If you are looking for the moment American federal criminal law crossed a line, this is it.

The people who built the case hate Donald Trump. 

Steven Hassan wrote a 300-page book called The Cult of Trump. 

Bandy X. Lee organized a conference at Yale to have psychiatrists declare Trump mentally unfit for office. The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. She edited it. It was a collection of essays by 27 mental health professionals. 

Jamie Raskin stood on the Senate floor during Trump’s impeachment and called Republican senators members of a religious cult. 

There are others whose target is Trump and those communities who support him. 

How a Theory Becomes a Prosecution

When the prosecution began building its case in the Eastern District of New York, the words didn’t need to be defined precisely. They were words a jury could understand without instructions, words that once belonged to opinion—cult, brainwashing, coercion.

In the proceedings of United States v. Daedone and Cherwitz, prosecutors pointed to a broadcast in which Hassan described OneTaste using the vocabulary of cult theory. It wasn’t evidence in the traditional sense. 

The theory: Belief can be redefined as coercion. The boundary between persuasion and force depends not on what people do, but how their actions are later described.

Hassan Named the Next Targets: Trump’s People.

In The Cult of Trump, Hassan extended the language of cult dynamics to political life, suggesting that patterns of influence and control could be found in communities.

In United States v. Daedone and Cherwitz, concepts, once applied in theory, entered the courtroom. Hassan had spent years building—writing, speaking, applying the idea to different groups. By the time the case came, the theory was ready. It worked to secure a conviction. It stopped being a theory. 

Once a theory becomes a prosecution, it doesn’t stay confined to a set of facts. It adapts. The next time, it won’t feel new at all.

The New Apostolic Reformation. Paula White, the director of the White House Faith Office. Kenneth Copeland. The homeschool movement. The MAHA coalition. The MAGA coalition. The pro-life movement. 

None of these would see themselves in it. They will not think it matters. That’s how precedent is made. You build it where no one is looking.  

A rule applied to a group perceived as remote is an exception. Once established, the rule does not remain confined to its subject. What was applied to a small, unfamiliar community becomes available for broader applications. You don’t start in the middle. You don’t start with a church or political group. 

That’s what made United States v. Daedone and Cherwitz perfect. A niche community. Sexual practices most people wouldn’t understand and likely object to. Not illegal. Just a community easy to call extreme.

OneTaste was a prosecution that Trump supporters would not recognize as an arrow aimed at them.  A sexuality and meditation community in San Francisco and Manhattan. The pastors, the apostles, the prophetic ministries, the residential programs, the wellness practitioners, and political training organizations would not see a nexus to themselves. 

First They Came for OneTaste

It was forced labor conspiracy. That was what the US Attorney in Brooklyn under Biden charged OneTaste founder Nicole Daedone and one of her executives, Rachel Cherwitz with in a one-count indictment.

It is the precursor for prosecutions of a NAR ministry, or a MAHA wellness community brought in 2029 or 2030 by a Democratic Department of Justice. The OneTaste precedent can be used to target the ministry’s practices, its tithing, residential intern programs, marriage and family teachings.

The complaining witnesses will be former members who had come to understand their experiences through therapy with Hassan-tradition clinicians and victim-centered communities grown around social media and podcasts during the 2020s. 

In the OneTaste case, the witnesses didn’t walk out of the community and go straight to a courtroom. They left, went on with their lives, and later – after the FBI reached out – did they reconsider what had happened.

Some went into therapy. Some found online forums, support groups—made up of people who had left similar communities. They were introduced to a new way of describing their experiences. Words like coercive control. Words drawn from people like Hassan. By the time they testified, the story had taken shape. Not the facts. The interpretation. The vocabulary — coercive control, love bombing, thought stopping, high demand group — comes from the Hassan tradition. 

And the operative word: Brainwashing.

OneTaste, out of San Franciso, remote from Trump’s base. Trump-aligned future targets won’t recognize the precedent, or that the seven year investigation, the pre trial, the trial conviction and the sentencing was crafted by people with hatred for everything Trump represents. 

It has the shade of Niemöller: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. 

“Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. 

“Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. 

“Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.” 

The evangelical will not speak for OneTaste because OneTaste is not his community.

