In retrospect, it was a serious error not to have
15 given the jury information needed to make an educated
16 determination of the charges against me. This could only have
17 come from the principal in this matter, me.
18 This case finds it origins in early 2013, upon my
19 determination and my own judgment that the murders of four
20 Americans, including the ambassador, at the United States
21 consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was corrupted, that our men were
22 tortured to death in the worst ways imaginable, and that a
23 conspiracy to cover up had occurred at the highest levels of
24 government in the interest of the 2012 general election.
25 As well, illegal immigration had begun to challenge

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1 our nation, in violation of Article II, Section 3 of the
2 Constitution, that is, to take care to faithfully execute the
3 laws enacted by the Congress, which set forth established
4 immigration policy. The executive branch largely ignored
5 these laws. And other significant issues had arisen, id est.,
6 terrorism, the IRS scandal, the military downsizing, among
7 others, quite.
8 The people had developed a lack of confidence in
9 government, as determined by statistically valid opinion
10 polls. Personally I found the executive and legislative
11 branches to be left wanting. Because of these stats, I stood
12 for the 4th District of the United States Congress in
13 Tennessee in 2014, unsuccessfully. My platform was centrist
14 and constitutional, and its stated purpose was the protection
15 of our people, our land, and our form of government, among
16 other topics.
17 Having lost that election and the influence I would
18 have gained from it, what was I to do? Call upon the very
19 government that I did not trust to tell us all was well? I
20 thought not, and thus set out to create an elaborate hoax to
21 acquire the government's attention.
22 Around the same time, I became aware of what some
23 people consider to be potential enemies of our nation. I had
24 already addressed the illegal immigration issue in Laredo,
25 Texas, at the border crossing during the 2014 campaign, on two

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1 visits, where there were clear violations of immigration law.
2 During the latter trip, there was a bomb threat against me. I
3 went anyway.
4 The potential enemy that stood above all others were
5 suspected jihadist training encampments near Hancock, New
6 York, and Dover, Tennessee. I had already visited Dover,
7 which is in Stewart County, and determined that the community
8 there was law-abiding and a peaceful contributor to the town.
9 This was according to the city and county mayors, the county
10 sheriff, and the neighbor to the property. And so of the
11 three types of jihad, theirs was a spiritual path, and is to
12 be respected.
13 To add clarity here, jihad is to Islam as terrorism
14 is to jihad. I call it the inverse square law of jihad, and
15 it is depicted on this exhibit. (Indicating.) I can go
16 through this, Your Honor, if you wish, but I think it clearly
17 explains the inverse nature of jihad, Islam, and terrorism.
18 THE COURT: Ms. Cory, do you have an exhibit number
19 for that? Is that Number 1?
20 THE DEFENDANT: Exhibit 1, Your Honor.
21 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I was not certain Mr. Doggart
22 wanted his documents admitted as exhibits. I think they're
23 more examples to show the Court his train of thought.
24 THE DEFENDANT: Yes, ma'am.
25 THE COURT: Well --

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1 MS. CORY: We can admit it, Your Honor, if you want
2 to, but I --
3 THE COURT: -- I'll let you decide. I'm thinking out
4 loud here. My assumption is going to be there's going to be an
5 appeal from whatever decision the Court makes. I have no idea
6 what issues may be brought up on appeal. But if one of the
7 issues is the Court did not take proper account of the
8 defendant's statements, and an argument is made to the
9 appellate court that the Court either did not understand or
10 ignored the exhibit or the content of the defendant's argument,
11 I don't know that the appellate court will be able to
12 understand that without some idea of what it was that was shown
13 to the district court. But I'll let you make that call.
14 MS. CORY: Well, Your Honor, I'm happy to submit it
15 as an exhibit. Mr. Doggart has written it, so we don't have
16 copies for the government or anyone else to look at.
17 THE COURT: Well, the government can see it now.
18 MS. CORY: Yes. It's on the screen. I guess we
19 could number it Exhibit 1 for the defense.
20 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: I've got a sticker.
21 (Defendant's Exhibit 1 was received into evidence.)
22 THE COURT: Go on, Mr. Doggart.
23 THE WITNESS: Very well.
24 Judge Collier, jihad is but one of many attributes
25 that may be used to consider terrorism. Islam is merely

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1 incidental, not directly related, no different than if a
2 terrorist attribute attached itself to the incidental groups
3 of the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Panthers, the Ku Klux
4 Klan, or the Irish Republican Army. And I'm not suggesting
5 that those are equivalent; just to make the difference that
6 there's incidental versus directly related.
7 Islam deserves equal respect in this great land,
8 and there has never been a time that I hated or was afraid of
9 it. At this point I should state that it has been a privilege
10 to have grown up with, been schooled with, worked with, and
11 lived with members of all five racial groups, a distinction
12 relatively rare even in this easily traveled world. In
13 relation to that, there are no racial or religious components
14 on my part to this case. However, I believe that the
15 government targeted my demographic. Accordingly there should
16 be no victim-related adjustment.
17 Most disturbing of all, though, is that someone,
18 anyone, thought that I sought to harm children. A fellow said
19 as much outside this courtroom in July 2015, not knowing that
20 I fully understood that the loss of a child is an abyss from
21 which few families emerge. I have personal experience with
22 this.
23 To the assertion in the PSR that I played a
24 leadership role in this case, I did no such thing. I gave no
25 orders or made any requests of anyone. Indeed, it was the

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1 confidential source who convened the meetings in Nashville and
2 here in Chattanooga. They never would have occurred
3 otherwise. Regarding Nashville, I tried to prevent it by
4 offering to reimburse the confidential source for his airline
5 ticket. He declined, and pushed forward anyway. In
6 Chattanooga I was called the very same morning as the meeting,
7 and individuals who I had never met attended. Clearly the
8 government was trying to entrap me; make no mistake. I was a
9 leader of nothing, making certain of that.
10 The PSR assigned a repeat offender designation to me
11 at the highest level, VI. The report is wrong. I have never
12 been charged with or convicted of any federal crime. The PSR
13 attempts to define me, however, as a terrorist in accordance
14 with Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 2332, and
15 continues to obsess with the term plan, which is not
16 applicable to convictions to crimes which have never been
17 committed, nor did I ever intend to commit any. Accordingly
18 the 12-level upward adjustment to the offense level should not
19 be approved.
20 And to clarify, there is a very big difference
21 between trying to influence or affect the conduct of
22 government by intimidation or coercion, which applies to
23 public policy, as opposed to my intention, to influence the
24 implementation of established procedure, which is a much lower
25 level. I was simply seeking to raise the government's level

