White nationalist arrested on weapons charges
Lt. Christopher Paul Hasson was arrested last Friday:
A Coast Guard lieutenant and self-proclaimed white nationalist was arrested on charges of illegal drug and weapons possession on Friday. But authorities say the charges are just the “proverbial tip of the iceberg” and that the man is a “domestic terrorist, bent on committing acts dangerous to human life.”
This guy wrote some scary stuff, privately and published only to himself: many threats to liberal and leftist public figures, much white supremacist talk. He also wrote that he was “dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on the earth.” He thought maybe a plague of some sort might do the trick. Here’s the sort of thing he had in drafts on his computer:
I think a plague would be most successful but how do I acquire the needed/ Spanish flu, botulism, anthrax not sure yet but will find something.
Interesting idea the other day. Start with biological attacks followed by attack on food supply. . . Have to research this. Two pronged attack seems it might be more successful. Institute a bombing/sniper campaign.
I have little doubt that there are currently people in the US like Hasson, plotting mass terror. I have little doubt that some are on the left and some on the right. How do we find them? How can we tell who is going to actually commit an act of terror and who is just “dreaming” about it, writing notes on a computer? On what grounds do they get detained, and when?
In fact, that’s true of contemplating or planning any crime. Is writing on your computer, amassing some weapons (not anthax, but ordinary weapons) in accordance with gun laws, actionable? I don’t think so.
Fortunately for us, Hasson seems to have violated some gun and drug laws and could be arrested on those grounds, so we don’t have to get into the question of how serious he was about his terrorist attack plans. But what if he hadn’t violated (or allegedly violated) any such laws? What if the only crime of which he’d been guilty was thoughtcrime?
If Hasson had conspired with someone, and that person had gone to authorities, they might be able to charge Hasson with conspiracy (see this):
Conspiracy has been defined in the United States as an agreement of two or more people to commit a crime, or to accomplish a legal end through illegal actions…
Conspiracy law usually does not require proof of specific intent by the defendants to injure any specific person to establish an illegal agreement. Instead, usually the law requires only that the conspirators have agreed to engage in a certain illegal act.
Under most U.S. laws, for a person to be convicted of conspiracy, not only must he or she agree to commit a crime, but at least one of the conspirators must commit an overt act (the actus reus) in furtherance of the crime.
But I don’t think any of this applies to Hasson. I haven’t seen any allegations of conspiracy.
You can find the motion for detention pending trial here (scroll down). He’s being charged with the following:
…possession of a firearm and ammunition by an unlawful user or addict of controlled substances) and simple possession of Tramadol, which is an opioid and a Schedule IV controlled substance.
The rest of the document is a listing of the reasons he should be detained pending trial, and consists of a description of his extremist views, dreams, plans, writings, and computer research, none of which he seems to have shared with anyone (he wrote a draft of an email that he sent to himself, for example). The contents are indeed violent and very ominous—as well as containing frequent references to the attack perpetrated by Breivik and the detailed plans Breivik had made. Around the time Hasson was writing all of this he was buying multiple weapons; more recently he was listing possible liberal targets and researching where they lived and that sort of thing. Altogether a chilling picture.
But—at least so far as I can see at the moment—he doesn’t appear to have committed any act of terrorism, or even threatened anyone except in his own writings to himself. It’s almost as though this was some sort of textbook law exam case, as I remember them—designed to describe a set of circumstances that places someone in a difficult gray area and asks the student what should be done and why.
I think it was wise to get this guy for the acts he’s actually committed, which is exactly what authorities have done so far in this case. I’m having some difficulty finding the possible penalties he could face if he’s convicted of the firearms and drug offenses, so I’m not sure whether even Hasson’s conviction on these charges would put him away for a significant amount of time.
But that doesn’t solve the question of what to do with anyone—left, right, or in-between—who has made detailed and obsessive plans for murdering people (few or many) and yet hasn’t done anything in terms of acts, except the possession of lawful weapons. I suppose the commitment laws could come into play if the person is judged to be suffering from a mental illness, but that tends to be quite ineffective and time-limited, as well as difficult to implement.
It all comes down to an old question: how much risk are we willing to accept in order to retain our liberty? We don’t want to be prosecuting thoughtcrime—at least, most of us on the right don’t.
What society chooses to do depend upon the political bent of the jurisdiction, and of course the characteristics of the individual; race, gender, religion, political affiliation, citizenship, for of course justice and the law is impartial. If the law and justice were not impartial there would be many violent crimes committed that have no motive and were completely unexpected, lone wolves so they say. It is a persistent mystery how these things continue to occur. Good thing they have that white male in custody. /s
For the Left, this will totally cancel out Smollett, CovCath, and most of the other fake hate crimes attributed to the Right.
