While it remains entirely possible the phones were broken into, that’s not the only possible explanation for the Google activity. It could have been the Gmail app, for example, checking for new mail. Regardless, police are supposed to store mobile devices in signal-blocking bags to prevent them from being wiped remotely.

Less than a week passed. That Friday, the first journalist’s charges were dropped. The following morning, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the world I was performing my “professional duty,” and “was in police custody for almost 24 hours” despite carrying a press card. My case was also discussed in the Duma. “You’re famous in Russia” the Russian reporter I mentioned earlier would tell me in the coming week.

I was told to stay off social media and out of the field, so I went to New York City for the weekend to catch a break. That was when the President issued his first attempt at a Muslim ban. I went anyways to JFK International Airport to the mass of angry New Yorkers who began protesting at a moment’s notice. Police dressed in riot gear formed lines around entrances to the airport. The enormous crowd chanted “Why all the riot gear / there’s no riot here” throughout the night until a judge halted the order, which was announced by activists via a ‘mic check.’

It was refreshing to be back in the field, even if stripped of my ability to report. The feeling that something meaningful was happening around me was more than enough to pull me out of the rut I was in.

Monday morning I took a Chinatown bus back to DC to make my shift at the office. En route, I got a call from my lawyer to tell me the prosecution had dropped its charges against me “without prejudice.” In other words, the government had not made a determination as to whether I was guilty or innocent but had simply decided it was not interested in prosecuting me. They could still re-open the case at any time, I was told. Charges against some of the other journalists were dropped as well. I’d get to speak out for the first time since I tweeted the picture of the Sting-Ball grenade police used that blinded me and gave me tinnitus.

Publicly, I thanked the press advocacy groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders for the statements of support they made for me. Privately, I lamented they’d singled me out from some of the other journalists still facing felony riot charges. But mostly, I contemplated the state’s attempt to cut only the highest classes of the defendants from the web they entangled us in during the mass arrest. I considered that I was no more innocent of the charges than many of the people still facing them.

Those journalists, Alexei Wood and Aaron Cantú, each face more than 60 years behind bars. Wood was live streaming throughout the march and there is no indication he had engaged in any unlawful activity in the stream besides the government’s overreaching charges that he was part of a criminal conspiracy to participate in a “riot,” and in fact was doing so by the mere act of having an excited response to the scene he was capturing for his audience. Wood is among the first round of defendants currently facing trial.

It isn’t clear how the Department of Justice is justifying its prosecution of Cantú, a journalist whom I had never met but whose name I knew well through his independent reporting and articles featured in publications such as the New York Times, the Intercept, and The Nation magazine.

I still couldn’t talk but at least I was back in the field. I’d thought things may start returning to normalcy then, but I couldn’t have been further from the truth.

On April 3, Disrupt J20 organizer Dylan Petrohilos — another activist whom I corresponded with leading up to the inauguration — had his home raided. Cellphones, computers, and an “anti-capitalist, anti-fascist” flag were seized. That same day, a grand jury began to convene in Washington, DC.

In just a few weeks, they delivered a superseding indictment bringing new charges against 212 defendants including urging or inciting a riot, engaging in a riot, conspiracy to riot and five counts of destruction of property. One hundred were also charged were misdemeanor assault on a law enforcement officer. While the felony charges that came with the initial indictment were “unprecedented” in Washington, DC, the superseding indictment broke precedence nationally. Each count in the indictment begins by listing everyone charged under that law named “hereinafter, the ‘Rioting Defendants.’” In a few cases, a small handful of individual protesters were alleged to have committed specific acts of property destruction, but the overwhelming majority of protesters were never alleged to have done any specific, incriminating behavior. The “overt acts” listed as evidence of the rioting ranged from the destruction of storefront windows to chanting statements like “fuck capitalism.”

