Three white men charged in a terrorist plot to murder Muslim refugees in Kansas are just ‘knuckleheads’, according to a defense attorney for one of the men.
Curtis Allen, 49, Gavin Wright, 49, and Patrick Eugene Stein, 47, are accused of planning to bomb a mosque in Garden City, Kansas and an adjoining apartment complex for Somali Muslim refugees in 2016.
The three militia members are currently on trial in Wichita and one of the key arguments from Allen’s public defender was the suggestion that the men were just engaging in hateful locker room talk.
During cross-examination of an undercover agent, attorney Rich Federico questioned why the FBI didn’t alert local police about the potential terror plot.
Gavin Wright, 49, and Patrick Eugene Stein, 47, are two of three men accused of planning to bomb a mosque in Garden City, Kansas and an adjoining apartment complex for Somali Muslim refugees in 2016
He argued that police could have gone to the men in a bid to stop their plans, the HuffPost reports.
‘Hey knucklehead, we know what you’re talking about. Knock it off,’ Federico suggested the police could have said to the men if they had known of the plot.
Curtis Allen, 49, is also charged in the plot but his defense attorney tried to argue that all three men were just ‘knuckleheads’
The other defense attorneys have also tried similar arguments, saying the FBI set the men up with a paid informant and all the talk about violence wasn’t serious.
They argued that the men had a right to free speech and association under the Constitution.
Attorney Jim Pratt previously said the alleged crimes occurred during a heated presidential election campaign that had split the country, and that the media fed this with nonstop reporting.
He said conservative media outlets reported that President Barack Obama was letting refugees who had not been vetted into the country, and liberal media outlets reported that then-Republican nominee Donald Trump was going to kick immigrants out of the country.
‘Hate ruled the day and the ratings,’ Pratt said.
He said the militia members were simply talking about these politically-charged issues at the time.
The three men were indicted in October 2016 after a militia member, Dan Day, became alarmed and contacted the FBI. He agreed to wear a wire and recorded profanity-laced conversations among the men that led to their arrest.
People stand outside an Islamic mosque located within an apartment complex in Garden City, which federal authorities allege was to be targeted in a bomb plot by the three militia men in 2016
The interior of a mosque located within an apartment complex that the FBI says that Allen, Wright, and Stein had planned to target in 2016
Secret recordings made by the informant reveal that Allen, Wright, and Stein struggled to recruit any other members from the anti-government militia group, Kansas Security Forces, to join their scheme.
The recording revealed the depraved lengths the trio were willing to go to destroy the Muslim community in America.
‘When we go on operations, there’s no leaving anyone behind, even if it’s a one-year-old. I’m serious,’ Stein was heard to say. ‘I guarantee if I go on a mission, those little f****** are going bye-bye.’
‘The f**king cockroaches in this country have to go, period,’ Stein said in one recording. ‘They are the f**king problem in this country right now. They are the threat in this country right now.’
The men also discussed killing a landlord who owned a building occupied by Muslims and raping the landlord’s wife and daughter as a message to stop other landlords renting to people of Islamic faith.
It is estimated that between 300 and 500 Somali refugees live in the neighborhood where the three men allegedly wanted to carry out the bombings
They also discussed their hopes that the bombing would inspire further attacks on Muslims and could even trigger ‘the Crusades 2.0.’ They also planned to publish a ‘manifesto’ after the bombing, similar to the Unabomber’s, the court heard.
Day, the informant, told jurors that Patrick Stein called him a couple of days after the Florida Pulse nightclub attack in which a man who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group killed 49 people.
He said Stein told him he was ‘ready to take action’ against Muslims and wanted to see who else in the militia group was with him and who wasn’t.
‘They were outraged that a Muslim was killing all these Americans,’ Day said. ‘I was outraged too.’
Prosecutors said that over a five-month period, Day gave the FBI secret recordings of meetings and conversations in which a plot formed to bomb a mosque and an apartment complex where Somali immigrants lived.
They say the defendants planned to carry out the attack right after the 2016 presidential election and hoped it would inspire attacks on Muslims throughout the country.
They have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy against civil rights. Stein also faces two additional weapons-related charges and Wright faces a charge of lying to the FBI.