Sigh.
With all the rest soon to follow!
Why would a “white nationalist” want “to kill almost every last person on earth”?
Don’t racists, whether white, black, yellow or brown… intensely desire that the world consist only of their race? Isn’t that by definition, the point of being a “white” nationalist?
In pondering that contradiction, I find it a bit too facile to dismiss that conundrum with the “just crazy” label. Yes, he’s clearly a nut but sane enough to keep his delusions private.
BTW, what about the ability of those knowledgable, to hack into and plant ‘evidence’ into a computer? My impression is that for the skilled, it’s fairly easy to do… Not saying that’s the case here but I certainly wouldn’t put it past activists on the left, ala Jussie Smollett. This certainly plays into the left’s narrative about the great danger from “right-wing domestic terrorists”…
And no, thought crimes are not prosecutable or at least 95% of the human race above the age of 7 (knowing right from wrong) are criminals.
“(he wrote a draft of an email that he sent to himself, for example)”
The documentary, “The Creepy Line” contends that when writing on gmail.com even the drafts you type are retained and available for perusal by Alphabet employees. Or maybe authorities simply confiscated his computer.
Why the heck would someone write threatening stuff to themselves in an email? The NSA stores and may examine all emails ever sent in recent years in the U.S. Thank G_d this guy is really dumb. Spanish flu, and anthrax? Why not use a hydrogen bomb?
Anders Breivik is the worst of the worst. But his evil was as effective as it was partly because he was preying upon a disarmed society. That would not work as well here. Well, except for all those gun free zones.
TommyJay:
My guess—and it’s just a guess—is that this guy’s email had extra surveillance because he was in the Coast Guard in some capacity. Perhaps something he said or did aroused suspicion and triggered the extra monitoring:
He certainly sounds like a wacko, but these kind of reports are a bit scary to me. It would be possible to paint me as assembling an “arsenal” and if having 1,000 cartridges is somehow a sign of a dangerous wacko, that would include me and millions of other shooting enthusiasts who have way more than 1,000 cartridges on hand at any given time.
And now that the FBI has proven untrustworthy, who knows what to believe?
Crazy but white people are no longer allowed to be crazy.
Ted Bundy would understand.
I might have 1000 rounds in the garage. I would have to check. Probably 10 guns but two are muzzle loaders so the ammo would probably not count. Would it ? I have a jar of black powder.
Mike K,
To hoplophobes in general, and the leftists, a black powder would count as proof you are dangerous because you have double digit firearms. And a jar of black powder! Sounds like bomb making supplies. 😉
I have a jar of black powder.”
I certainly hope that is not a glass jar!
“We don’t want to be prosecuting thoughtcrime—at least, most of us on the right don’t.”
Given that we have firm evidence that our intel and law enforcement agencies were plotting a coup against the President, why would anyone think that they would hesitate on coming up with this to take all the Democrat racialists and hoax hate crimes off the front page.
The only question these days is are you paranoid ENOUGH.
By acting so crazy White supremacists are helping no one but the leftists, either they are mentally ill who have no awareness of whom their actions are benefiting, or false flag crazy but high functioning leftists who have a death wish but know better to pretend to be right wingers to benefit their side while going the path of self destruction
If David duke is not stupid and fully aware that his name is toxic, and he truly wants trump to win, why would he endorse trump openly to hurt his chance of winning, it makes no sense to me. He should endorses the democrat candidate to drag her down with her notoriety
The hard part is the fact that if you put the fbi and fed in perspective. .. they havent proven themselves to be the good guys, ever actually.
I gather he was researching some highly questionable sites and information on his Coast Guard computer, which is why they began investigating him further.
Like others here, I think the number of guns and rounds is not a serious problem, but the writings threatening violence are. He sounds crazy.
I agree with Kate – he sounds mentally ill, not “just” philosophically misguided and unusually radical in his commitment to his philosophy. When someone talks about killing almost every human being, my basic assumption is that that’s a sign of mental illness.
Which, I guess, renders a lot of harmless-but-depressing amateur nihilists and those who believe human beings are a plague on Mother Gaia mentally ill in my book. So perhaps I need a more stringent standard.
Yes, this guy is just crazy. His political views are totally irrelevant because of this fact.
spokesperson for the Coast Guard, said in a statement to multiple media outlets that Hasson’s arrest was part of an ongoing probe by the Coast Guard Investigative Service.
Too bad Major Hassan was not in the Coast Guard where somebody might have done something about his radical statements and actions before he killed a bunch of people. Instead, General Casey said he hoped the mass terror attack would not “affect our diversity policies.”
