Lawyers For Man Convicted in Right-Wing Terror Plot Beg Judge for Leniency Because He Believed Trump’s Lies
Via AlterNet:
On Monday, the Huffington Post reported that lawyers representing Patrick Stein, a supporter of President Donald Trump who conspired in an anti-Muslim terror plot, are urging a federal judge not to sentence him too harshly, arguing that he only did what he did because he was agitated by the rhetoric of Trump and his supporters on the far right:
Patrick Stein was one of three right-wing militiamen found guilty in April of a conspiracy to kill Muslim refugees living in rural Kansas. Ahead of the 2016 election, Stein and two others plotted with an FBI informant and an undercover agent to bomb an apartment complex that housed Muslims in Garden City. Stein went by the handle “Orkin Man” and referred to Muslims as “cockroaches” he wanted exterminated.
At trial, defense attorneys referred to the defendants as “knuckleheads” who were engaged in “locker room talk,” and Stein’s attorney argued his client was a victim of a “chaos news” environment that had him thinking a civil war was coming.