US Coast Guard officer held in plot to kill 'leftists'

A U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant who was arrested last week should not be freed from custody while he awaits trial because he was plotting to "murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country," prosecutors said in court documents Wednesday.

Christopher Paul Hasson, a self-avowed white nationalist, was arrested last Friday after allegedly plotting to kill journalists, professors, doctors, politicians and "leftists in general," according to the filing.

The Marine Corps veteran and Coast Guard acquisitions officer stationed at the guard's Washington, D.C. headquarters has been charged with illegal firearms possession and possession of a controlled substance, but prosecutors said those charges are just "the proverbial tip of the iceberg".

"The defendant is a domestic terrorist, bent on committing acts dangerous to human life that are intended to affect government conduct," they wrote in the documents, asking for a judge to order him held in custody pending trial.

Prosecutors cited a lengthy letter Hasson drafted, but never sent, to friends from June 2017 that winds between a screed against liberals and several plots to kill them that included biological attacks and attacks that targeted food supplies.

"I am dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on Earth," it says. "Liberalist/globalist ideology is destroying traditionalist peoples esp white. No way to counteract without violence."

"Much blood will have to be spilled in order to get whitey off the couch. For some no amount of blood will be enough."

That letter was followed up by a letter Hasson sent to himself in September 2017 with the intent to send it to an unidentified neo-Nazi leader. In that letter, Hasson allegedly said he has been a white nationalist for more than 30 years, and advocated for "focused violence" to establish a white homeland, prosecutors wrote.

Hasson routinely read portions of a manifesto by Anders Behring Breivik -- the Norwegian far-right extremist who killed 77 people in dual attacks in 2011 -- starting in 2017 up until he was arrested.

Prosecutors said Hasson compiled a hit list of prominent Democrats in Congress as well as activists, political organizations, and MSNBC and CNN media personalities.

He is set to appear in court for a hearing that will determine whether he remains in custody on Thursday afternoon.