The Mormon does not speak for the evangelical. The NAR pastor does not speak for the Mormon. By the time they come for the NAR pastor, there may be none left who has not already decided the previous community deserved it.

The Landmine

At the end of the day, a pardon of Daedone and Cherwitz, may not be enough. 

The left leaning flank of the Department of Justice has planted a landmine to blow up Trump’s base. OneTaste stepped on it. The test case destroyed a group nobody cares about. 

It is available now to destroy Trump’s people. In opposite hands, it can destroy the left. The precedent can take down a community.

They start with the fringe. The DOJ may have to shop jurisdiction. OneTaste was a San Francisco company. It never taught a class in Brooklyn. They needed Brooklyn because no San Francisco jury would convict them. Sexual wellness teachings that shock a Brooklyn jury would not seem bizarre in San Francisco. 

The Eastern District gave them the jury pool the case required.

The same logic runs in reverse when they come for the NAR. They will not file in Louisiana, where a jury of the defendant’s neighbors might see a prophetic ministry the way San Francisco sees OneTaste — as something at worst unusual but not criminal. 

They will file in the Northern District of California. San Francisco, where one of the “victims” might have lived for a time and where a jury that would never convict Daedone for teaching orgasmic meditation will have no difficulty convicting a Louisiana pastor for teaching that the Spirit has placed on his heart that a congregant is called to give at a level she cannot afford. Venue is destiny. The prosecution gets to pick. That’s a little known fact.

The Good Deed Doers 

The career prosecutors at the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit believe they are protecting vulnerable people. The clinical researchers who developed coercive-control theory believe they are giving voice to women in abusive relationships. Steven Hassan spent 50 years trying to help people he believed were in a dangerous cult. 

The Biden administration officials who drafted the December 2021 Plan were seeking to help people get out of dangerous cults that happen to lean right. 

What they created had no proof of concept until Daedone and Cherwitz.

The Shift

Here is the precedent they established: Consent is not a defense. 

The state reserves the authority to recharacterize a person’s participation as coerced regardless of her statements when she was a member of a community. 

Disagreement with the state’s characterization is evidence of the coercion. 

She was not harmed? She is in denial. She defends her experience? This is evidence of how deeply she was brainwashed. 

A well-intended group has produced a precedent where the state decides who is the victim. It overrides consent, denies the subject authority over her life, and expands designated vulnerable categories until most adherents of the Trump or faith-based world are either victim or defendant.

This is not the same totalitarianism of the twentieth century — the secret police, the one-party state. It is bureaucratic, embedded in DEI-framed commitments that democratic populations are unable to argue against without appearing to argue against vulnerable populations. 

It is the totalitarianism of the therapeutic state. The state that cares. The state that knows better. It was built by many hands, culminating in the OneTaste conviction. 

The Brainwashing Standard

In the OneTaste case, nine women, culled from 16,000 who took OneTaste classes, were victims. All nine testified that they consented when they participated in OneTaste with its outlier teachings of sex and consciousness, with practices that focus on female sexuality. 

Nine women came when they wanted, left when they chose, had sex when they wanted, said no when they said and later came to regret some of their activities. 

There was never an allegation that anyone said no whose no wasn’t honored. No sex crimes charged. No rapes. Never anyone underage. 

Nine adult women who took their own sexuality to new and uncomfortable places who said yes, in most cases eagerly, and at worst with an eye to experimenting who years after they left experienced regret.

Some of them worked or volunteered in the OneTaste community. Some worked long hours. At the time, they were pleased until they weren’t. Then they left. The government said the work they did, even the sex they had was not coerced because anyone forced them.  The government admitted they said yes.

But this is precedent. The government said it. Coaching and therapy helped the nine women say it themselves.

They were “brainwashed.”

That is the word to negate consent. Brainwashed and two alleged brainwashers, Daedone and Cherwitz, are in prison.

Anyone ought to be able to see where this is going. Typically the victims in a §1589 forced labor case are migrant workers held in agricultural servitude, foreign nationals whose passports have been seized, domestic workers locked in homes, trafficking victims moved across state lines. 

The forced labor statute was written for them.

The nine OneTaste women were white, college educated, middle class or affluent. They lived in Manhattan and San Francisco apartments. They kept their cell phones. They had access to their families, their therapists, their bank accounts, and the door. They posted on social media about how they loved their lives. They left when they wanted.

