Former Tennessee congressional candidate charged with plotting to burn down mosque

(Image credit: Twitter.com/namiari)

last updated 8 July 2015

A man who ran for Congress in Tennessee last year was charged Tuesday with plotting to burn down a mosque and other buildings in a New York community with a large Muslim population.

Robert R. Doggart, 63, of Sequatchie County, was indicted by a federal grand jury and accused of the civil rights violation of soliciting others to destroy religious property. Court documents say he wrote on Facebook that his targets — a mosque, school, and cafeteria in a hamlet near Hancock, New York, called Islamberg — "must be utterly destroyed in order to get the attention of the American people." Doggart spoke with a confidential source and others on a cell phone being tapped by the FBI, court documents said, and he was reportedly heard saying he wanted to firebomb the different buildings. The plot was never carried out.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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