The Goonan Case: A Preview of Trump’s Counterterrorism Shift Targeting the Left

By the standards of the San Francisco Bay Area’s far-left activist circles, the acts Casey Goonan committed were far from unprecedented. One was a police SUV left partially burned by an incendiary device on the UC Berkeley campus. The second was a shrub planter set ablaze, after Goonan failed to smash a glass office window and hurl a firebomb into Oakland’s downtown federal building.

But because Goonan released a series of public statements claiming credit for the 2024 summer attacks, carried out in solidarity with Hamas and aligned with the East Bay native’s anarchist ideological beliefs, federal prosecutors argued Goonan “intended to promote” terrorism — adding that allegation to the existing felony charge for use of an incendiary device. Notably, Goonan’s original charging document did not include any terrorism-related counts.

In late September, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White sentenced Goonan — whom the judge labeled “a domestic terrorist” during the hearing — to 19 and a half years in prison, plus 15 years of probation. Prosecutors have also requested that Goonan be placed in a Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facility with a Communications Management Unit (CMU), a highly restrictive housing designation reserved for inmates the government labels “extremist” with terrorism-related offenses or affiliations.

Though Goonan’s case was first initiated under the Biden administration, it offers a clear preview of the approach the U.S. Department of Justice is expected to take during Donald Trump’s new crackdown on the political left. That crackdown was formalized in late September with National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), an executive order that frames anti-fascist beliefs, opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, and criticism of capitalism and Christianity as potential “indicators of terrorism.”

Beyond Goonan’s stated support for Hamas — a U.S.-designated terrorist organization since 1997 — and his role co-founding True Leap, a small anarchist publishing press, the 35-year-old African American Studies PhD has an identity that puts him directly in the crosshairs of the Trump administration and its allies: Goonan is a transgender person. While NSPM-7 cites “extremism [related to] migration, race, and gender” as an indicator of “patterns of violent and terroristic tendencies,” the conservative Heritage Foundation has already pushed specious claims linking gender-fluid identity to mass shootings, and is lobbying the FBI to create a new, unsubstantiated domestic terrorism classification labeled “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism,” or TIVE.

The executive order redirects the United States’ sprawling post-9/11 counterterrorism apparatus, shifting its focus away from neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, white nationalists, Christian nationalists, and other far-right extremist groups that have carried out the vast majority of political violence in the U.S. over the past several decades. Instead, it reorients that massive surveillance and enforcement infrastructure toward opponents of ICE, anti-fascist organizers, and anyone who opposes the Trump administration’s agenda. Beyond individuals who may engage in violence, NSPM-7 orders federal law enforcement to scrutinize nonprofit organizations and philanthropic foundations that fund groups holding a wide range of loosely defined ideologies — everything from “support for the overthrow of the United States Government” to expressing “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

“NSPM-7 is the natural end point of using ‘radicalization theory’ as the foundation of America’s counterterrorism approach,” says Mike German, a retired FBI agent who spent years infiltrating violent white supremacist groups before resigning from the Bureau in protest of its post-9/11 shift in counterterrorism strategy. German detailed the history of radicalization theory in his 2019 book Disrupt, Discredit and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy.

Radicalization theory posits that terrorists follow a predictable linear progression: they are first introduced to a specific ideology through regular political and social activism, and eventually move on to commit targeted violence.

“When I worked domestic terrorism cases in the 1990s, ‘radicalization’ theory was already discredited — then it was brought back to life after September 11,” German explains. The theory centers on removing “bad ideas” from the broader political community and neutralizing dissident voices that might inspire others to radicalize, which is exactly how federal prosecutors framed Goonan in sentencing documents.

“Thanks to this framework, they can target anyone they want,” German says. “They’ve built a logic where bad ideas justify mass surveillance, financial scrutiny, and disruption of activity. The paradigm that was originally created to al Qaeda is now being turned on ordinary Americans, mainstream political ideas, and mainstream political groups.”