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1 of awareness such that it would assure to do its job and
2 assure a absence of a genuine danger to New York City. I have
3 relatives there.
4 Now I would like to recite the definitions of a
5 number of terms which are essential to an understanding of my
6 activities. They are act, attempt, intent, plan, threat,
7 solicitation, and use. And they were not adequately addressed
8 at trial. The first and most important is plan, defined as
9 "an organized and especially detailed method according to
10 which something is to be done," as stated in the Oxford,
11 Sixth Edition, 2007. Throughout this event, the government
12 has failed to come to grips with this definition. And I found
13 that so disconcerting that I wrote an embryonic plan three
14 months after my arrest. It is presented here as Exhibit 2. I
15 call this an algorithm. This algorithm contains a number of
16 attributes that would comprise a plan. There are hold points
17 along the way, descriptions of activities. This algorithm
18 required a scant 42 minutes of my time, and shows what some
19 items of a plan might be.
20 In my line of work, sir, there are folks who do
21 nothing but plan. We call them planners. And they author
22 documents containing actions, due dates, responsible persons,
23 and narrative explanations of each plan item. This exhibit,
24 despite that it has some detail, does not show narratives,
25 persons, or dates. So it, itself, is incomplete. The date

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1 that it was originated was July 9th, 2015. The point here is
2 that there was no plan, ever, formal or informal, complete or
3 incomplete.
4 The next item is threat, which this Court has ruled
5 upon in June of 2015 by stating that there was no true threat
6 in response to a plea bargain agreed to by the government and
7 me pursuant to Title 18 of the United States Code, Section
8 875(c). During the negotiations about the 875, the government
9 explicitly agreed that no further charges would be brought.
10 In as much as I held up my part of the bargain, irrespective
11 of the denial, more charges were indeed brought against me, a
12 clear violation of this agreement. In plain language, this is
13 called lying.
14 Accordingly, by virtue of the plea, sentencing
15 credit for acceptance of responsibility should be granted.
16 Ultimately no intimidation was pursued against Islamberg or
17 its residents.
18 The term attempt is next. It is "an act of making
19 an effort to accomplish something uncertain or difficult, a
20 trial, an endeavor, especially when unsuccessful or
21 incomplete," as stated in the Oxford, Sixth Edition, 2007.
22 Also, it is defined in Item 5.01 as "a substantial step beyond
23 words." As discussed today in the plan that you see before
24 you, there was no action or step of any kind.
25 The next term is intent. An intent is "an act or

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1 fact of intending, formally also inclination, will, one's
2 will, one's desire." It is also "having a mind concentrated
3 on something, engrossed in an activity, firmly resolved on a
4 purpose." That is from Oxford, Sixth, 2007.
5 The next term is solicitation, from the Oxford as
6 well, "the act of asking for or trying to obtain something
7 from someone;" from the Black's Law Dictionary, "asking,
8 enticing, or an urgent request."
9 The final two definitions are of act and use, and
10 both relate to "denoting internal manifest- -- external
11 manifestation of an actor's will, primarily that which is
12 done," or "doing," from Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition,
13 1999, or "the fact or state of being used, or an application
14 or conversion to some purpose," from the Oxford, Sixth. Your
15 Honor, there was no act, use, or application or conversion to
16 some purpose. In summary, it is clear that the government
17 does not comprehend the applicable lexicon.
18 In consideration of words regarding this case, I
19 assert in totality this is about the First Amendment right to
20 free speech. And irrespective of the difficulty of getting
21 past my words used to get the attention of the government, I
22 point to U.S.A. v. Apfelbaum and the Shakespearean court
23 appearing in Measure for Measure, Act 5, Scene 1, as follows:
24 "His acts did not overtake his bad intent, and must be buried
25 as an attempt that perished by the way. Thoughts are no

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1 subjects, intents but mere thoughts." This quote illustrates
2 sound legal doctrine.
3 Turning now to the most hateful language, used by
4 the prosecution at least three times because it offends our
5 sensibilities and is fundamentally abhorrent. With purpose, I
6 bring attention to the Brad Pitt movie Inglourious Basterds.
7 I intentionally embellished that quote, augmenting it to make
8 it more impactful for the benefit of the government. During
9 the trial, I never believed that Mr. Piper remembered it from
10 his movie-going past. It was given to him by my first
11 attorney, and it was used to sway the jury, a jury that could
12 not see past the infected words.
13 Judge Collier, there are unintended human costs to
14 this case that I deeply regret.
15 To the residents of Islamberg, please accept my
16 apology for any inconveniences you may have experienced. I
17 know they were real. I read your letters. All I was seeking
18 was the assurance from the government that -- reports from Fox
19 News and other media that your community was not a danger to
20 New York City. It is unfortunate that the FBI caused you to
21 believe that an attack was imminent. That was never true. I
22 request your forgiveness. Please. Please.
23 To my family, who has been troubled by this event
24 for more than two years, I am so sorry, and I love you so
25 much.

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1 Your Honor, you mentioned something earlier about
2 the tragic events of July 16th, 2015. So I feel like I should
3 make a comment about that. To the truly tragic attack on the
4 Navy Operational Support Center in July of 2015, resulting in
5 the deaths of five Armed Services members at the hands of one
6 Muhammad Abdulazeez, and Azeez's death in the police response,
7 as well as that of the confidential source, if he is indeed
8 dead, how terrible for all of the families of those men. Who
9 is to blame for this ultimately lies with the accountability
10 to God that each of us owns. His fatherly charity is most
11 earnestly sought for us all.
12 Now I would like to discuss the FBI's surveillance
13 of me in the days and weeks leading up to my arrest on
14 April 10th, 2015. It was 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and
15 involved airborne oversight, a camera in my front yard, GPS
16 location monitors on my vehicles, and interstate tracking, at
17 significant cost to the people. What was I doing? Was it the
18 functions shown on the algorithm? Target practice? Secret
19 meetings? Acquisition of financing? Logistics? Recruitment?
20 Signing of oaths? No, sir. It was me visiting my children
21 and their families, grocery shopping, getting gasoline,
22 washing my vehicles, going to the post office, restaurants,
23 and, worst of all, donating blood products, all activities of
24 an ordinary person. They observed nothing.
25 And I wonder, whilst I was going and donating

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1 apheresis products, which is time-consuming, what were the
2 agents doing outside of Blood Assurance? Maybe they thought
3 they were following a bad man prepared to do a horrible thing
4 against a helpless community. Well, Your Honor, I am not, I
5 was not, and they are not. Looking back, I speculate what was
6 the cost of my prosecution. I say $3.1 million. And I am
7 sorry for the assets that were activated against me. That
8 money is your money, Your Honor, everyone in this courtroom's
9 money, and it is my money, all unwisely spent.
10 That brings to mind the cost of incarceration.
11 According to the presentencing report, the cost of
12 incarceration is just short of $32,000 a year at Bureau of
13 Prisons facilities, as opposed to a little over $4000 a year
14 for supervised release, the delta being $28,000 a year. Some
15 folks in this great land do not make that much money a year.
16 Judge Collier, I have been concerned about the Civil
17 Rights Division of the Department of Justice's certification
18 to prosecution pursuant to Part 247 since the onset of this
19 case. A Ms. Vanita Gupta signed as Acting Assistant Attorney
20 General. And despite numerous requests, no document
21 designating or authorizing Ms. Gupta as the Acting Assistant
22 Attorney General has been produced, whether a single page or a
23 position description. In addition, I am aware of no
24 memorandum detailing how the certification was achieved. And
25 so I do hope that some relatively informal action was not the

