FBI terrorist sting of a Kansas militia ends in guilty verdicts

WICHITA, Kan. ― Three right-wing militiamen from rural Kansas were found guilty on Wednesday in a 2016 plot to slaughter Muslim refugees living in an apartment complex in Garden City.

Patrick Stein, Gavin Wright and Curtis Allen were found guilty on charges of weapons of mass destruction and conspiracy against civil rights. Wright was also found guilty on a charge of lying to the FBI. The defendants will face a potential life sentence.

  HuffPo

They deserve a life sentence. That's what they were preparing to hand out.

"The fucking cockroaches in this country have to go, period,” said Stein, who went by the code name “Orkin Man” in text messages with other militia members. “They are the fucking problem in this country right now. They are the threat in this country right now.”

In another recording, the men could be heard mapping out targets on Google Earth, dropping a “pin” labeled “cockroaches” over areas they knew to have a high concentration of Muslims. They eventually settled on a main target: a Garden City apartment complex that’s home to many Somali Muslim immigrants and the mosque where they worship.

The prosecution presented evidence that the men had started to collect explosive materials. Per the recordings made by Day, their plan was to detonate bombs at the apartment complex in November 2016. They wanted the explosions to occur during Muslim prayer times when more potential victims would be there, “packed in like sardines,” as Stein put it. The bomb’s shock waves, he hoped, would make “Jello out of their insides.”

[...]

Brody Benson, part of the Kansas Security Forces militia, held anti-Muslim beliefs himself. “Fucking Islam,” he wrote in a Facebook post in June 2016. “I’m done. Kill them all. Bring on the DOJ.”

But Benson testified that when he heard Stein talk about his plan to kill Somali immigrants in Garden City, he knew Stein was for real.

[...]

The men were enthusiastic supporters of Donald Trump.

Of course they were.

During the plotting, Stein reportedly referred to then-candidate Trump as “the Man.” The men had planned their attack for after the 2016 election, so as not to hurt Trump’s chances of winning.

[US Attorney Stephen McAllister] said he couldn’t comment on whether President Donald Trump’s rhetoric impacted this case. Trump, who was supported by the defendants, has said that terrorists might be coming into the United States as refugees. The defendants had asked the federal judge to pull jurors from rural Kansas since they’re twice as likely to have voted for Trump, a motion that was denied.

During the trial, a defense attorney for Allen called the men’s words “locker room talk,” the Huffington Post reported.

  Kansas

They not only lapped up everything Trump said during his campaign, but their own attorney used Trump's words to try to get them off. Hey, it worked for Trump.

The Kansas men called themselves “Crusaders” who planned to create a “bloodbath” by detonating vehicles laden with bombs the day after the November 2016 election.

Which would make it look more like an anti-Trump group, eh?

"We welcome the guilty verdicts in this disturbing case and hope that anyone considering turning bigoted views into violent actions will see what their fate will be when apprehended and prosecuted by law enforcement authorities," said Moussa Elbayoumy, chairman of the Kansas chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, in a news release.

We hope, too.