The blanket charges underscored the tactic of collective punishment prosecutors are employing in place of substantial evidence against the majority of defendants. Petrohilos, though he never actually attended the anti-capitalist march, was included in the superseding indictment, and faces 61 years.

A far-right website published the name, age, and city of residence of 231 people arrested during the inauguration, myself included, in an effort to spark a mass doxxing campaign against us. The information published was likely enough for internet sleuths to uncover the addresses and telephone numbers for a number of arrestees and their family members. I called my parents to warn them against taking calls from anyone asking about me. Throughout the rest of the month, my parents informed me on three occasions of such calls.

The news website that published the doxx belongs to alt-right activist Charles C. Johnson, who has a history of fabricated, viral claims that firmly place him in the ranks of Cernovich, Posobiec, Milo and Watson. “Charles is well intentioned — but he is wack,” Bannon once told Milo in an email. When neo-Nazi James Fields plowed through a march in Charlottesville sending bodies flying through the air, killing one — activist Heather Hyer — and injuring 19 others, an incident I bore witness to, Johnson regurgitated 4chan-originated conspiracy theories that an “anti-Trump druggie” was to blame, and doxxed him through the same website, resulting in a campaign of harassment.

Days after the inauguration doxx, prosecutors likewise sought additional personal information from defendants.

They had already filed search warrants for the entire contents of the Facebook pages belonging to organizers Lacy Macauley and Legba Carrefour from November 1, 2016, to February 9; the date the warrant was filed. The third warrant filed then was for the Disrupt J20 Facebook page. Honoring the warrant would entail the unmasking of every Facebook user who followed the Disrupt J20 Facebook, engaged with any of its posts, or simply ‘liked it.’ Roughly 6,000 people ‘liked’ the page during the warrants’ requested window, according to the ACLU who would later jump in, filing a motion to intervene and another to modify the terms of the warrants.

Yet another warrant was issued to the company that hosted the DisruptJ20 website, which the company stated in a blog post “demands that DreamHost hand over 1.3 million visitor IP addresses — in addition to contact information, email content, and photos of thousands of people.”

In both cases, the ACLU was successful in limiting the scope of the warrants such that they no longer required information on visitors.

But the J20 defendants were not spared from similarly invasive searches. Federal authorities would later begin extracting all data from more than 100 seized phones, using Cellebrite data extraction devices sold by private firm.

“In effect, investigators are conducting an indiscriminate digital dragnet to retroactively justify their indiscriminate physical one,” Sam Adler-Bell poignantly stated in Mask.

As the USOA’s prosecution of Disrupt J20 activists continued, prosecutors in other American cities began to employ similar charges. In Jacksonville, Florida, hours after the new president bombed a Syrian air base with Tomahawk missiles, demonstrators held an anti-war rally which ended in the hospitalization of two activists and arrest of five. I investigated what happened and in my report detailed a scenario of selective law enforcement. An organizer was arrested after the rally on charges of felony incitement of a riot, yet a right-wing provocateur named Gary Snow, who had physically intimidated a deaf activist and local icon named Connell Crooms, went entirely unpunished for his actions despite breaking a Florida law banning the disruption of public assemblies. Crooms was left hospitalized and charged with felony incitement of a riot.

National media was silent. I published screenshots of Snow and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Faceboook friendship, and two documented meetings between the pair. I also reported allegations, including one made to me first-hand by a journalist, that Snow was connected to the Chicago Police Department. I also published a Facebook screenshot proving Snow’s digital connection to Jack Posobiec. I also uncovered a number of previously unreported charges against him in addition to known cases. Months later, the riot charges against Crooms and the other organizer were dropped.

Snow worked as a low-level volunteer on the Trump campaign.

In Olympia, Washington nine of 75 protesters were arrested and charged with felony rioting on May Day after some storefront windows were smashed and police say protesters threw objects and slung marbles at them. The police department said on Twitter that officers were injured, which Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts later qualified as being “not serious” due to officer’s riot gear.

