The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on January 11 that Kaleb Cole, a 25-year-old Washington state man, was sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in a plot to threaten and intimidate journalists and advocates working to expose anti-Semitism.
The DOJ accuses Kaleb Cole of being the division leader of the Neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen.
A federal jury in Washington state found Kole guilty of interfering with a federally protected activity (exercising the right to freedom of speech and press) because of religion, of conspiring with other Atomwaffen members to commit offenses against the U.S., and on three counts of mailing threatening communications.
“Threats motivated by religious intolerance are antithetical to American values, even more so when they aim to intimidate journalists and others who are working to expose bigotry in our society,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in a DOJ press release. “The defendant led a multi-state plot by a neo-Nazi group to threaten and intimidate journalists and advocates who were doing important work to expose anti-Semitism around the country. The Justice Department will continue to investigate and prosecute these hateful acts.”
Cole and other Atomwaffen members plotted to intimidate journalists and others, according to evidence presented at trial, by mailing threatening posters or gluing the signs to the victims’ homes.
According to Yahoo News, one of the posters read, “You have been visited by your local Nazis,” and featured an image of “a hooded figure preparing to throw a Molotov cocktail at a house.” Another poster read, “Death to Pigs,” the same message scrawled on the wall of Leno LaBianca’s home by Charles Manson’s followers when they murdered Leno and his wife Rosemary in 1969.
The DOJ reports that the group primarily targeted Jewish journalists and journalists of color.
Cameron Shea, Johnny Roman Garza, Taylor Ashley Parker-Dipeppe, and three other co-conspirators pleaded guilty and were sentenced earlier this year.
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Seattle, Tampa, Houston, and Phoenix investigated the case with assistance from the Seattle Police Department.
