Judge blocks release of Coast Guard officer called terrorist

GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge in Maryland on Monday blocked the release of a Coast Guard lieutenant accused of stockpiling combat gear and compiling a hit list of prominent Democrats and TV journalists.

U.S. District Judge George Hazel agreed to revoke a magistrate’s order to free 50-year-old Christopher Hasson from custody while he awaits trial on firearms and drug charges. Prosecutors had appealed and asked Hazel to review the magistrate’s order.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Day decided last Tuesday that Hasson could be released from custody and supervised by relatives in Virginia. But Day didn’t order Hasson’s immediate release. Instead, he gave prosecutors time to appeal.

Prosecutors have called Hasson a domestic terrorist intent on carrying out a killing spree, but they haven’t filed any terrorismrelated charges against him since his Feb. 15 arrest.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom said the government has no doubt that Hasson’s arrest “prevented a mass casualty event.”

“His continued detention is imperative,” the prosecutor wrote in a court filing Friday.

Day’s order called for releasing Hasson to the custody of in-laws at a home in Virginia, with 24-hour monitoring by global positioning system equipment.

Hasson has pleaded not guilty to charges of unlawful possession of firearm silencers, possession of firearm by unlawful user or addict of a controlled substance, and illegal possession of tramadol, an opioid painkiller.

Hasson’s attorney, Liz Oyer, has said prosecutors haven’t filed terrorism-related charges against Hasson because they haven’t found any evidence to back up those allegations. Oyer, an assistant federal public defender, accused prosecutors of seeking to punish Hasson for “private thoughts” that he never shared.

But prosecutors believe Hasson “planned to turn his thoughts into action,” just as other far-right extremists wrote manifestos before killing 77 people in a 2011 bomb-and-shooting rampage in Norway and launching a deadly attack on New Zealand mosques in March.

“This is a case study in the adage, ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.’ Through years of research and purchases, the defendant made plain his intentions,” Windom wrote.

Hasson is a self-described white nationalist who espoused extremist views for years and “intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country,” Windom wrote in a previous court filing. Hasson also drafted an email in which he said he was “dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on earth,” Windom said.