The federal government on Monday sentenced a California man who used Molotov cocktails to firebomb a clinic that provided abortion services in a 2022 attack on a facility run by Planned Parenthood Federation of America in Costa Mesa, California. A yearly sentence was handed down. authorities said.
The man, Chance Brannon, 24, is an active-duty Marine and was stationed at Camp Pendleton at the time of the attack, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said. Federal authorities described him as a former Marine.
He also planned attacks on Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium during Pride celebrations and an electrical substation in Orange County, California, which he believed would start a race war, and targeted Jewish residents of Los Angeles. They also planned to break into a house. said in a statement.
U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney said Brannon, who was also ordered to pay $1,000 in restitution, “engaged in a brutal and indefensible act of domestic terrorism.”
Brannon pleaded guilty in November to one count each of conspiracy. Malicious destruction of property by fire or explosives. Federal authorities said he was charged with possession of an unregistered destructive device and intentional damage to a reproductive health services facility.
Officials said Brannon and co-conspirator Tibet Ergul, 22, of Irvine, Calif., were wearing hooded sweatshirts and masks at the entrance of the clinic around 1 a.m. on March 13, 2022. He allegedly lit a Molotov cocktail and threw it. Criminal charges. It hit the entrance, causing a fire, the statement said.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement Monday that Brannon had launched a “brazen attack” on clinics that provide abortions, contraception and other medical services, putting lives at risk.
The government's sentencing memorandum said Brannon was motivated by “radical neo-Nazi ideology” and made calls to “two foreign adversaries” in 2022 in hopes of providing information about the United States. Ta.
Prosecutors say the suspect kept an “equipment list” for the plot, including a rifle with racial slurs written in Cyrillic that the white supremacist killed 51 people in 2019. He said he also had recordings of the mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Forty other people were injured.
Brannon is the first of three men to be convicted in the case, one of many attacks in recent years targeting facilities and doctors providing abortions in the United States. A Costa Mesa clinic was forced to close the day after the incendiary bombing, and dozens of appointments were canceled. The building sustained approximately $1,000 worth of damage, according to the criminal complaint.
Mr. Ergul has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to damage an energy facility and intentional damage to a reproductive health services facility and is scheduled to be sentenced on May 30. The men were arrested on June 14, 2023, two days before the planned attack. at the stadium, the statement said.
The third defendant in the case, Xavier Batten, 21, of Brooksville, Florida, has been in federal custody since July 2023. He pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of possession of an unregistered destructive device and one count of intentional damage to property. Reproductive health services facility. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for May 13th.