News broke yesterday that Defense Distributed’s Cody Wilson had been charged with sexual assault as a result of an encounter with an under-aged girl. It was then also revealed by police that he didn’t board a scheduled return flight from Taiwan. As a result, as Ars Techica reports . . .
A Travis County judge has signed an arrest warrant for him and the US Mashals Service has issued a wanted poster.
“We know Mr. Wilson frequently travels for business,” Commander Troy Officer, of APD’s Organized Crime Division, told assembled press shortly after 2pm Central Time. “We don’t know why he went to Taiwan, but we do know that he was informed that he was being investigated.”
Much discussion of possible entrapment took place in the comments yesterday and Commander Officer, who held a brief press conference yesterday, was asked about that:
Cmdr. Officer fielded a few other questions, like if the APD knew whether Wilson had a history of this alleged action (right now, they’re only aware of this particular incident) or whether anything indicates this might be entrapment. “That’s why we have the courtroom and attorneys,” Cmdr. Officer said. “Our job is to enforce the law and make an arrest on the front end. We felt we had enough to charge him with and we had the District Attorney and Judge signing off on the affidavit.”
Some also speculated about whether Wilson knew the girl was a minor.
When asked if Wilson said anything indicating he knew the reality of the situation, Cmdr. Officer didn’t share any details from the messages between Wilson and the girl referenced in court documents. “Any time you solicit—whether as a child or as an adult—it’s illegal,” Cmdr. Officer said. “This happens to be a child, but I don’t think my detectives have ever sat down with an [alleged perpetrator] that said, ‘I knew the victim was underage.’”
The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Taiwan.