the court there really is only one issue here and it is whether or not mr van halfpence actions in trying to travel or in travelling with syria constitute a federal time crime of terrorism it's not just that he offered to provide material support which is the crime itself it's well what lies behind that and i think the crux of the argument is really is that the object of the act or is it him his motivation and depending on how this court rules that really becomes the test we think that there's more than a mountain of evidence as to mr grafton is delusional beliefs into all of his very mixed in myriad motives but can you explain to me i gather there was some some investigation into mr van have to psychological condition before he entered the guilty plea yes that's right and the finding was made that he was capable of pleading  defined by statute and yet there are a lot of people who are have a bubble off plumb but they're still able to to do something very serious damage we unfortunately see it every day and so it seems to me that the facts found here by the district court judge with mr bent have to choose one of those people you know a lot of things wrong with him the judge says that that he thinks that he still had in mind trying to do what he could to kill americans who were very angry about his sex offender conviction and lifetime duty to register for that he says you know he's just very angry person that is borne out and the facebook post your question don packet he has the capacity to act you know he's definitely competent there's no question of capacity act and he's very angry at the united states and says all these things  of ways primarily i guess these posts but you know other ways as well that he wants to you know goes over to turkey wants to kill u s soldiers he's trying to get himself into syria i mean this is pretty serious behavior and the judge gives him quite a break actually from the guidelines range first the statute caps it and then the judge goes down significantly from the statutory cap and it is serious behavior but the question is really what motivated that behavior and what motivated that behavior you do have two years of about ten thousand pages of discovery and out of that the statement so we have the most inflammatory really the white house you know just him on his phones pressing the thumbs up on the other two are just a couple streets and i'm not to say that those aren't alarming  and i'm not asking that he get an apology or that we say hey you should have been convicted i'm saying what was behind those actions and what motivated those actions is really borne out in those two years of popes  i think persuasively that people have mixed motives you know and maybe he thought the apocalypse was coming or maybe he thought some other things were going on that zombies were going to rule the world the earth you know i don't know what he thought it but some of those things he seems to say does and and yet at the same time you get this theme that i'm very that the united states has ruined my life they criminally you know the state was a state of wisconsin criminally prosecute him for behavior that he clearly regards his innocuous behavior he's got this lifetime obligation so he's angry so it shows that one of the motives it is one of the motives can't say that you know if one percent of your motivation is you know as a five year as an afterthought a kind of hate america too but i really want to avoid those zombies so ninety nine percent of use i want to get out of the zombies and one percent of us i know and i don't like america we don't say you know what five hundred percent increase in the guidelines that's never been the standard in courts or it isn't that with thirty five fifty three four i mean it's hard to boil these down to percentages and so here you have this guy who's talking about zombies or the apocalypse and at the same time he's saying i hate america you know and he's taking some concrete steps to do something about it so it seems he is  and this sort of a three does come in and i think it's measured it's over everything at some brawl of that we all the defense attorneys and breaks and the government embraces as well but that's actually cuts to the circumstance and that's why i decided to christiansen you know there it is the circumstance of the act is really becomes all right was it the hamas soup kitchen or was it the suicide bomber because it is a soup kitchen maybe you get in two years maybe five years and that's up to the district court's discretion but you're not giving that five hundred percent increase to two hundred ninety two to three hundred sixty five months thirty three a day allows for the court to say properly calculated what was the object of your act that's the crime what was the motivation of that what drove you to do it and then the circumstance suppose somebody motivation to give you a couple of motivation at one i'm going to get paid a lot of money for doing this act another possible motivation if i do this i'm going to go to heaven and so i'm going to have a really nice afterlife you know another motivation you know i'll be very famous people right aren't goals about you know all over the world does that matter if if you know for a fact that you're going to go there and blow up a trucking that has a bunch of u s soldiers on yes it does it does all three of those are apart from what the guidelines command or what the statute is so what is it calculated to and the reason it does if you go back to the government setting is footnote to the merkin case they say this is an extreme god this is a huge bump for somebody but the reason is because the people who engage in this cannot be deterred there are so resolute they're the massai is of the world they're the ones who they say like my life blood is there but somebody who acts out of greed they say well it's not profitable to me eighteen year old kids and they say look we got through to him and they're not going to do this again or we think you know what there are different motivations there those who are so resolute those are the ones who we increase it for and that's why it has to go to the motivation and when the court probes the motivation we see often you know like you say our defense attorney you're building a mountain out of a molehill but here the court took a mob amount of evidence two years that we presented to him and said it's just a molehill you