ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) A Coast Guard lieutenant accused of stockpiling guns and compiling a hit list of prominent Democrats and network TV journalists looked at other targets: two Supreme Court justices and two executives of social media companies, according to federal prosecutors.
Those new allegations are contained in a court filing Tuesday in which prosecutors urge a magistrate judge to keep Christopher Hasson, 49, detained in custody pending trial on firearms and weapons charges.
The filing doesnt name the two justices and two company executives but says Hasson searched online for their home addresses in March 2018, within minutes before and after searching firearm sales websites.
The defendant conducted an internet search for are supreme court justices protected approximately two weeks prior to searching for the home addresses of the two Supreme Court justices, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom wrote in a footnote.
Hasson, who is due back in court today for a detention hearing, is renewing his request to be released from custody while awaiting trial. A lawyer who represented Hasson at a Feb. 21 detention hearing accused prosecutors of making inflammatory accusations against Hasson without providing evidence to back them up.
Prosecutors havent charged him with any terrorism-related offenses since his Feb. 15 arrest and subsequent indictment in Maryland. Hassons attorney, Liz Oyer, wrote in a court filing last week that prosecutors recently disclosed that they dont expect to seek any additional charges.
In an email to The Associated Press, Oyer declined to comment Wednesday on the prosecutors new allegations.
In a February court filing, prosecutors called Hasson a domestic terrorist and said he intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country. They also said he is a self-described white nationalist who 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.
Hassons internet search history lays bare his views on race, which in turn inform his criminal conduct, Windom wrote.
In November 2017, according to the prosecutor, Hasson searched for please god let there be a race war. And the defendant did an internet search for guns with a search term that used a racial slur for blacks in March 2018 before visiting firearm sales websites.
Prosecutors have said Hasson appeared to be planning attacks inspired by the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in a 2011 bomb-and-shooting rampage. Windom said it cannot go unnoticed that the terrorist who perpetrated the deadly New Zealand mosque attacks in March also was a devotee of Breivik.
In 2017, Hasson sent himself a draft letter he had written to a neo-Nazi leader and identified himself as a White Nationalist for over 30 years and advocated for focused violence in order to establish a white homeland, prosecutors said.
That letter also refers to Missouri, a person with whom Hasson has a long history, Windom wrote. In 1995, according to federal prosecutors, Hasson and Missouri went to a home in Hampton, Virginia, where the homeowner arrived by car and asked them why they were there. The victim identified Hasson and Missouri as skinheads.
Missouri, wearing a black jacket with Swastika patches, aimed a handgun at the victims face and pulled the trigger, according to a police report cited by prosecutors. When the gun didnt fire, Missouri beat the victim with it.
Chris Hasson was standing there with the suspect when this occurred, Windom wrote.
Investigators found 15 guns, including seven rifles, and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition at Hassons basement apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland, prosecutors said. Hassons Feb. 27 indictment also accuses him of illegal possession of tramadol, an opioid painkiller.