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1 method of approval, because that would not be
2 professional-grade work, and this is my life we're talking
3 about here.
4 At this time I would like to assert that in
5 reviewing Part 247 certification, it should have been clear
6 all along that there was no mens rea, that is, no knowledge of
7 applicable law or intent to violate it or harm any persons
8 most presently.
9 Upon realization that I was not planning a crime,
10 the FBI should have stood down their investigation and
11 approached me as to my goal, which I repeat was to the draw
12 attention to possible dangers to New York City.
13 The PSR, on Page 12, Paragraph 73, dealt with my
14 various medical impairments in a perfunctory fashion,
15 minimizing the limiting role that would be applicable. Most
16 notable is primary fibromyalgia as diagnosed by Dr. David
17 Dreskin here in Chattanooga; it was not included, nor was the
18 fact that both TVA and the Social Security Administration have
19 defined my conditions as medically disabled. Therefore, even
20 if I had possessed bad intent, limiting physical impairments,
21 of which I am abundantly aware, would have prevented my
22 actions.
23 The defense objections to the PSR state that the
24 event was inserted into the middle of my life and was
25 therefore out of context. That is partially correct. In as

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1 much as most of us die at about the same age as our parents, I
2 would be in the twilight of mine, not in the middle, or in the
3 last 18.1 percent, in mathematical terms. If I was at half my
4 life span, that would make me 32.6 years old.
5 I would now like to address the grand jury
6 indictment of July 2015, during which the four-count
7 superseding indictment was approved. In doing so, I quote a
8 combination of two items of case law, USA vs. Calandra and USA
9 vs. Dionisio. I entitle this, The Function of the Grand Jury.
10 MS. CORY: We'll label it Exhibit 3.
11 (Defendant's Exhibit 3 was received into evidence.)
12 (Off-the-record discussion between the defendant and
13 defense counsel.)
14 THE DEFENDANT: The grand jury's historic functions
15 include both a determination whether there is a probable cause
16 to believe a crime has been committed and the protection of
17 citizens against unfounded criminal prosecutions.
18 Unfortunately the grand jury has not remained faithful to its
19 historic purpose. A common criticism of the modern grand jury
20 is that it has become a rubber stamp for the prosecutor.
21 As one federal judge famously stated, "This great
22 institution of the past has long ceased to be the guardian of
23 the people, for which purpose it was created. Today it is but
24 a convenient tool for the prosecutor, too often for the sole
25 purpose of publicity. Any experienced prosecutor will admit

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1 that he can indict anyone at any time for almost anything."
2 That's in USA vs. Dionisio, quoting Senior District Judge the
3 Honorable William Campbell of the Northern District of
4 Illinois.
5 I absolutely believe that the Knoxville grand jury
6 was similar to the trial jury, in that they did not fully
7 comprehend the indictments and could not see beyond the
8 infected words. Even FBI Special Agent James Smith, at
9 Mr. Piper's suggestion, stated that the government was
10 uncertain if I was going to undertake some action. That was
11 in July of 2015. How 'bout that.
12 Next, the topic of entrapment and character need
13 mentioning. When I first reviewed the jury instructions from
14 Your Honor, I was encouraged by what I thought was pointing to
15 pertinent subjects. Perhaps the most convincing was the
16 number of telephone calls, 17 in total, 14 by the confidential
17 source, and 3 by me, returning the confidential source's
18 messages. This is both qualitative and quantitative data
19 showing intrepid action by the government, period.
20 Adding to this are the meetings in Nashville and
21 Chattanooga, both convened by the confidential source,
22 unequivocally. The meetings would never have occurred
23 otherwise. About Nashville, I say again, I tried to reimburse
24 the CS's airline fee. And in Chattanooga I was not notified
25 of the meeting until that very morning. The fact that Shane

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1 Shielein and Sally McNulty attended was of little consequence
2 to me. Clearly I was ensnared. And the jury assigned too low
3 a level of importance to the CS's legerdemain.
4 Now, regarding character, Judge Collier. During my
5 trial, the defense provided two witnesses, my first daughter,
6 Christie Atkins, and my -- and her husband, rather, Randy
7 Atkins. It was unfortunate that other character witnesses
8 were out of town at the time. And so despite realtime concern
9 over the depth and breadth of the defense in general, it
10 rested. Most impactful of all was my failure, at my
11 attorneys' urging, to testify. In doing so, the jury was
12 deprived of many dozens of facts, even as my family was trying
13 to get the defense's attention. That opportunity presents
14 now. And whilst I do not wish to spend an inordinate amount
15 of time on this item, there are some points that need to be
16 made.
17 First are my educational credentials, Your Honor. I
18 have an associate's degree in applied science in technology, I
19 have a bachelor's degree in applied science in technology, I
20 have a master's in business administration, and a Ph.D. in
21 engineering management.
22 My career duration and some of my titles. It's not
23 just an NDT. I'd like to clarify that, sir, because there's
24 been too much emphasis on that. I worked for 43 years. Some
25 of my titles were: Nuclear plant manager; superintendent, the

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1 power service shop; senior field superintendent, fossil and
2 hydro power operations; engineering manager; senior NDT
3 engineer; project manager; director, nuclear quality
4 assurance; engineer, pipeline integrity; quality control
5 supervisor, nuclear; senior engineering specialist; project
6 engineer; senior consultant; marketing and sales
7 representative, senior; quality assurance audit supervisor,
8 and managing lead assessor.
9 My volunteer activities should be mentioned as well,
10 sir. And I was a candidate for the Hamilton County School
11 Board, 7th District. I was a candidate for the United States
12 Congress, 4th District. I was the chairman of the
13 Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department Advisory Board.
14 I am a blood donor, 22 gallons and counting, I hope. I was a
15 director at large at ASTN. I was the president of ASNT and
16 the chairman of ASNT. I was the executive officer and
17 commanding officer of United States Naval Sea Cadet Corps,
18 division here in Chattanooga. I am the recipient of two
19 Presidential Call to Service awards by Mr. Bush. That's 8000
20 hours to get that. And I am the singular author of the United
21 States National Program for Certifying Industrial Radiology
22 Radiation Safety Personnel. I wrote that for the Nuclear
23 Regulatory Commission.
24 I have four items I'd like to mention as hallmark
25 career or volunteer events, please. First was when I was

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1 president of ASNT. During a time of extreme conflict, I saved
2 the association from bankruptcy and dissolution amid a hail of
3 lawsuits. I was then sharing a restored order to the
4 boardrooms. As I said, I was the singular author of the
5 radiation safety program. And most important from a
6 professional standpoint, at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant's Unit 1
7 and 2, I was the project engineer responsible for
8 accreditation of that plant. And while I recognize, Judge
9 Collier, that many hundreds of TVA employees did great things
10 up there, distinguished things, they didn't do what I did.
11 The plant would not have operating licenses without me.
12 My most important achievement, though——my four
13 daughters and ten grandchildren.
14 This allocution would not be complete without a
15 discussion of the trial jury, its challenges and behaviors,
16 and whether or not justice was ultimately served. When
17 reviewing the subjects of definitions, entrapment, and
18 character, as discussed earlier, and the new issues of
19 weariness, the apparent jurist-led verdicts, and the absence
20 of my testimony, a clearer understanding of the jury's
21 performance may be gleaned, but the dross must be removed.
22 Despite that the instructions were straightforward
23 does not result in a high level of confidence that the jury
24 will, in a final sense, be able to find -- to be a correct
25 finder of fact. That the Court vacated Counts 3 and 4 on

