Four Americans found guilty in case involving Russian influence

A federal jury on Sept. 12 found four black power activists guilty of conspiring to act as unregistered agents of the Russian government.

The group was found not guilty of acting as agents of a foreign government.

The guilty verdict was handed down against Omali Yeshitela, 82, Penny Joanne Hess, 78, Jesse Nevel, 34, and Augustus C. Romain Jr. (also known as Gazi Kodzo), 38. Federal prosecutors had charged all four individuals last year, accusing them of working with three Russian nationals to promote Russian government narratives, sow political discord in the US, and interfere with US elections.

After a trial that began on Sept. 3 and a day of deliberations starting on Sept. 11, the jury delivered its verdict on Thursday morning, finding all four defendants guilty of conspiring to act as agents of a foreign government. However, Yeshitela, Hess, and Nevel were not found guilty of a second charge of acting as agents of the Russian government without proper identification as foreign agents.

Russian nationals Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, Aleksey Borisovich Sukhodolov, and Yegor Sergeyevich Popov were also charged with conspiring to have US citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government in the US.

On the first charge, Yeshitela, Hess, Nevel, and Romain could face up to five years in prison. No sentencing date has been determined.

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If Yeshitela, Hess, and Nevel had been convicted of the second charge of acting as unregistered foreign agents in the US, they could have faced up to an additional 10 years in prison.

Black Power Activists Convicted

“According to evidence presented at trial, from at least May 2015 until July 2022, Yeshitela, Hess, and Nevel agreed to act on behalf of the Russian government within the US,” stated the Justice Department in a press release following the Thursday verdict.

Yeshitela, Hess, and Nevel are associated with the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), a group advocating for reparations for slavery.

Information on the APSP party website describes Yeshitela as “the leader of the International African Revolution” since 1972, when he helped establish the organization, which reflects aspects of black power movements like the Black Panther Party.

The APSP serves as an umbrella group for the Uhuru movement, its activist branch.

Federal prosecutors claimed that Ionov reached out to Yeshitela in May 2015, inviting him to Russia to discuss advancing their collaboration. Prosecutors alleged that Yeshitela shared email exchanges with Hess, Nevel, and Romain regarding his interactions with Ionov.

Prosecutors asserted that Ionov founded an organization called the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR) and was taking instructions from Russia’s Federal Security Service, also known as the FSB.

In one email, prosecutors stated that Yeshitela believed Ionov was working for the Russian government and acted as “a means by which the Russian government is engaging the US and Europe in serious conflict.”

Throughout the case, prosecutors argued that Ionov directed the actions of APSP members, including instructing them in August 2015 to submit a petition to the United Nations accusing the US of actively participating in genocide against African people.

Prosecutors alleged that Romain was a senior member of APSP until he broke away from the organization in 2018 and established a black power group called Black Hammer. Despite leaving APSP, prosecutors claimed he maintained contact with Ionov.

In February 2022, after Russian forces moved into Ukraine, prosecutors contended that Ionov instructed Romain and Yeshitela to organize protests in California at a social media company’s headquarters and protest against the alleged suppression of pro-Russian views online.

Free Speech Defense

Hess’s legal team filed a motion to dismiss the case in July last year, which was unsuccessful. They argued that the case violated the defendants’ free speech rights under the First Amendment.

“None of the speech targeted by the APSP defendants was inherently illegal,” stated the motion to dismiss.

The motion argued that how APSP members interacted with Ionov aligned with their broader advocacy efforts before 2015. It noted that Yeshitela had spoken at a conference in 1981 expressing solidarity with Nicaragua’s socialist Sandinista movement, a conference in Belfast, Ireland in 1983 expressing support for the Irish Republican Socialist Party, and similar events over the years.

The motion to dismiss also asserted that APSP did not hide its interactions with Russians, citing an APSP newspaper article that highlighted Yeshitela’s trip to Russia in 2015.

Nevel’s attorney, Mutaqee Akbar, warned that the verdict could stifle speech.

“It intimidates people to speak out on an issue, you know, and think, ‘okay, is the government going to come to me now and say that I’m a Russian agent, or say that I’m an agent of some other government that we don’t—just don’t happen to agree with,’” Akbar stated in an interview with The Epoch Times after the verdict.

Akbar indicated that he is preparing to appeal on First Amendment grounds and other challenges to the case while awaiting sentencing for his client.

Leonard Goodman, one of Hess’s attorneys, questioned the jury’s decision to convict his client for conspiracy but not for the more severe charge of being an unregistered agent of Russia, deeming it contradictory.

“The jury may have been misled by the government’s closing argument, which asserted that partnering with a Russian national is enough for a conspiracy charge, which is not legal,” Goodman noted in an email statement.

Yeshitela and Romain’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment following the verdict by publication time on Thursday.