A U.S. Coast Guard officer who federal prosecutors allege stockpiled weapons to launch a spree of domestic terrorism and mass murder will appear in court Thursday.
Police arrested Christopher Paul Hasson last week on drug and weapon charges after finding a large stash of guns, ammunition and drugs in his suburban Washington apartment.
Federal prosecutors are expected to argue at Thursday’s bail hearing that Hasson must remain in jail until his trial.
“The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country,” the government’s court filing says. It calls Hasson a “domestic terrorist bent on committing acts dangerous to human life that are intended to affect governmental conduct.”
Along with the weapons and drugs, investigators found documents in which Hasson allegedly calls for “focused violence” and expresses a desire to “establish a white homeland.”
He is said to have written about ways to “kill almost every last person on Earth,” and called the idea of a biological attack and poisoning the nation’s food supply “interesting.”
Investigators also found a hit list of liberal politicians Hasson allegedly singled out for assassination, including U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a number of Democratic presidential candidates. CNN and MSNBC television personalities were also included on the list.
Prosecutors said they believed Hasson was not just fantasizing but was serious about his plans. They said he was a longtime white nationalist and neo-Nazi.
They said he spent time studying the manifesto of far-right Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people during a 2011 massacre.
Hasson has a public defender who as of late Wednesday afternoon had yet to comment on the charges.
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