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1 June 2nd is evidence of this conclusion. The entire trial
2 required a scant ten days. And out of frustration and
3 weariness, following the Court's instruction disfavoring a
4 hung jury, they found me guilty, rather quickly, of all four
5 counts, despite the varying nature of the relative severity of
6 each.
7 (Brief pause.)
8 THE DEFENDANT: I made the speech shorter. That's
9 why I'm going through these pages.
10 THE COURT: Well, but, Mr. Doggart, understand that
11 this is the only opportunity that you'll have to speak to the
12 Court. And the Court carefully considers everything that you
13 say in making its decision. So I don't want you to leave this
14 courtroom thinking, "I wish I had said X, Y, and Z, but because
15 of the interest of time, I was trying to leave it out." So it
16 is your call to what you want to say. I have not suggested
17 that you cut it short or that you're taking too long. It is
18 your decision how long -- how long you take.
19 THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. Well, I'll proceed, then.
20 I've had three incarcerations totaling 225 days or
21 7 1/2 months, and added to the 18.5 months of home detention
22 which was location-monitored, equals a total of 26 months,
23 which has cost me most dear. During the home detention, there
24 was complete conformance with the directives of this Court.
25 Probation Officers Johnson and Lindsey can verify this

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1 assertion. I say this for the record.
2 Judge Collier, this brings us to the summary. I
3 wish to express my most heartfelt and sincere regret to all
4 those who have been affected by this case, including the
5 residents of Islamberg, my family, this honorable Court, and
6 the people of the United States of America, and to apologize
7 for the assets that were brought to bear against me. I do not
8 feel vouchsafed in any way, yet all along had confidence that
9 once all the attributes of the law and common sense were
10 assembled, I would be acquitted of any wrongdoing. This
11 Court's vacating of Counts 3 and 4 bear this out to a degree.
12 In order to consider, in recognition that the same
13 actions apply to all counts, how a sentence may be determined
14 for Counts 1 and 2, I submit the following respectfully:
15 There has been no act, no intent, no attempt, no plan, no
16 threat, or use of any kind against any person at any time or
17 in any way, therefore there is no crime within the language of
18 Parts 247, 373, and 844. To clarify, sir, the relationship
19 among the action terms is (1) an act is attempt, or vice
20 versa, but may be without a threat preceding. A threat may
21 precede an act or attempt, but can be without one. A threat
22 hand been defined by this Court, and an attempt is a
23 substantial step.
24 To venture even farther into the realm of inclusion
25 of issues that deserve consideration, the following also

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1 applies: There were no victims. Even the PSR recognized
2 this. There was no damage to any property. There was no
3 theft of any kind.
4 Along these lines, Title 18 of the U. S. Code, Part
5 3553, should be mentioned in brief; that is for the purpose of
6 factors to be considered in imposing a sentence. The most
7 important, in my view, sir, the nature and circumstances of
8 the offense and the history and characteristics of the
9 defendant. I think we've covered that quite adequately so
10 far.
11 I also take note that home detention may be imposed
12 as a condition of probation or supervised release, but only as
13 a substitute for imprisonment.
14 Finally we have arrived at my requests. Recognizing
15 the 7.5 months of incarceration and 18.5 months of home
16 detention, and using a sentencing table, plus that no physical
17 harm has resulted from my actions, and that Counts 3 and 4
18 have been vacated, I ask that the Court vacate Counts 1 and 2
19 and they be disposed of as well. I say this because of my
20 testimony here today in this crystal mosaic that the
21 government has placed together that establishes my purpose in
22 this matter. It is every bit as relevant and important as the
23 trial testimony. Should this request not find approval of
24 this Court, I then ask for a sentence of time served, plus a
25 period supervised release of four and a half months, as

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1 permitted in both the statutory and guideline provisions of
2 the PSR, revised, Paragraphs 82 and 84 on Page 14. Concurrent
3 with these options, my advanced age and medical conditions,
4 which are clearly best served by my local physicians, should
5 be considered.
6 Your Honor, the Federal Medical Centers——I have been
7 to one of them——they cannot care for me properly; they simply
8 do not have the capabilities. As well, additional
9 incarceration would go beyond just punishment, and incur
10 unnecessary further expense for the people.
11 Your Honor, I entreat you to return me to society,
12 where, practicing my engineering specialties, I can contribute
13 once again, perhaps with my former European employer, on the
14 stage of world trade. I would need to work again, in as much
15 as my entire savings, rental property, plus other assets, have
16 been liquidated to defend myself.
17 Many family events have also passed me by. And
18 because my children and grandchildren are my greatest pleasure
19 now remaining, these missed moments have been emotionally
20 distressful. So if punishment is what the people require, I
21 have paid it. The message has been sent and received.
22 I now quote Dag Hammaskjöld, the second
23 Secretary-General of the United Nations. "You have not done
24 enough, you have never done enough, so long as you have
25 something left to contribute." I have something left to

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1 contribute, sir.
2 And, finally, I recite a well-known excerpt from one
3 of the world's most practiced religions. "Ask, and it will be
4 given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and the door will
5 be opened to you; for everyone who seeks finds, everyone who
6 asks receives, and the one who knocks, the door will be
7 opened."
8 Judge Collier, I am seeking, asking, and knocking
9 for you to grant all of my supplications. Thank you, and good
10 afternoon.
11 THE COURT: Ms. Cory.
12 MS. CORY: Thank you, Your Honor. Just very briefly.
13 Your Honor has had the opportunity to hear Mr. Doggart and what
14 he believes is a very appropriate recommendation for his
15 sentence. My comment on Mr. Doggart is that that's what he got
16 out of his trial, that's what he got out of this sentencing
17 proceeding today, and he thinks a logical outcome would be that
18 you send him home.
19 THE COURT: He thinks that the grand jury process was
20 corrupt?
21 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I don't want to comment on the
22 specifics of Mr. Doggart's speech. But I think, from my
23 position as a lawyer, I would have wanted Mr. Doggart to say
24 all the things that would make Your Honor sympathetic toward
25 him. But those are things that might make Your Honor think him