I haven’t read the materials directly but I briefly read reference to the news story elsewhere. One feature struck me as weird: he reportedly was looking for “pro-Russian, neo-fascist and neo-Nazi literature”. I’ve long since learned to wait for details to emerge before forming strong opinions, but this sounds really fake to me. Admittedly, I’m not involved in any white supremacist groups, but as near I can tell, associating “Pro-Russian” with anything traditionally considered right-of-center is of entirely recent – and Democrat – vintage.
white people is the only race as a whole gets blamed for the action of one lunatic. For everyone else especially the leftists’ designated people of special privilege (LGBT, blacks, latinos, Muslims, etc) every attack is an isolated incident, and the guns are to blame, not the racial group the perpetrator belongs too, many times not even the perpetrator, as he is the victim too of institutional racism, and his crime was driven by many years of pain and suffering at the hands of evil white people.
I wish my side has the same domination on the media with the same power to shape public opinions as the other side, any group with such media domination should win every election, but they don’t, which tells me how incompetent those losers are.
This incident has the same stink of fraud about it as Smollett’s hate crime hoax.
Like the almost forgotten Cesar Sayoc, every single element is just a little too perfect a caricature of a rabid, radical right wing Trump supporter.
Just like Sayoc, this perp will vanish without a trace from the news cycle once the story’s usefulness is exhausted.
Considering how much the radical left has to lose as Smollett’s story collapsed, never underestimate the value of a good distraction.
parker on February 21, 2019 at 11:40 pm at 11:40 pm said:
“….It would be possible to paint me as assembling an “arsenal” and if having 1,000 cartridges is somehow a sign of a dangerous wacko, that would include me and millions of other shooting enthusiasts who have way more than 1,000 cartridges on hand at any given time.
And now that the FBI has proven untrustworthy, who knows what to believe?”
Five guns and a thousand rounds of ammunition. I hope they never search my house.
With the way the Obama Administration showed a willingness to use federal agencies to go after political enemies, it is more than a little disconcerting. We can also add in some in the medical associations asking questions about firearms and some banks and credit card companies choosing to not do business with firearm companies and some individuals.
Pelosi has recently made threats about going after firearms, manufacturers, distributors and owners. If the democrats had a majority in the senate as well as the POTUS, I think there is little doubt they would be doing more than threatening.
How come all of the Muslim attackers here in the U.S. who, after the fact, are found to have been writing similar stuff on their computers, to have been perusing Jihadi how to websites, and to even have been in contact, via the Internet, with Muslim leaders who advocated such attacks, and amassing firearms, never got picked up–before the act–like this turkey?
The chief case in point is Maj. Nidal Hasan, who was giving off so many signals of being a Jihadi, poised to act, that he might as well have been glow in the dark radioactive–the lecture he gave his fellow officers on Jihad, his clothing, his business cards which proclaimed him to be a “soldier of Allah,” etc.
If I remember correctly, those above him had been concerned enough to interview him, but concluded that “he posed no threat.”
It seems to me that they had just as much and perhaps a lot more evidence of intent than there is in the case of this supposed “white nationalist.”
I am so glad they caught this man, it appears he is really a mental case and he is dangerous. As for the 1,000 rounds quoted with the picture, there were full 50 cal. ammo cases with a lot more ammunition than that, lots and lots. He had some low end rifles and shotguns and then he had some real nice top end guns like the Bergara, the bolt action, green camo rifle on a bipod which is an incredible rifle, useful for long distance precision shooting. He had more than enough arms and ammo to do a tremendous amount of damage if he were decide to go out with a bang.
There are also what looks like some suppressors which are not legal in every state and require a $200 Fed tax stamp and a long waiting period and severe penalties for ownership without the stamp. This is one time the nut guy did not fall through the cracks, good catch.
Silly me, Neo.
The WSJ has an article on Hasson, entitled “Coast Guard Officer Accused of Planning Terror Attack Amassed an Arsenal” (Oh, boy) and they finish with this line,
“Insider threat program.” Interesting.
What kind of “nationalist” wants to kill every last person on earth?
Yeah, LOL, some of the “arsenal” was pretty funny. A couple of what looked like Mossberg (maybe a Remington) pump action shotguns with extra barrels for slug hunting, an almost comical H&R (style)break open single shot cheapie either shotgun or rifle in maybe .410 or even .308; then, what looks like a 1960’s blond wood Wards or Sears private label version of a low-end Marlin or Mossberg or something, tube mag bolt action 22.
The “black rifles” I don’t know. But they could be almost anything rigged up to look like whatever his particular fancy might be.