The immediate day following the attack that killed a woman in Charlottesville, Virginia a rally was held in response in Durham, North Carolina. One woman tied a rope around a Confederate statue honoring “THE BOYS WHO WORE THE GRAY” at the courthouse, in a town that was once somewhat of a capitol for the Klan. Others yanked and it quickly toppled. Twelve were eventually arrested and charged with counts of felony participation and felony incitement of a riot among other misdemeanor property crimes. By mid-November, felony charges against all but seven were dropped.

In March I made my way on foot to a demonstration outside the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual conference in Washington, DC. “Rubinstein!” someone shouted from across the street. I turned to see but there were only a few cops blocking a closed street to the back entrance to the summit. Some protesters were just arrested there. I heard my name from across the street again as I drew closer and saw that it was my arresting officer. I walked over and spoke with him. He asked me about my case. I told him my charges were dropped and brought up that he told me he follows my company. “RT? I thought you meant retweet,” he told me, not that I was wearing any RT gear. I spared him the embarrassment of telling him I knew he was lying through his teeth.

And in June I would have an even more surreal experience. I was at a rally held after somebody hung a noose outside a house adjacent to a predominately black elementary school in Southeast DC. It was the third found in a week in the District, and the sixth since the election. Upon my arrival, a woman identified me as a reporter and said to stay put and she fetched someone whose name I couldn’t quite make out. It was Chief Newsham. The man who in 2002 ordered the mass arrest of more than 400 people, for which the city had to fork up more than $2 million over. He stood in front of me, but I was forbidden by my lawyer, and employer, from questioning him on it. It took every bone in my body not to, but anyways it seemed the community was comforted by his presence in the face of threats of fascist vigilantism, so I refrained from making a scene.

November eventually rolled around. Judge Lynn Leibovitz reduced the rioting and conspiracy to riot charges to misdemeanors, but protesters still face 60 years with the other charges. The count of “engaging in a riot,” in fact, does not even carry a felony offense, contrary to the superseding indictment. Some protesters had already pleaded out by now. One was sentenced to four months in prison.

My initial motion to seal my case was opposed by the USAO and then challenged by my lawyer. A judge was to decide on the case early in the month. But late in the day prior, new evidence was introduced against me by prosecutor T. Anthony Quinn, the Deputy Chief of the Special Proceedings Division at the office, which is not technically associated with the prosecution of other J20 defendants. His department primarily deals with post-conviction matters and motions to seal. The new evidence effectively postponed the ruling as both parties took the necessary time to review the material. It included edited and unedited bodycam footage, footage from Alexei Wood’s live stream, and an aerial shot. Still photographs depicting me engaging in such riotous behavior as being on my cell phone, or sandwiched between protesters, were also introduced. It was all clearly bunk evidence.

By the time of the trials, one week before my case was decided, a total of 15 others had charges against them dropped, including minors, journalists, and legal observers. But it would still be more than a week before my paperwork was finalized, per the request of Quinn that some technicality get addressed. That it had been was relayed to me on November 30.

In motions to seal, the burden of proof no longer lies with the prosecution but with the defense. Quinn aggressively questioned me on the stand. It gave a strong impression he had been conscripted by people involved in the prosecution of the Disrupt J20 protesters to see to it that my case was not closed. At one point we established that there were roughly 15 feet between myself and the police line before the charge. He then questioned me over my behavior during the first foot, and then the second, and third, leading all the way up to the fifth before I said I was in the course of those 15 feet swept-up in the crowd, but couldn’t recall my actions in each foot.

“What were you doing in the sixth foot?” he asked me to the sound of laughter from the others sitting in the courtroom for unrelated matters. As matter-of-factly as possible, he told the judge I’d been rioting. She couldn’t agree and sealed the case, thereby establishing the first incident of false arrest during the inauguration. Nonetheless, I maintain that many of the people still facing decades behind bars are equally so.