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1 less of a man. I think it is more important for him to be seen
2 to be in control of his destiny, to be the smartest man in the
3 room, to know more about the law than you, or me, or Mr. Piper,
4 than it is for him to get an appropriate sentence.
5 You've heard from him. When you denied him bail,
6 you made a comment that you felt he was delusional. I did not
7 disagree with that observation, because I think Mr. Doggart
8 just doesn't see the world the way we do.
9 THE COURT: Including the American legal system.
10 MS. CORY: Your Honor, that is how he sees things.
11 He's told you.
12 Now, where I'm coming from on this-- Your Honor
13 made mention of two incidents. One was something I had no
14 knowledge of whatsoever, about some 67-year-old guy that shot
15 somebody up in Washington. And then the other incident --
16 THE COURT: I have no knowledge of it, either,
17 Ms. Cory.
18 MS. CORY: I'm sorry, Your Honor. I thought you were
19 the one that brought it up.
20 THE COURT: No, the point was that in the millions
21 and millions of lives that we have on this planet, people do
22 things every day that appears to be out of character, that was
23 unpredicted, and if you talked with people that knew them,
24 would have said, ahead of time, "There's no way in the world
25 this person would ever do something like that." So the point

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1 was not this particular person's case specifically, but just to
2 illustrate that people can live a life of honor, a life of
3 productivity, a life of complying with the law, and then, for
4 whatever reason, and they're all -- in every instance they
5 don't make sense to us, they're irrational, but people do
6 things that create harm to others.
7 MS. CORY: But, Your Honor, I would speculate that
8 the 67-year-old man that we know nothing about, it probably
9 isn't going to turn out to have been a surprise to everybody.
10 There's going to be all kinds of recriminations about all the
11 people who knew something and didn't say anything. The same
12 thing with the young man who killed the service members here;
13 there were some people who were totally shocked, and there were
14 other people who said, "Oh, my goodness, you know, I should
15 have seen that coming."
16 Your Honor, you are, today, making a decision to
17 sentence Mr. Doggart based on your prediction of what he's
18 going to do in the future.
19 THE COURT: And what does it say when we have someone
20 who thinks that the grand jury system that's used is corrupt,
21 that the Acting Assistant Attorney General's name perhaps was
22 fraudulently placed on some document, that the jury in his case
23 did not pay any attention to the evidence that was presented or
24 the Court's instructions, and I'm not sure exactly what he
25 meant about this, but he was picked on because of demographics

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1 or singled out because of demographics?
2 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor. I think that he is an
3 old white guy of the Christian religion.
4 THE COURT: So he was prosecuted and convicted
5 because he's an old white guy?
6 MS. CORY: I believe that that was Mr. Doggart's
7 belief, yes. And another thing he said is --
8 THE COURT: I'm not sure that gives me much
9 confidence that he would not pose a threat in the future, then,
10 if he actually believes all that.
11 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I talk to people every week at
12 Sunday school who think exactly like Mr. Doggart, and none of
13 them are doing these kind of things. There is a divide in this
14 country. People think all kinds of things, they say all kinds
15 of things when they think they're not being tape-recorded, and
16 they are not doing violent things. Mr. Doggart has a very low
17 opinion of the state of this nation. He didn't do anything.
18 What I was going to say about your comparison of the
19 67-year-old guy and the young guy who killed the service
20 members is to make the contrast that had those men lived to be
21 punished by a court of law, they would have been punished for
22 what they did. They killed somebody. They shot people.
23 Mr. Doggart should be punished for soliciting a
24 crime that never occurred and that, from everything he's told
25 us and from everything we know about his past, we can safely

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1 say he was not going to follow through on. His punishment
2 should fit what Your Honor knows he did, not what people
3 might -- or the government specifically might project he's
4 going to do or would have done in the future. You punish
5 people for what they did. Mr. Doggart has been convicted of
6 soliciting a crime that never occurred. And I think the
7 evidence is ample that this crime never would have occurred.
8 The punishment is for the solicitation. He should not be
9 punished for burning a mosque and shooting a bunch of people
10 when he didn't burn a mosque or shoot a bunch of people.
11 It was truly my hope today that the people in the
12 courtroom would leave with an understanding that Mr. Doggart
13 is not the monster that they had heard that he was; he is a
14 human being who is deeply flawed, who has mental health
15 issues, has a grandiose view of himself but also firmly
16 believes that he has a commitment to help people. He's
17 planning on spending the rest of his life, wherever he is,
18 doing that.
19 He's not violent. He has not done anything violent
20 for 64 years. That is the only measure Your Honor has of
21 whether he's going to do something violent in the future. We
22 use predictive scales all the time. I don't like them. But
23 people who reach the age of 66, by and large, do not commit
24 crimes of violence if they never have done so before. You
25 know, is there the one in a thousand? You know, there is.

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1 But Your Honor should make a prediction based on what the
2 statistics show is more realistic, which is, Mr. Doggart is
3 not a violent person and he's not going to become a violent
4 person.
6 Mr. Piper?
7 MR. PIPER: Briefly, Your Honor. Obviously the
8 defendant wants to say everybody else is at fault. He even
9 says that I'm a liar of some sort, and that Agent Smith did
10 something wrong; I can't quite recall what -- what it was. The
11 FBI -- if they'd only just talked to him, everything would have
12 been okay, but yet all the rest of the system is corrupted, and
13 he's the only one that's in the right.
14 Ms. Cory keeps saying, "Well, he's not going to do
15 anything, he's not going to do anything," and complains that
16 the people in the courtroom don't really understand who he
17 truly is. How can one fault the people of Islamberg to say
18 that they view him as a danger when he kept telling people
19 that he was a danger, that he's going to shoot them and blow
20 them up and cut them up with machetes? He says that on the
21 tape, Your Honor, on more than one occasion, tells that to his
22 sister. Ms. Cory claims that, well, he doesn't really -- he's
23 being egged on by -- well, he wasn't egged on my Ms. Gaunt to
24 say that, by his daughter in South Carolina, when he called
25 her, who was also disinterested. He kept talking about it,

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1 talking about militias, talking about the attack. Again,
2 Judge, how many times does somebody have to tell us that
3 they're going to kill somebody or blow up their buildings
4 before we start paying attention? And, in essence, what
5 Ms. Cory's argument is, well, we caught him too quickly.
6 That's the way I see it. Well, we took him down too quickly.
7 We should have let him go and attempt something before we
8 arrested him. And thank goodness the FBI, being on top of
9 their game, did not allow that to happen.
10 Your Honor, there's been a lot of heated testimony
11 in this case, it was very hard-fought on both sides. The
12 guideline range as it now stands, I believe, is 235 to 240
13 months. That's a lot of time, Judge, for a man that's 65
14 years and 7 months old. We did not ask for a specific
15 sentence. I do think that a substantial period of
16 incarceration is warranted, given the defendant's crimes and
17 his lack of remorse and his blame-shifting. But as I always
18 tell Your Honor, I trust the Court's judgment more than my
19 own.
20 I -- there's -- it's of the oft-competitive business
21 of law enforcement. I'm not without emotion in this case.
22 I've been close to the people of Islamberg. I've talked to
23 them. I understand their feelings. The Court has removed
24 itself from the passions involved. And Your Honor is in the
25 best position to make a decision, and we'll respect it,

