Prosecutors: CG Lt used work computers in planning attack
By Lynh Bui, Dan Lamothe and Michael E. Miller
February 21
The U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant spent hours on end planning a wide-scale domestic terrorist attack, even logging in at his work computer on the job at headquarters to study the manifestos and heinous paths of mass shooters, prosecutors say. He researched how to carry out sniper attacks, they contend, and whether rifle scopes were illegal. And all the while, investigators assert, he was amassing a cache of weapons as he ruminated about attacks on politicians and journalists ...
... an internal Coast Guard program that watches for any “insider threat” ... identified suspicious computer activity tied to Hasson, prompting the agency’s investigative service to launch an investigation last fall, said Lt. Cmdr. Scott McBride, a service spokesman ...
... Federal law enforcement officials seized a stockpile of guns and ammunition from his basement apartment ...
The judge, Charles B. Day, said that it is unusual to detain a defendant based on the charges Hasson was facing and that the issue at hand is “all about the defendant’s state of mind and intentions.”
Hasson’s federal public defender, Julie Stelzig, said ... that Hasson had no prior record and that the number of weapons he had were “modest at best” for average gun collectors ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/ex-coast-guard-lieutenant-ordered-held-for-14-days-while-government-weighs-terrorism-related-charges-in-his-planning-of-widespread-terrorist-attack/2019/02/21/57918f12-3573-11e9-854a-7a14d7fec96a_story.html?utm_term=.81c52459954f
= new reply since forum marked as read
when she says the number of weapons he had were “modest at best” for average gun collectors ...
She is in an unenviable position, having to defend the indefensible.