know what really what really was motivating with those two facebook posts and those five likes and it's not enough to cherry pick those and i agree if it's if it's a close call it's clear i lose but this wasn't a close call i mean we embed facebook message after facebook message the conversation after conversation showing here's a development he goes to the u s attorney and given that letter he's interviewed three times every time he's like are you guys guess what zombies are coming i'm not here two thousand fifteen bloodmoon get out and that's he's speaking to that motivation that motivations pervasive it's consistent and it's everything that's about him so i don't think that we can just reduce it and say you know what he also made these streets and therefore they just sort of block out everything else that was going contemporaneous postings and that conversation with his mother on the facebook platform etc most probative of his motivation i mean those were the immediately preceding his departure  bit sorry do you mean departure going to syria or departure isn't before he's arrested on october twenty sixth when he is well he's arrested in turkey yes me in at the where is that do i have the date wrong and that i thought that was a few weeks before it's throughout the i thought you might be doing the july twenty third one i'm focusing on the one that was important to the district judge over he says if they ask you this is why i'm  this and said it's to you know if they ask you tell the truth that i went to iraq to fight the americans the only thing that matters to me is joining my brothers for the war against american liars that seems to be fairly  you get it out i think the most probative one is actually the one that's right before his arrest because that's the one where he's not just posting he's actually e mailing with the cia operative or whoever it is but that's when we show his motivations that's why block order for two pages  district court we believe is on solid footing in applying the terrorism enhancement here and in making the supporting calculation finding in some the defendant didn't just spout vitriol from the basement of his house in the united states he traveled from the united states to turkey and he admitted in pleading guilty to attempted to enter syria that he attempted to join isis the group e admittedly understood was engaged in terrorist activities and he made a number of statements at the time of the offense and those are the statements that the district court focused on that there was a cyst there any question about i mean even if he was mentally competent to enter this plea everybody was satisfied that his competence is approximately the same at all times or worse or better i can see this judge that there was a competency evaluation at the defense's request by the b o b o p psychologist found the defendant to be competent to proceed to trial the defendant accepted that finding and then the defendant i mean the district court found that the defendant is competent to enter a knowing involuntary plea and there was never any question that you know this is now that was then that when he went to turkey for example he was delusional or anything like that not that i'm aware of judge i mean that the district court and we can see that he's got some wacky views that probably border on delusional but the fact of the matter is the district court found that he was capable of calculation and i don't understand the defense to be to be challenging that particular finding and the district judge at the end of its opinion actually said look i'm going to consider some of this mental state when we get to sentencing and i'm applying the thirty five fifty three factors right and the court did so it's our view that again that the court was on solid footing and that even if the defendant had other purposes in mind like escaping zombies or being in the caliphate at the time of the apocalypse the existence of those other purposes don't preclude application of the enhancement whereas here there are multiple statements from the defendant's own mouth stating that he's pledged allegiance to isis he's he's praised the leader of al baghdadi the isis leader and in the same post where he includes a video of isis members fighting he says he wants to kill americans and he expresses anger at the united states not united states ask for him to be extradited back from treaty you know the records a little thin in mr book me may know a little bit more i don't know the where the united states was involved in his detention by the turkish authorities he was held there for a while and i'm soon there when somehow he materializes back he doesn't get he was held there for a while and and you know it's clear the united states was contemplating his return because he was he was so there was some communication at a minimum because he was arrested as soon as he arrived back in the united states and he was affiliated with this other guy who they caught it at the atlanta airport that's right leon davis and  in the plea transcript actually the defendant conceded that the government could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he encouraged and assisted davis in davis efforts to leave the united states travel to turkey enter syria and join isis so this wasn't a paragraph forty three of the p s r hasn't that's also the statement with his mom or says don't worry i'm actually going there it's a bill rhodes and helped with the helpless so this is that was part of it as to his confidence she it was really it was whether or not a insanity plea and we felt that we couldn't given what we knew about mr van past and at the time he went there and also the continuing nature of the facts because you know there are definitely parts where he will get more off balance and others but we felt as a whole we would not be able to sustain that as a judge used to roast question i think it is correct that like judges can allow for defraying you know like that mercenary needs more time versus the undeterred of all religious zealots but really that's that what is allowed for the judge's discretion at sentencing and those are the reason all minds can disagree and that's why they can't deviate from the guidelines for the first application and whether or not the court had to look at this mountain of evidence is really one that it should and that's why it aired and why it should be sent back to recenter th