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1 whatever it is, Judge.
2 THE COURT: Ms. Cory, would you and Mr. Doggart
3 return to the lectern.
4 (Brief pause.)
5 THE COURT: Mr. Doggart, in your allocution a few
6 minutes ago, you talked at some length and with some degree of
7 criticism of the legal system that we enjoy in this country.
8 It's at times like these, when a citizen faces the possibility
9 of loss or the curtailment of their liberty and their other
10 rights, that the importance and longevity of our fundamental
11 rights come most into play.
12 You criticized the grand jury. But the grand jury
13 is made up of your fellow citizens. Your fellow citizens came
14 from all walks of life, from various parts of this community,
15 and they listened to what the government presented to them.
16 And they decided, as a grand jury, that you should be charged
17 with a violation of laws passed by their representatives, that
18 is, their Congress, and signed into law by the President. You
19 apparently don't like that process. I'm not sure what other
20 process you would have more confidence in. In some
21 jurisdictions, instead of having your fellow citizens make
22 that decision, that decision is made by the government. You
23 criticized the former Assistant Attorney General for the Civil
24 Rights Division. You've criticized the prosecutors here. I'm
25 pretty sure whoever's name found itself on the charging

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1 document would be subject to criticism.
2 Most of us, though, instead of criticizing citizens
3 who are willing to give up their time and the other important
4 matters that they have to come together to serve as a grand
5 jury, applaud them, instead of criticizing them. Our system
6 of law is not perfect. No one has ever said it is perfect.
7 It is designed by human beings and made up of human beings.
8 So that means that, by necessity, it will always be imperfect.
9 But I would challenge you or anyone else to suggest a better
10 system for us to use and that better preserves the rights of
11 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for a free people.
12 Your conviction came about because you were given
13 the protection of rights guaranteed to you by our
14 Constitution. You had the right to a trial by jury, and you
15 enjoyed that right. You had the right to the assistance of
16 counsel. You enjoyed that right. You had the right to
17 assistance of counsel of your own choice. You selected your
18 own counsel. You enjoyed the right of the presumption of
19 innocence. You enjoyed the right to cross-examine all of the
20 government's witnesses and call your own witnesses. You had
21 the right to testify in your own defense if you chose to do
22 so. And you enjoyed the right that the jury of your fellow
23 citizens were required to only find you guilty if they found
24 the government had proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
25 You also criticized the jury for the length of time

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1 that the trial took and how long the jury was out in
2 deliberation. Based on my experience -- and I've been a
3 federal judge since 1995, and I've been involved in trying
4 cases, mostly criminal cases in federal courtrooms such as
5 this, since 1979, and the time that the jury spent considering
6 your case was much longer than the norm. So, again, I don't
7 think there is anything to criticize the jury about for taking
8 the time that it did to consider the evidence in your case.
9 After you enjoyed all these rights that our
10 Constitution gives to you, that jury found that you were
11 guilty. You now face a very important date, and that's the
12 date and time of your sentencing. It's important to you, it's
13 important to the government, but it's also important to this
14 society in which we live.
15 In imposing a sentence, the Court is required to
16 look at a number of factors set out in Title 18, United States
17 Code, Section 3553——you mentioned many of these in your
18 allocution——the nature of the offense, your background, your
19 history, and your character. I refer to the next four, in my
20 own terminology, as retribution, general deterrence,
21 incapacitation, and rehabilitation. But combining all of
22 these factors together, what the Court looks at is what is in
23 the best interest of society for the Court to do with respect
24 to Robert R. Doggart as a result of his conviction by a jury
25 of his peers.

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1 And from looking at all of these factors, the Court
2 has determined that the most important consideration in this
3 case is retribution. And the Court has made this decision
4 after hearing all of the arguments, reading the presentence
5 report, reflecting back on the evidence presented at trial,
6 and also hearing your allocution this afternoon. And after
7 hearing the allocution and thinking about the case, the Court
8 has decided that this is not an appropriate case for the Court
9 to impose a sentence at variance of the guidelines. There is
10 a motion still pending for the Court to vary from the
11 guidelines for various reasons. And the Court has considered
12 those, and has decided to deny that request. So the sentence
13 that you're going to receive will be within the guidelines.
14 In your allocution you talked about the rights
15 protected by our First Amendment and your free speech rights.
16 Our right to free speech is spelled out in the First
17 Amendment. And the First Amendment restricts our Congress
18 from passing laws that establish a religion, or that prohibit
19 the free exercise of our religion, or that abridge the freedom
20 of speech. This amendment protects our right to practice our
21 religions, it protects our right to openly display tokens of
22 our religions or our religious briefs, it protects our right
23 to communicate our religious beliefs, and it protects our
24 right to join whatever religion we chose and to worship
25 however we see fit. The amendment also gives us the right to

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1 freedom of speech. We can criticize public officials and
2 public institutions. In our country today there is an amazing
3 amount of criticism of our institutions. Much of that is done
4 by elected officials criticizing each other. It also involves
5 the media and others. And this amendment gives us a right to
6 peaceably assemble, which means that we can join with other
7 people with similar ideas and goals and we can protest and
8 complain and criticize. These are positive things that the
9 amendment does.
10 The amendment also gives us a right to hate, to
11 disparage, to criticize, to denigrate or complain about
12 others, including their religions, their political beliefs,
13 their religious dress, or other reasons. These ideals are
14 important, and they're embedded in our Constitution because
15 people came to this country from England seeking a way to
16 practice their religion without the abuse and oppression they
17 faced in England. They were looking for a place that gave
18 them more living and breathing room, to practice their
19 religions and worship how they chose. And once they got here,
20 they were able do that. But they also did all the other
21 things that we as human beings want to do; that's to live a
22 normal life, raising families, working, enjoying ourselves,
23 and taking recreation, and doing as much as we can to improve
24 ourselves.
25 You talked about your right to free speech and your

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1 right to enjoy the First Amendment. The people of Islamberg
2 also have those same rights. They have the right to free
3 speech. They have the right to their own religion. They have
4 the right to practice their religion however they see fit.
5 Their desires are just like the desires of those people that
6 came to these shores many, many years ago. They want to live
7 a life the way they see fit, raise their children, work, and,
8 when they have time, to enjoy themselves, and to advance
9 themselves in the way that they see fit.
10 So the question comes up, then, Where does our
11 protected constitutional right of free speech stop and a crime
12 starts? From your allocution, it is clear that you think you
13 never got outside of the area of just free speech, you never
14 thought that you got into the prohibited area of criminal
15 activity. As a rule, free speech stops once action starts.
16 And the government produced before the jury abundant evidence
17 of acts, not speech, of acts that you took which demonstrated
18 your desire, your intent, to do something that your fellow
19 citizens, through their Congress and their President, have
20 said you cannot do.
21 I mentioned Islamberg a minute ago and the
22 residents. It's important for us to remember, though, that
23 you're not charged with a crime against the community of
24 Islamberg. I gave them the right to speak today, I've read
25 their letters, and they've been the subject of a lot of

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1 discussion here, and that is well and good. But this is not a
2 crime against the community of Islamberg or even the residents
3 of Islamberg. You were charged with, and found guilty of,
4 committing a crime against the United States of America. That
5 means your fellow citizens. And of course the residents of
6 Islamberg are fellow citizens, and they're entitled to the
7 same rights, the same privileges, the same constitutional
8 protections as you enjoy.
9 You apologized to the residents there, and I think
10 that is commendable. There are a couple of passages from some
11 of the letters that I think it is worthwhile to read here,
12 because they bear upon what I've just said.
13 This is one from Khadijah Smith. And this is on the
14 second page. And it's only about two or three sentences.
15 "Robert Doggart never considered the residents of Islamberg,
16 whom he knew nothing about. Why a village of doctors,
17 lawyers, engineers, nurses, teachers, social workers, elders,
18 fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and children? Most of
19 all, we are, and have always been, and will continue to be,
20 decent American citizens who have the same rights and
21 liberties as everyone else."
22 Simple words, but elegant words.
23 You believe in your mind that you only did talk and
24 your talk should not have caused any disruption to others'
25 lives or any harm. This is a letter from Bilqees Abdallah.

