US military officer ‘plotted white supremacist mass murder’

A neo-Nazi serving as a lieutenant in the US coast guard plotted a domestic terror attack “on a scale rarely seen in this country”, prosecutors claim.

Christopher Hasson intended to murder civilians, high-profile journalists and Democratic politicians including House speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to documents filed at a federal court in Maryland. A total of 15 guns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition were found during a police raid on his basement apartment last week.

Hasson, 49, was arrested on Friday on ­charges of illegally possessing weapons and drugs, but prosecutors says those charges are the “proverbial tip of the iceberg”, reports The Washington Post. The self-proclaimed white nationalist - said to be a fan of Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik - is due to appear in court later this week.

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Officials who raided Hasson’s home, in the Maryland suburb of Silver Spring, also found a computer spreadsheet list of targets, the court filing reports. Officials with the state’s US Attorney’s Office say that along with Pelosi, his hit list included Democrat representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, and anchors from news networks CNN and MSNBC.

In a draft email dated 2 June 2017 recovered from Hasson’s account, he allegedly wrote: “I am dreaming of a way to kill every last person on earth.”

The email, addressed to “friends ... acquaintances more likely”, discusses the most effective methods to “cause complete destruction” by unleashing a biological attack on the public, followed by contamination of food supplies.

“Much blood will have to be spilled to get whitey off the couch... They will die as will the traitors who actively work toward our demise,” the letter continues.

Washington DC-based news site NPR reports that the “rambling” email also includes a to-do list for the following four years that said: “Get out of debt!!! Buy van to convert, diesel, Buy land for family out west or possibly NC mtns [North Carolina mountains].”

In addition, Hasson wrote about wanting to “come off” tramadol, a highly addictive painkiller, and “clear my head”, the site adds.

He also conducted online searches using the terms “civil war if trump impeached” and “what if trump illegally impeached”, according to investigators.

And he had allegedly studied a manifesto by white supremacist Breivik “on how to amass firearms and compile a list of targets”, reports the BBC.

In 2011, Breivik killed eight people with a car bomb in central Oslo and then shot dead a further 69, many of them teenagers, at a camp for young socialists on the island of Utoya. He is currently serving 21-year prison sentence, the longest allowed under the Norwegian justice system.