Nazi Coast Guard Guy May Have Arsenal, 'Hit List,' But Is He Really A *Terrorist*?

What part of 'he's white' did you not understand?

  Weird development this week in the case of Christopher Hasson, that Coast Guard dude who was arrested in February and described as planning a huge act of violence . Despite some very scary stuff in a court document asking he be held without bond, the government hasn't actually charged Hasson with anything like terrorism, and now his federal public defender is asking the judge to release him until trial, saying the government hasn't shown he's dangerous and that prosecutors don't plan to charge him with terrorism. That seems quite odd!

In the February motion to hold Hasson, prosecutors didn't mince words, calling him a "domestic terrorist, bent on committing acts dangerous to human life." They said he "intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country," and included excerpts from files on his computer in which he called himself a "long time White Nationalist" and said "much blood will have to be spilled to get Whitey off the couch" in support of a white homeland. He referenced the manifestos written by other white supremacist murderers, and had what the prosecutors described as a hit list of prominent liberals in government and media, like Chris Hayes, Cory Booker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, and others.

Bit of a follow-through problem, though: Apart from four counts of firearms and drug possession charges, prosecutors haven't filed any additional charges, never mind all the talk of his wanting to kill everyone on the planet. On Monday, Hasson's federal public defender, Liz Oyer, filed a request with US Magistrate Judge Charles Day to schedule a new detention hearing "at the earliest agreeable date for all parties," as the Baltimore Sun   reports. 

Oyer said her client's alleged domestic terrorism activities were "the heart of the government's case for detention." A prosecutor wrote in the February court filing that the drug and firearms charges were the "proverbial tip of the iceberg."

"No other crimes have been charged," Oyer wrote. "Moreover, during a recent status call, government counsel advised the Court and defense counsel that it does not expect to file a superseding indictment in this matter."

So far, prosecutors haven't responded in writing to the request for a new hearing. And nahh, the Department of Justice has still made no mention of Hasson on its website.

Yr Wonkette has no idea what the hell is up here. We are Not a Lawyer, but we can certainly understand that the prosecutors may have decided that there's just not enough evidence to prove a terrorism charge beyond a reasonable doubt (Yr Wonkette predicted his defense would be Imagining a Turner Diaries roleplaying game  is not a crime ). But that seems like something they might have considered before definitively stating to a judge the dude was planning a mass casualty event that had never been matched in the history of ever?

Seems like a hell of a thing to bring up and then never mention again, if you ask us. Are these prosecutors working from a Tommy Wiseau script?

[ Baltimore Sun / WaPo ]

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