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1 And although I'm reading this, this sentiment is expressed in
2 a number of the letters. "Not only did he," referring to you,
3 "intend to endanger human lives but Robert Doggart has also
4 disrupted the psychological well-being of the men, women, and
5 children of our community in a way that may never be repaired.
6 This selfless and bold plan by Mr. Doggart cannot be seen as a
7 minor offense, nor should his alleged clean record grant him a
8 lesser sentence. His plan was inhumane, and serves as a
9 violation against the core values and principles of our
10 American society. I strongly believe that a strict sentence
11 is most appropriate in this situation."
12 You read the letters, I'm sure. And I'm quite sure
13 you read the letters talking about other people on social
14 media that have singled out this community for abuse and
15 threats. I don't personally know any of the residents. I've
16 seen them in the courtroom, of course. My assumption is that
17 many of them are fathers and mothers and they have children.
18 And they talk about how they are worried that at any time
19 somebody might pull up to their community with a gun, they're
20 concerned about leaving their children alone, they're
21 concerned about where their children play, they're concerned
22 about their children going to the mosque, they're concerned
23 when they go; when they're away from their community for a
24 while, is a telephone call going to come.
25 You argued and your attorneys argued that

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1 "Mr. Doggart had no intent at all to carry out any type of
2 crime at all." The crime that you're convicted of is
3 solicitation. The crime you're convicted of was not
4 Mr. Doggart planning to go up to Islamberg and murder people
5 himself. That's not the crime of conviction. The crime is
6 solicitation. That's a little bit like throwing out a fish on
7 the ground in the middle of a pack of cats to see which cats
8 come to get the fish. And just like when you throw out a fish
9 among a pack of cats you don't know what cat is going to bite,
10 you could have no idea who the people were who were going to
11 respond to your urgings. It was just free speech, that's all.
12 It was just talk.
13 After hearing your allocution, I can understand why
14 your attorneys counseled you not to testify at trial. I can
15 assure you that, based upon my experience, had you testified
16 at trial anywhere close to your allocution, the jury would not
17 have been out for the time that they were, I think 15 to 20
18 minutes would have been the most. The allocution that you
19 gave gave me more concern about you than anything I heard on
20 the recordings and any evidence I heard at trial. You are a
21 person who has discarded almost everything sacred and
22 important about our American legal system. You don't trust
23 it. You don't believe in it. You have no reason to believe
24 it. You have no reason to honor it or obey it. So if someone
25 puts themselves outside of the American legal system, how can

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1 I, as a judge who's sworn to uphold the law, have any trust in
2 you?
3 Ms. Cory explained that your comment about the
4 demographics meant that you are concerned or you believe or
5 you think that you were singled out, because you're an old
6 white person, for prosecution? I don't know how familiar you
7 are with this, but we judges have to do things based upon the
8 law, and we cannot let criticism affect us. Many people were
9 displeased when the Court decided to allow you out on bond.
10 You're going to be displeased by the Court's sentence. But
11 courts have to do what's in the best interest of society, and
12 not because it pleases someone or displeases someone else.
13 The Court understands that as you stand here before
14 the Court today you are not a monster. In all my years on the
15 bench, I've never sentenced a monster. And I doubt I will
16 ever sentence a monster. We sentence human beings. And human
17 beings come with all of their complexity and all their
18 imperfections. In many respects you've lived a life of honor
19 and respect and good character. That's commendable. But
20 you're not standing here to be sentenced for that. You're
21 standing here to be sentenced because you committed a crime
22 against your fellow citizens.
23 You also said something that I also don't
24 understand, but this also caused the Court some concern; I
25 think it was "an elaborate hoax." That, again, suggests to

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1 the Court that you really don't have any understanding of your
2 actions and what you did and the effect of what happened to
3 other people, and it again suggests to the Court that you are
4 not willing to accept the decisions of the American legal
5 system.
6 I stated that the most important consideration for
7 this Court was retribution. And we can look at retribution as
8 being that sentence which most speaks to the defendant's
9 breach of societal laws. And we can look at the laws of
10 society as a fabric. And when you break a law, you tear that
11 fabric. So what's necessary to put that fabric together
12 again? You've torn that fabric by starting at the top and
13 ripping a wide and long tear in the fabric. So a very tough
14 sentence is necessary to repair that fabric.
15 General deterrence is also necessary. There are
16 other people who also bear the same thoughts that you do about
17 other parts of our great country, and would like to do harm to
18 certain segments of our population. And they need to
19 understand that if you are apprehended and prosecuted for such
20 a deed, the punishment will be such you will not be able to
21 carry out such a deed in the future. So to deter others.
22 Incapacitation is also a factor. The Court alluded
23 to this earlier, at your -- after your conviction, when the
24 Court denied your request for bond. The Court indicated that
25 hearing that a person was willing to lay down their life to

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1 stand up for their convictions, and knowing that you may be in
2 a position where you would never be able to do that in the
3 future, you actually had an incentive to do so. Your
4 allocution only reinforces the Court's concern and heightens
5 the Court's concern that you are a distinct danger and threat
6 to the citizens of the United States of America.
7 So the Court is going to impose a sentence within
8 the guidelines here. As the Court indicated, it's considered
9 your background, your history, your character, your
10 characteristics, your family, your work history, your friends,
11 the nature and circumstances of the offense, the advisory
12 guideline range, as well as all of the 3553 factors.
13 After considering these factors, it is the judgment
14 of the Court that the defendant be committed to the custody of
15 the Bureau of Prisons to be imprisoned for a term of 235
16 months. This term consists of 120 months on Count 1 and a
17 term of 115 months on Count 2, to be served consecutively, for
18 a total term of 235 months.
19 The Court does recommend that the defendant be
20 placed at a Bureau of Prisons medical facility for treatment
21 of any of his medical ills, and that he also receive any
22 needed mental health treatment while in the custody of the
23 Bureau of Prisons.
24 Upon his release from imprisonment, he shall be
25 placed on supervised release for a term of three years on each

