A federal prosecutor said the FBI found the largest cache of homemade explosive devices in the agency’s history last month in Virginia.
Brad Spafford was taken into custody on Dec. 17 at his farm outside of Norfolk, Virginia, on a single-count criminal complaint that accused him of failing to register a short barrel rifle. But when investigators searched the 20-acre property, they discovered more than 150 explosive devices.
Prosecutors in Federal District Court in Norfolk filed the court papers describing Mr. Spafford’s explosives in an effort to keep him in custody as his case moves toward trial.
According to the court papers, which were reported earlier by the website Court Watch, the investigation into Mr. Spafford began last year, after a neighbor reached out to the authorities. Mr. Spafford had lost three fingers on his right hand while working with a homemade explosive device, the neighbor said, and he was stockpiling weapons and homemade ammunition.
The neighbor reported that Mr. Spafford had told him that he and his friends were “preparing for something” that he “would not be able to do alone,” the court papers said.
The neighbor also told investigators that Mr. Spafford sometimes used photographs of President Biden for target practice at a local shooting range and believed that “political assassinations should be brought back.” After the attempt on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s life in Pennsylvania in July, the papers said, Mr. Spafford told his neighbor that he “hoped the shooter doesn’t miss Kamala,” an apparent reference to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Mr. Spafford moved to his farm this fall, and the neighbor went to visit him there in October wearing a secret recording device, the papers said. Mr. Spafford told the neighbor that he had various types of explosives at the property and discussed fortifying it with “a 360-degree turret” in which he planned to mount a 50-caliber rifle, according to the papers. (NYT)
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An attorney for Spafford filed a response to the Department of Justice’s motion to revoke the judge's release order, arguing the 36-year-old has “no criminal record and no history of substance abuse or mental illness.”
“The government argues that Mr. Spafford should be detained because he poses a danger to the community in spite of the fact that the government has been investigating and carefully watching Mr. Spafford for approximately two years through the use of a confidential human source who was a friend and confidant of Mr. Spafford,” the filing continues. “During all of that time, there is no evidence or allegation that Mr. Spafford committed or attempted to commit any act of violence. There was no evidence introduced that Mr. Spafford is a danger to the community and in fact, the evidence showed he had never used any explosive device, never threatened to use one, and never threatened any individual or group. Additionally, there was no evidence that Mr. Spafford had the means or equipment necessary to explode the devices. The evidence was that professionally trained explosive technicians had to rig the devices to explode them.”
The attorney said Spafford’s “ill-advised comments” about political figures are protected by the First Amendment.
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