United States v. James Morgan

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedJune 25, 2026
Docket24-3313
StatusPublished
AuthorKolar

This text of United States v. James Morgan (United States v. James Morgan) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. James Morgan, (7th Cir. 2026).

Opinion

In the

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 24-3313 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v.

JAMES MORGAN, Defendant-Appellant. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. No. 3:24-cr-00006 — James D. Peterson, Chief Judge. ____________________

ARGUED NOVEMBER 12, 2025 — DECIDED JUNE 25, 2026 ____________________

Before ROVNER, PRYOR, and KOLAR, Circuit Judges. KOLAR, Circuit Judge. For years, Defendant James Morgan built up a cache of dangerous, largely homemade weapons, documenting his growing arsenal on social media. He also posted about using his weapons against government officers, advocated for violence, and spewed antisemitic and racist threats. Citing Morgan’s online activity, federal agents sought a warrant to search his trailer and other property. A magis- trate judge in the Eastern District of Wisconsin issued the warrant. Officers executed it and recovered pipe bombs fitted with construction-grade nails from Morgan’s trailer in the Western District of Wisconsin. A grand jury indicted Morgan for unlawfully possessing unregistered destructive devices in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d). Morgan moved to suppress the pipe bombs, arguing the Eastern District magistrate judge lacked the power under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(b) to issue a warrant for execution upon Morgan’s trailer in the Western District. He also moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing the charg- ing statute is unconstitutional because it exceeds Congress’s enumerated taxing authority. The district court denied both motions, and Morgan pled guilty while reserving his right to appeal. Because the warrant affidavit supplied a sufficient ba- sis to conclude that Morgan’s activities met the statutory def- inition of domestic terrorism, Rule 41(b)(3) authorized the magistrate judge to issue the extra-district warrant. And Mor- gan’s taxing power theory is foreclosed by Supreme Court and Circuit precedent. We affirm.

I. Background

Morgan was on state and federal law enforcement’s radar for several years before he was arrested and charged in 2023. We start with this history because it informs Morgan’s argu- ments about the warrant application and the magistrate judge’s jurisdiction. We then turn to the details of the warrant and Morgan’s indictment and prosecution. We also note at the outset that much of Morgan’s social media activity, while vile, is protected speech. But the First Amendment does not immunize the conduct underlying his crime of conviction. And the magistrate judge who issued the warrant had ample evidence of criminal activity beyond First Amendment-protected speech. A. Factual Background In 2019, Morgan moved from Illinois to Janesville, Wiscon- sin to care for his father, who had lung cancer. Morgan en- rolled at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater to study chemistry, and in June 2022, after his father’s passing, he moved to an apartment in Whitewater to be closer to school. He later paused his schooling for financial reasons and, in July 2023, moved into a travel trailer, which he parked outside of a McDonald’s in Janesville where he worked. Morgan was an avid social-media poster. In 2019, he posted videos about making smoke grenades and a sulfuric acid sprayer. His posts were also ideological: Morgan held anti-government views—and became further emboldened in those beliefs after moving in with his father—that he aired online. Morgan’s online activity drew authorities’ attention. Local and state police investigated him, and in March 2020, Ja- nesville police issued a statewide alert warning that Morgan had acid throwers, homemade sulfur-oxide grenades, and firearms. The FBI assisted in disseminating this warning about Morgan’s activities, which also included investigators’ assessment that Morgan did not pose an imminent, specific threat. Further, in 2019 and 2020, law enforcement uploaded two incident summaries about Morgan to a nationwide track- ing system accessible by state and federal law enforcement agencies. Those summaries noted Morgan’s interest in exper- imenting with and manufacturing chemical weapons but con- cluded that Morgan posed no “threat to life” at that time. In July 2022, the FBI reopened its investigation of Morgan based on concerns about his social media posts. Agents inter- viewed Morgan’s family member, who stated that Morgan’s violent rhetoric had declined since his father’s death in 2021, and former co-workers, who reported that Morgan had not made any threats of violence. The FBI also obtained Morgan’s posts from Gab (a social media platform), where he expressed hatred for various minority groups, including African Amer- icans, Jews, and immigrants. In a May 2023 Gab message to his girlfriend, Morgan wrote that if the government ever came “for the guns,” he would create a large amount of chlorine gas and “defeat them without firing a single shot.” In December 2023, as part of this renewed investigation, the FBI sought a search warrant from a magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Included in the warrant af- fidavit were more than twenty photos and screenshots of Morgan’s social media posts where he demonstrated how to build homemade weapons and made explicit calls for vio- lence. For instance: − In October 2019, Morgan discussed “forming my own militia” called “The New American Minute- men” and calling for his followers to “dust off our guns” and answer his “call to arms.” − In November 2019, Morgan posted a Facebook video about how to create and use an acid sprayer. Along with the video, he posted, “People should not be afraid of their government, governments should be afraid of their people. So here’s how you make a device that shoots sulfuric acid!” − In April 2022, Morgan took a photo of supplies to make destructive devices, including smokeless powder, cardboard containers, hobby fuse, glue, and nails. − In May 2022, Morgan posted a video showing the components and design used to create a gasoline flamethrower, which he was “finishing up.” − In May 2023, as described above, Morgan sent mes- sages to his girlfriend on Gab describing his will- ingness to use chlorine gas against government agents. − In November 2023, Morgan posted: “the one thing above all other things they nail into your head over and over from the youngest age is ‘violence is not the answer.’ You know what? It literally is an an- swer.” In the warrant affidavit, the government invoked Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(b)(1), (2), and (3)—provisions prescribing the proper venue for a warrant application to a magistrate judge—as the bases for the magistrate judge’s au- thority to issue the warrant. It also identified the mobile trailer Morgan was living in, which had been seen by law enforce- ment in both the Eastern and Western Districts of Wisconsin, along with Morgan’s storage unit in the Eastern District. B. Procedural Background Based on the warrant affidavit, a magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Wisconsin issued a warrant to search Mor- gan’s person, trailer, pick-up truck, and storage unit. The war- rant authorized law enforcement to search for evidence of federal crimes, including 26 U.S.C. § 5861 (receiving, possessing or making unregistered firearms or destructive de- vices). Agents executed the warrant on December 21, 2023.

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