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1 of Counts 1 and 2, all such terms to be run concurrently.
2 Within 72 hours of his release from the Bureau of
3 Prisons, he shall report in person to the probation office in
4 the district to which he is released.
5 While on supervised release he shall not commit
6 another federal, state, or local crime; shall comply with the
7 standard conditions that have been adopted by this Court in
8 Local Rule 83.10, and shall not illegally possess a controlled
9 substance.
10 He shall not possess a firearm, destructive device,
11 or any other dangerous weapon.
12 He shall cooperate with the collection of DNA as
13 directed.
14 He shall participate in a program of mental health
15 treatment, as directed by his probation officer, until such
16 time as he is released from that program by his probation
17 officer.
18 He shall waive all rights to confidentiality
19 regarding mental health treatment, in order to allow release
20 of information to the supervising United States Probation
21 Officer and authorize open communication between that officer
22 and the mental health treatment provider.
23 He shall submit his person, property, house,
24 residence, vehicle, papers, computers, or office to a search
25 conducted by a United States Probation Officer or that

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1 officer's designee. Failure to submit to a search may be
2 grounds for revocation of release. He shall warn any other
3 occupants that the premises may be subject to searches
4 pursuant to this condition. An officer may conduct a search
5 pursuant to this condition only when reasonable suspicion
6 exists that the defendant has violated a condition of his
7 supervision and that the areas to be searched contain evidence
8 of this violation. Any search must be conducted in a
9 reasonable time and in a reasonable manner.
10 It is further ordered that the defendant pay to the
11 United States a special assessment of $200, pursuant to
12 18 U.S.C. Section 3013, which shall be due immediately.
13 The Court has examined the part of the presentence
14 report that lays out the defendant's assets, and the Court
15 understands that this defendant does have some properties of
16 some value; however, the Court finds that in the totality of
17 the circumstances, the defendant does not have the ability to
18 pay a fine. The Court therefore waives the fine in this case.
19 All documents that have been sealed in this case are
20 now ordered to be unsealed, with the exception of the
21 presentence report and the defendant's medical records, unless
22 counsel has some reason they should not be.
23 MS. CORY: Your Honor, I presume the medical includes
24 the psychological evaluations.
25 THE COURT: That will also include the psychological

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1 evaluation.
2 Mr. Doggart, you have the right to appeal the
3 sentence the Court just announced. If you decide to appeal
4 the sentence, your notice of appeal must be filed within 14
5 days. You also have the right to appeal the jury's verdict in
6 this case. And if you'd like to appeal that verdict, your
7 notice of appeal on that also must be filed within 14 days.
8 Mr. Piper, does the government have any objection to
9 the sentence the Court just announced?
10 MR. PIPER: No, Your Honor. Thank you.
11 THE COURT: Ms. Cory, does Mr. Doggart have any
12 objection to the sentence the Court just announced?
13 MS. CORY: Your Honor, we would reiterate all the
14 objections we made during the sentencing hearing and prior to
15 it.
16 I hope that my asserted objection to Ms. Annita
17 Gaunt not being allowed to testify further was sufficiently
18 stated to be in the record.
19 THE COURT: I heard it, it was understood, and it
20 should be reflected in the record. And that objection, I
21 believe, pertained to the other three, also.
23 THE COURT: So I think there was an objection to the
24 Court putting a limitation on the four defense witnesses.

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1 THE COURT: Mr. Piper, does the government have any
2 objection to the sentence the Court just announced the
3 government has not previously raised?
5 THE COURT: Is there anything further, then, the
6 Court must do regarding this case by the government?
8 THE COURT: Okay. Ms. Cory, anything further?
9 MS. CORY: Your Honor, the only thing that I would
10 ask is, his family's asked for just a second to say good-bye to
11 him.
12 THE COURT: My policy is to always let the marshals
13 make that decision. The marshals have training in safety and
14 security. They also know a lot more about the defendant than I
15 do. I will never order the marshals to permit a contact, just
16 out of the fear that they may know something that I don't. So
17 I'll leave it up to them.
18 MS. CORY: So Your Honor is leaving it up to their
19 good judgment.
20 THE COURT: I'm leaving it up to their expert
21 judgment.
23 THE COURT: Anything further?
25 MS. CORY: No, Your Honor.

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1 THE COURT: That concludes this matter.
2 END OF PROCEEDINGS
5 I, Elizabeth B. Coffey, do hereby certify that I
6 reported in machine shorthand the proceedings in the
7 above-styled cause, and that this transcript is an accurate
8 record of said proceedings.
10
11 s/Elizabeth B. Coffey
Elizabeth B. Coffey,
12 Official Court Reporter
13
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5547

Robert Doggart Federal Court Sentencing Transcript Convicted in Islamberg Plot

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Robert Doggart Federal Court Sentencing Transcript Convicted in Islamberg Plot

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1

1 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

2 EASTERN DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE

20 SAEED AHMED MODY

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

18 2 "Suspected Domestic Enemies of the USA. 169

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

1 THE COURT: Please call the case.

2 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: United States of America

3 versus Robert R. Doggart, Case Number 1:15-CR-39.

4 THE COURT: Counsel, please make appearances for the

7 States, Your Honor.

8 MS. CORY: Leslie Cory, Garth Best, and Jonathan

9 Turner here for Robert Doggart, Your Honor.

10 THE COURT: Thank you.

11 We are here this morning for the sentencing hearing

12 pertaining to this defendant. We set the hearing at this

15 take several hours; I think one estimate was as many as eight

17 The Court appreciates the number of arguments and

18 the commitment that the parties have to their particular case,

20 restraints that we have and try to proceed as expeditiously as

22 The Court notes that the defendant is present here

23 in court. The defendant went to trial, and after trial he was

24 found guilty. Subsequent to his conviction, the Court

25 considered the defendant's motion with respect to dismissing

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

2 law in application with respect to the charges did not permit

3 those charges to go forward. So the Court granted the

4 defendant's motion with respect to that. So the defendant is

5 here before the Court to be sentenced on two charges.

6 The Court ordered the probation office to prepare a

7 presentence report. The probation office completed the

8 presentence report, had it provided to the parties. The

9 parties, after reviewing the presentence report, made comments

10 and objections to the report. The probation office responded

11 to those comments and/or objections. And the Court now has

12 received the presentence report.

13 The Court has also received, in addition to the

14 presentence report, a number of attachments and/or exhibits.

15 The government submitted a large number of letters, mostly

16 from people in the community that was the subject of the

18 The defendant also submitted a number of letters,

20 people that know him. And there is a lot of medical materials

22 review the voluminous information that was submitted.

23 The Court will now inquire of the defendant whether

24 he has received a copy of the presentence report.

25 Mr. Doggart, did you receive a copy of the

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

2 THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir, I did.

3 THE COURT: Did you have a chance to read that

5 THE DEFENDANT: Yes, I did.

6 THE COURT: And did you have adequate time to discuss

7 the report with your attorneys?

8 THE DEFENDANT: I have, sir.

9 THE COURT: Thank you.

10 Ms. Cory, did you receive a copy of the presentence

11 report on Mr. Doggart?

12 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor.

13 THE COURT: And did you have adequate time to read

14 and review the report?

15 MS. CORY: Yes, Your Honor.

16 THE COURT: Did you have adequate time to discuss it