The guy is a clown. Maybe dangerous and crazy enough to do real harm. But a clown.
Two bricks of .22 long rifle would get any 1960’s rural boy with an ammo supply for tin cans and rabbits, to that level.
I can’t tell from the image what the displayed caliber of his hoard was. Probably a fair amount of .223 of course; though the black guns might be .308. The rounds looked too long to be 7.62×39.
Right-wing extremism is a growing problem in the United States, and threats such as those posed by individuals like Hasson are becoming more common, not less.
This is the problem with these stories. Most of the real mass shootings in this country have been Muslims the past ten years. Vox is wetting it’s self because they finally found a right winger making threats. The kid that shot up the Charleston black church is a mental case and this guy probably is, too.
The Charlottesville demonstrations were engineered by the Mayor who ordered the police to stand down. It’s the same story with alleged “hate crimes.” The list of those that are NOT hoaxes is pretty short. You won’t find that news anywhere.
Tracing back my ancestors who immigrated to the U.S. from a number of different countries in Europe, it is quite common to find that many of those ancestors changed their names when they got here, to make them seem less strange, to fit in, to be more “American.”
My next question is, is his name Hasson–an unusual name, it seems to me–or was it originally a Middle Eastern name, Hassan?
People who plan to shoot unarmed innocent people are mentally defective and trying to assign a political motive and align them with either the right or the left will never explain their actions in a manner that makes any sense. The best description of their thinking I can come up with is garbage, mixed in with a lot of true evil and a sorry assed need for recognition. The media annoys me when they try to rationalize the irrational for their own ends.
With all the responses about government surveillance (You say “Hasson,” I say “Hassan”..), unknown motives (pro-Russian White Nationalists have never been a feature in the US), and questionable weaponry…where are we on the 48-hour Rule?
Planning, not Planned.
That said, diversity (e.g. [unprincipled] denial of individual dignity) is a clear and progressive risk for civilization.
The American right is libertarian. There is no common principle that normalizes diversity or color judgment.
The American center is constitutional (less the Twilight Amendment) and conservative. The Constitution does not indulge in diversity, sexism, genderism, ageism (e.g. selective-child), and other Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic, politically congruent ideologies.
And here in the Evergreen state :
Washington Man Arrested For Allegedly Vowing Sheriffs Who Oppose Gun Control Law ‘Will Be Shot. By Me.’
https://www.newsweek.com/jaydin-ledford-okanogan-county-sheriffs-office-sheriff-tony-hawley-omak-1339509
Okanagan County is in northern WA east of the Cascade Mtns. Generally not a progressive “enlightened” area.
My next question is, is his name Hasson–an unusual name, it seems to me–or was it originally a Middle Eastern name, Hassan?
Checking on Ancestry.com, there were apparently several thousand people with the name in the U.S. at the time of the 1940 Census. A search turns up a Turkish immigrants, another descendants of a fellow who was born in England, another a fellow descended of Irish immigrants.
Here’s the correct link to my last post, (sigh)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coast-guard-officer-accused-of-planning-terror-attack-amassed-an-arsenal-11550789657
Another interesting factoid,
But the real threat, we’re told in a couple hundred words, are his un-serial-numbered “ghost” guns.
“Amateur nihilist.” Hah! Good one.
“Full 50 cal ammo cases..” full of whar? What is inside? Show me a 50 cal sniper rifle or machine gun. Otherwise, SO WHAT? When you believe in what you don’t understand, you make everyone else suffer either in ignorance or frustration.
Parker – those large metal cases with the hinged lids are 50 cal machine gun ammunition cases and they appear to be full of rifle ammunition as in .556 boxes of 30 each just like the six cases I have for ammunition storage, Inside dimensions are 11 x 5.6 x 6.75 inches. That does not mean they are full of 50 BMG ammo. Sorry if I caused you to have any confusion. https://www.amazon.com/50-Cal-Military-Surplus-Ammo/dp/B07BZR4L99
“Someone” is not paying attention.
“Email to self” is the traditional way to message a group of people using the “BCC” option so that each recipient only sees theirown email address. All recipients are “blind” [hence BCC, or blind copy.] to the identity of all the others receiving that message. Obama’s people used that method for some of their Russia-Russia-Russia work.
Either the investigators are utterly inept or they are hiding the identities of this wacko’s collaborators. That BCC information will have been retained on the email server or the originating computer. One has to ask, “What agencies and/or individuals were involved?’ After all, an FBI “employee” loaded many of the Mandalay Las Vegas rifle magazines…..
And why “now”, so soon after the Jussie and Chief Tin Drum hoaxes were debunked? Gots to keep the peasants energized for the next event….