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A researcher at<\/span> a far-right think tank helped Justice Department prosecutors craft their indictment for terror charges against an alleged \u201cnorth Texas antifa cell,\u201d the researcher testified Monday. The charges were brought in relation to a protest outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center outside Dallas.<\/p>\n Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy said under questioning from a defense attorney that he provided language that prosecutors used in the first-ever domestic terrorism case against a purported antifa cell.<\/p>\n The decision to use the language was the government\u2019s, Shideler said.<\/p>\n \u201cI told them what I believed to be an accurate definition of antifa, and they used it,\u201d Shideler said.<\/p>\n The courtroom testimony provided a window into the extraordinarily close cooperation between federal prosecutors and a Washington advocacy group that has regularly argued for government action against left-wing activists.<\/p>\n Shideler himself was the author of a September article titled \u201cHow to Dismantle Far-Left Extremist Networks: A Roadmap for the Trump Administration<\/a>\u201d that called on the Justice Department to take more aggressive action<\/a> against left-of-center activists. He said he conferred with prosecutors in October, a month before they obtained an indictment in the Texas case.<\/p>\n Defense lawyers raised questions about Shideler\u2019s professional home, the Center for Security Policy<\/a>. The nonprofit think tank was founded by Frank Gaffney, a former Defense Department official under President Ronald Reagan who has routinely been described as an Islamophobic conspiracy theorist. Gaffney\u2019s views on Islam<\/a> are commonly espoused<\/a> at Center for Security Policy events<\/a>.<\/p>\n The center itself has been branded a hate group<\/a> by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a designation Shideler bristled at in court.<\/p>\n \u201cYes sir, the Southern Poverty Law Center has mislabeled many people as a hate group,\u201d he said in response to questioning from defense lawyer Phillip Hayes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The nine defendants on trial this month face years or life sentences in prison for a noise demonstration outside ICE\u2019s Prairieland Detention Center on July 4 of last year.<\/p>\n After demonstrators used fireworks in a show of solidarity for the detainees held inside the Alvarado, Texas, facility, local police arrived to confront them. One of the responding officers was shot in the neck.<\/p>\n Shideler testified as an expert witness for the government over the objections of defense attorneys, who were overruled by U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, a Donald Trump appointee.<\/p>\n In lengthy testimony, he provided a recounting of the history of antifascist organizing that ranged from 1930s Germany to 1980s U.K. activism to the present-day United States. Various tactics used by the Prairieland demonstrators to protect their identities \u2014 such as Signal chats, \u201cblack block\u201d clothing, and a general \u201csecurity culture\u201d \u2014 were all consistent with antifa practices, Shideler said.<\/p>\n Under questioning from prosecutors, Shideler sought to tie the ideas laid out in anarchist zines<\/a> recovered from the defendants\u2019 possession with their actions outside the detention center.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n