Sentencing records make clear that Goonan’s political beliefs diverged from the U.S. mainstream long before his weeklong string of direct action in late spring 2024. A former standout high school baseball player, Goonan became immersed in the East Bay’s radical political circles after suffering an injury during junior college, and continued exploring radical politics during his undergraduate studies at UC Riverside and his doctoral program at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Israel’s massive military response to the October 7, 2023 attacks — which an independent United Nations commission has deemed genocidal — horrified Goonan, who threw himself into Palestinian solidarity organizing in the East Bay. When the Gaza solidarity encampment launched at UC Berkeley in spring 2024, Goonan became an active participant in the movement. Court documents show this was an incredibly difficult period for Goonan: he experienced severe hypoglycemic episodes related to his Type 1 diabetes, was involuntarily held for psychiatric care, and received a formal diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

“I am not an arsonist but an activist who in a manic fit of rage and desperation committed arson,” Goonan wrote in a September 13 letter to Judge White ahead of sentencing.

When the UC Berkeley solidarity encampment quietly disbanded in late May — a far different outcome than the violence police and pro-Zionist vigilantes inflicted on encampments at other campuses — court records show Goonan decided to launch a solo direct action campaign he named “Operation Campus Flood.” Federal prosecutors claim Goonan explicitly referenced Hamas’ own name for its October 7 operations (al-Aqsa Flood), and that FBI agents found a propaganda pamphlet in Goonan’s family home laying out Hamas’ justification for its attack on Israel.

These details, outlined in the government’s sentencing memo, plus Goonan’s post-arson online statements urging others to follow his example, his goal to publish writing explaining the reasoning behind his actions, and his alleged attempt to use legal mail to hide communications from authorities, form the basis of the prosecution’s request to place Goonan in the BOP’s highly restrictive CMU housing.

“Even after being arrested and pleading guilty to his crimes, he has refused to show any remorse and in fact has taken substantial steps to continue to publicize his actions and recruit others to his cause,” assistant U.S. attorney Nikhil Bhagat wrote in a September 18 filing. “The defendant is a highly educated, unrepentant domestic terrorist who sought to use violence against law enforcement officers and the federal government.”

Communications Management Units were created during the George W. Bush administration, and have long been criticized for fueling further radicalization among incarcerated people. Only one CMU remains operational in the federal prison system today, at FCI Cumberland, where a mix of radical Islamists, neo-Nazis, and prisoners with left-wing political affiliations are currently held. Court records show the two other existing CMUs, at FCI Marion and FCI Terre Haute, were closed within the last year.

Sarah Potter, Goonan’s defense attorney, told WIRED that the government’s push for an extremely harsh sentence only came after Goonan reached a plea agreement on January 14, 2025 — before Trump’s inauguration — that capped his maximum sentence at 20 years. Once prosecutors obtained access to Goonan’s jail correspondence, Potter says, they expanded their framing of Goonan’s radicalization from his long-held anarchist beliefs to include claims of Islamist terrorism.

“By the time we got to sentencing, they were drawing a much closer and clearer connection to Hamas,” Potter says. “The main core of his beliefs is anti-oppression in various aspects, whether that’s racial oppression, prisons, or other marginalized groups.”

The decision to assign Goonan to a CMU will be made unilaterally by federal prison officials, and Potter says the possibility alarms her given Goonan’s Type 1 diabetes and court-documented history of severe mental health episodes. “Their comments at sentencing were designed to paint Casey as a dangerous ringleader, who if allowed to have free communication would continue to present a true threat of violence to the country,” Potter says.

Beyond the sentencing and housing request, Potter says federal law enforcement is also attempting to unseal Goonan’s confidential legal correspondence with the Transgender Law Center (TLC). Goonan could choose to join a class action lawsuit the TLC brought against the BOP and the Trump administration on behalf of transgender incarcerated people, which creates a unique, open-ended threat. Even though Goonan’s trial and sentencing are formally complete, and he is already being held at FCI Mendota awaiting transfer to another facility, Potter and federal prosecutors are still arguing in court over whether the DOJ can access Goonan’s confidential legal communications with the TLC.

“TLC has filed a class action over gender-affirming healthcare against BOP, and the government knows that Casey might well become a client when they go into Bureau of Prisons custody,” Potter says. “The TLC and transgender Americans are clearly on the government’s radar, and not in a good way.”

If the Trump administration does target the legal services organization for allegedly promoting extremism, German, the retired FBI agent, notes that the foundations for this overbroad counterterrorism strategy were laid long before 2024.

“There’s been bipartisan acceptance of this kind of theory of terrorism that is often disconnected and unrelated to actual acts of violence,” German says. “NSPM-7 is a natural culmination of the adoption of this radicalization theory over 20 years as the basis for counterterrorism, and the government can target anyone they choose.”