A self-proclaimed white nationalist was arrested in Maryland after police seized firearms and evidence that he was planning to commit domestic terrorism.
Christopher Paul Hasson, a former U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant had amassed a stockpile of firearms, was reading a manifesto from far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik (who murdered 77 people in Norway in July 2011), and created a spreadsheet of people he planned to target, according to court documents. The list included House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), “Sen blumen jew” – believed to be Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, according to The Washington Post. Scarborough was allegedly added to the list after he called President Donald Trump “the worst ever,” according to court documents.
The Post reported that Hasson called for “focused violence” in order to “establish a white homeland.” He also wrote, “I am dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on earth.”
He also searched for “best place in dc to see congress people,” “are supreme court justices protected,” and “where is morning joe filmed.” Scarborough is the host of “Morning Joe.”
Hasson was arrested last Friday by the Baltimore FBI field office and the Coast Guard Investigative Service. The arrest was first reported by Seamus Hughes, a former senior counterterrorism advisor to the Senate Homeland Security Committee and U.S. government intelligence policy officer who now works for the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.
Hughes reported that Hasson was initially arrested “for drug and gun charges,” but the case quickly turned.
“It looked like a run of the mill case until the detention memo filed yesterday. He had a hit list, contacts with white supremacists, guns, and, again, was an Coastie assigned to HQ,” Hughes tweeted.
Hughes also provided screenshots of the court documents relating to Hasson’s arrest, including the first page, which says in the first paragraph that Hasson “is a domestic terrorist bent on committing acts dangerous to human life.”
Hasson, according to the affidavit, drafted a letter “to a known American neo-Nazi leader,” in which he described himself “as a White Nationalist for over 30 years.” He sent himself the letter seven weeks after the Charlottesville alt-right rally (which left one counter protester dead).
At the time of Hasson’s arrest, police seized 15 firearms and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, according to the Post.
Hasson was living in “a cramped basement apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland,” according to court documents. Authorities also discovered a cache of various steroids and narcotics. Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist, took such items to enhance his ability to commit his attacks.
“When law enforcement raided Hasson’s apartment, they said they found a locked container loaded with more than 30 vials of what appeared to be human growth hormones. He has also ordered more than 4,200 pills of the narcotic Tramadol since 2016, along with synthetic urine to allegedly bypass possible random drug screenings at work,” the Post reported.
Yashar Ali, reporter for New York Magazine and the Huffington Post, tweeted out a list of the people named as Hasson’s targets, which included most of the announced Democrat 2020 presidential candidates and numerous MSNBC and CNN personalities.
Hasson had allegedly been planning some kind of attack for years, writing in a draft email in June 2017 that he was considering a “bombing/sniper campaign.”