The Thirteenth Amendment vocabulary the judge applied to them — peonage, involuntary servitude — written in the aftermath of chattel slavery to reach the sharecropper held in debt bondage, the convict leased to a coal mine, the domestic worker whose employer held her immigration papers, was applied on March 30, 2026, to nine women who described the years in question as the happiest of their lives.

If you see this is going straight in an Orwellian direction, keep reading. The precedent can target any community that those in power choose.

The Charge

The EDNY handled it perfectly, if conviction is the goal. They charged conspiracy. Not the crime of forced labor. They didn’t need to prove anyone was forced. They proved that two people — Daedone and Cherwitz — made an agreement to force nine women to labor through brainwashing. 

The jury never decided if any of the nine were harmed. The jury’s role was singular: Did Daedone and Cherwitz conspire? The question — was anyone forced to labor and did it cause serious harm was never before the jury. 

It is forced labor conspiracy without forced labor.

The Intention

In the hands of prosecutors who are ambitious, who can see a weapon and use it — the OneTaste precedent produces a new ability to target any community. Brainwashing is not a legal term of art. Judge Gujarati did not instruct the jury on brainwashing’s definition. She allowed it to be said by nine women who said they were victims. The prosecutors said it too:  Brainwashed. 

What they proved to a Brooklyn jury was the defendants had brainwashed nine women. Brainwashing. That was why the women stayed, why they were happy. Their consent was not consent. 

Rebecca Halpern, one of the nine, testified that she had been “carefully, gently brainwashed over time.” 

She was “fully in it and brainwashed.” 

She “didn’t see the world as it really was anymore.” 

The defense asked on cross: Daedone forced you by her ideas? Is that your testimony? 

Halpern answered: “It’s an interesting way to put it. That’s how brainwashing works, to me.” 

The defense asked: you went to a course that you signed up for? 

Halpern answered: “Freely. Yes.” 

The government in redirect asked her to reconcile two things she had testified to: she was happy, and she was brainwashed. 

How do those two things work together? 

Halpern answered: “The happiness is part of the brainwashing. Right? Like, that’s — because people don’t stay in places where they’re not happy.” 

Jennifer Bonjean, for the defense, tried to tell the court: “There’s no such thing as brainwashing.” 

Judge Gujarati said, “People use words colloquially all the time.” 

AUSA Kayla Bensing told the court: “We would be sitting here with our head in the sand if we suggested otherwise — they’re saying OneTaste was a cult that used these coercive tactics, which amount to brainwashing and mind control. And therefore that is the coercive control.”

Another of the nine, Christina Berkley was asked by the government: What was the trauma? 

Berkley answered: “The brainwashing.” 

During closing, the prosecutor told the jury that the witnesses had been “whittled down.” Not forced. But whittled.

“That’s the entire conspiracy. They’re being whittled down into the various things that they identified as brainwashing: loss of identity, loss of esteem, exhaustion. That is serious harm that left them feeling like they had no choice.” 

The defense argued: “You cannot brainwash people who are free to come and go…. There has never been a case where you can equate serious harm or threats of serious harm with these vague concepts of brainwashing or mind control.” 

The defense said it true. There never was a case where anyone was convicted on forced labor conspiracy based on mind control. 

Not physical but mental: Mind control, brainwashing.

This is a precedent that implicates a brave new world. A world with words with no definition, no scientific standing, no legal threshold, no place in the jury instructions except that it told the jury everything it needed to know. 

The Brainwashing Trial

Berkley testified: “Not everybody, but some people were more vulnerable to, that would kind of become more and more brainwashed in this way, where they became these carbon copies of whatever the core way of being was supposed to be. So the yeses were — felt like yeses, felt like choices, but there’s gaslighting and suggestion.” 

The yes felt like a yes. It was not a yes.

The prosectors never disputed the nine women were free to come and go. It was the yeses of college educated women in their twenties and thirties which now could be rescinded years later, turned into non consent since they were brainwashed.

If you can see the danger in that idea, please continue to examine this case and its potential for use against any community. 

One of the nine complaining witnesses participated in the OneTaste community for four months. She did not claim she was forced to do anything. 

