Neo-Nazi coast guard officer pleads guilty to gun and drug charges
Federal prosecutors called US coast guard lieutenant Christopher Hasson a self-described white nationalist and domestic terrorist intent on carrying out mass killings.
He was accused of stockpiling weapons and targeting supreme court justices, prominent Democrats and TV journalists.
On Thursday he pleaded guilty to four gun and drug charges – but no terrorism-related crimes.
Prosecutors did not file any such charges after Hasson was arrested in February. With his plea, he faces up to 31 years in prison. Sentencing is set for 31 January.
Two of the four counts in Hasson’s indictment charged him with illegally possessing unregistered and unserialized silencers. He was also charged with possession of a firearm by an unlawful user or addict of a controlled substance, and illegal possession of tramadol, an opioid painkiller.
In a February court filing, prosecutors said Hasson “intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country”. They also said he had espoused extremist views for years and drafted an email in which he said he was “dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on the earth”.
Prosecutors claimed Hasson drew up what appeared to be a hitlist that included the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. Network TV journalists Chris Hayes and Joe Scarborough of MSNBC and CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Van Jones were also mentioned.
Hasson also targeted two supreme court justices and two social media executives and searched online for their home addresses in March 2018, within minutes of searching firearm sales websites, according to prosecutors.
In a 2017 letter he sent to himself as a draft and apparently addressed to a neo-Nazi leader, Hasson identified himself as a white nationalist for more than 30 years and “advocated for ‘focused violence’ in order to establish a white homeland”, prosecutors said.
Investigators found 15 guns, including seven rifles, and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition at Hasson’s basement apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland. He researched how to make homemade bombs and mortars, studied sniper training and used his government computer to search for information about Nazis and Adolf Hitler, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors have said Hasson appeared to be planning attacks inspired by the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian rightwing extremist who killed 77 people in a 2011 bomb-and-shooting rampage.
But assistant federal public defender Liz Oyer has said prosecutors found no evidence to back up terrorism allegations. She accused them of seeking to punish Hasson for “private thoughts” he never shared.
In a court filing last week, Hasson’s lawyers asked the judge to bar prosecutors from presenting any evidence linking him to white nationalist views or associations or “any plans or preparations he allegedly made to commit an act of violence or terrorism”.
Last month, a federal judge refused to dismiss the gun charges against Hasson. US district judge George Hazel rejected defense attorneys’ argument that charging Hasson with unlawful possession of firearm silencers violates his second amendment right to bear arms.
Hasson, a former US marine, worked at coast guard headquarters in Washington on a program to acquire advanced new ships. He has been held in custody since his arrest.