Defense attorney Bonjean said of her in closing: “I don’t know how brainwashed you can get in four months.”

But it was enough.

The judge, to ensure that the jury remained focused on the victims narratives alone, blocked witnesses OneTaste wished to call — former participants who would testify they were not brainwashed, that they consented freely, and that their experience was positive. 

The judge ruled that testimony irrelevant. Under a victim-centered trial, what 16,000 other participants thought of their own agency did not bear on what happened to the nine.

That is the template. It does not matter how many members of a community would testify they were not brainwashed. The prosecution found nine from 16,000— less than one tenth of one percent. 

The Architect

Steven Hassan spent two and a half years in the Unification Church before his family got him out in 1976. He has spent the 50 years since then trying to free others from what he calls destructive high-demand groups. 

He wrote a 300-page clinical diagnosis of a sitting president he has never examined, published with Simon & Schuster, called The Cult of Trump, and he has spent the years since the book’s publication in 2017, explaining how the legal and prosecutorial machinery he helped build should be used to stop Trump’s movement.

His BITE model, Behavior Information Thought Emotion — has become central to FBI training bulletins, and the operational doctrine of every DOJ-funded human trafficking task force in the country. 

By 2023 Paul Chang, Regional Anti-Human Trafficking Coordinator and National Co-Chair of a Biden White House initiative, said on Hassan’s podcast that every Enhanced Collaborative Model task force in every federal district runs on the doctrine Hassan developed. 

A federal official, on the record, confirmed that a brainwashing or mind control framework now governs how the United States government identifies and prosecutes forced labor cases in every jurisdiction in the country.

Hassan was the treating therapist for at least two of the accusers in the OneTaste case – Michal Neria, the lead complaining witness who testified at trial and Ayries Blanck, the government’s original star witness, who the case was built on. The prosecutors were forced to drop her as a witness after the defense established she had fabricated evidence. 

Hassan wrote the model, trained investigators, identified OneTaste as a cult on a BBC documentary two years before the indictment and wrote The Cult of Trump. He crafted the doctrine that entered the courtroom of Judge Diane Gujarati in the Eastern District of New York. 

Hassan is the man who decides what is a cult. His BITE model — Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotion – is the means to determine. The four categories are domains in which Hassan decides whether a community leader exerts too much control over a follower’s life.

Within each category Hassan enumerates specific practices: living requirements tied to community membership, shared dietary and sleep norms, expectations around leisure time, dress standards, deference to leadership on major decisions, limited exposure to outside information, and teachings about the consequences of leaving. 

The BITE model, as articulated in The Cult of Trump, applies to religious, political, psychotherapy and education groups. It applies, Hassan writes, to the political movement that assembled around President Trump. 

Hassan proposes that the legal system’s definition of undue influence be updated to reflect what he describes as scientific advances in the understanding of how the mind works. He got his biggest boost in the OneTaste conviction.

The BITE framework, Hassan suggests, should be further deployed in civil and criminal matters. 

Hassan proposes that a federal governmental body be established with the power to investigate communities for violations of members’ civil rights — including, specifically, the use of high-pressure mind control techniques. 

An agency to root out brainwashing tied to the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. 

He wants psychiatry, psychology, counseling, clinical social work to incorporate training in coercive-persuasion assessment into their standard curricula. Mental health professionals, he writes, are not trained to identify cult involvement in their patients.

He proposes that the training incorporate the BITE model to identify “intense coercive persuasion.” 

Hassan proposes that presidential candidates, as a condition of seeking office, be under the jurisdiction of his field and undergo a neuropsychiatric and forensic mental health evaluation conducted by a professional committee. The evaluation would establish competence and be followed by periodic reassessment. 

The Die Is Cast

On March 30, 2026, in the Eastern District of New York, Judge Gujarati advanced Hassan’s doctrine when she sentenced Rachel Cherwitz to 78 months and Nicole Daedone to 108 months. 

The doctrine Hassan spent four decades developing finally produced criminal sentences. This is what Hassan designed his work to do. The sentences were the doctrine’s first major success.

The next is a prosecution of one of Donald Trump’s communities.

That’s not hard to see at all.

Read More:

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OneTaste Verdict: How Forced Labor Conspiracy Theory Redefined Consent and Coercion

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