Christopher Paul Hasson is a former United States Coast Guard lieutenant whose 2019 arrest became one of the most closely watched domestic terror cases in recent memory. Federal agents found him with 15 firearms, unregistered silencers, tactical gear, steroids, and a spreadsheet naming Democratic politicians and cable news anchors as targets. Prosecutors called him a domestic terrorist, but because no federal statute criminalizes domestic terrorism on its own, he was charged only with firearms and drug offenses. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in January 2020 to 160 months — roughly 13 years and four months — in federal prison. The Fourth Circuit affirmed that sentence in 2022, and the Supreme Court declined to take the case.
Who Hasson Was Before the Arrest
Hasson served in the Marine Corps from 1988 to 1993 and later spent two years in the Army National Guard before joining the Coast Guard, where he rose to lieutenant. At the time of his arrest he was 49, married with two children, and working as an acquisitions officer for the National Security Cutter Acquisition Program at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C. He held a Secret security clearance.
Court filings later described him as a self-identified white nationalist for more than 30 years who advocated what he called “focused violence” to establish a white homeland.
What Investigators Found
Hasson was arrested on February 15, 2019, after a multi-year investigation by the Coast Guard Investigative Service, the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office, and the ATF. User-activity monitoring on his government computer flagged him reading manifestos by mass killers, researching potential targets, and, in the government’s telling, conducting operational planning on official systems. The case has since been cited as a model of insider-threat detection.
Searches of Hasson’s basement apartment and workspace recovered:
- 15 firearms: seven rifles, two shotguns, four pistols, and two revolvers, including a Bergara hunting and match rifle with scope and bipod.
- One assembled and one disassembled silencer, neither registered nor bearing a serial number.
- Hundreds of rounds of ammunition, high-capacity magazines, body armor plates, plate carriers, tactical vests, smoke grenades, knives, and camping supplies.
- 426 tramadol pills split between his backpack, his Coast Guard desk, and his home, plus more than thirty bottles labeled as human growth hormone, five vials of testosterone, and the anabolic steroid mestanolone.
Court documents said Hasson had ordered at least 4,200 tramadol pills from internet distributors since 2016, paying by wiring money to individuals in Mexico. Over three years he had spent roughly $12,000 on tactical gear and components. A blood sample on the day of the arrest confirmed tramadol in his system.
The Manifesto and Target List
In a draft email dated June 2, 2017, found on his Coast Guard computer, Hasson wrote that he was “dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on the earth.” The document floated biological attacks on the food supply and a “bombing/sniper campaign,” and expressed hope of provoking a government overreaction that would tip into wider violence.
He studied Anders Breivik, Ted Kaczynski, and Eric Rudolph. He searched Breivik’s manifesto for guidance on using steroids in preparation for attacks and worked out a “possible steroid cycle” in the same spreadsheet that held his target list. His tramadol use appears to have followed Breivik’s writings on using narcotics to boost an attacker’s capability, though Hasson privately noted he needed to “come off” tramadol to “clear my head.”
The Excel target list named prominent Democratic politicians — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senators Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Tim Kaine, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Richard Blumenthal; Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Maxine Waters, Ilhan Omar, and Sheila Jackson Lee; and former Representative Beto O’Rourke. It also named cable news figures: MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, Chris Hayes, and Ari Melber, and CNN’s Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, and Van Jones. Former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta appeared as well.
His browser history included searches such as “best place in dc to see congress people,” “most liberal senators,” “where do most senators live in dc,” and “are supreme court justices protected.” Prosecutors said he had researched the whereabouts and security details of U.S. senators and Supreme Court justices.
Why He Wasn’t Charged With Terrorism
Prosecutors publicly described Hasson as a “domestic terrorist, bent on committing acts dangerous to human life,” yet no terrorism count appeared in the indictment. The reason is structural: no standalone federal criminal offense covers domestically motivated terrorism that lacks a connection to a designated foreign terrorist organization.
On February 27, 2019, a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland indicted Hasson on four counts:
- Unlawful possession of unregistered firearm silencers.
- Unlawful possession of firearm silencers lacking serial numbers.
- Possession of firearms by an unlawful user of a controlled substance, under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3).
- Possession of a controlled substance.
The Pretrial Detention Fight
The narrow charges made keeping Hasson locked up unusually difficult. At a February 21, 2019 detention hearing, Magistrate Judge Charles Day ordered him held but warned the government it had 14 days to bring more serious charges or he would revisit release. Prosecutors got the indictment, but the detention fight continued.
In April 2019, Judge Day ruled Hasson could be released to his in-laws in Virginia under 24-hour GPS monitoring and other strict conditions. Prosecutors appealed, arguing the arrest had “prevented a mass casualty event.” Defense attorney Elizabeth Oyer countered that the government was effectively trying to punish Hasson for “private thoughts” and that his target list resembled things “regrettably common” in the current political climate.
On May 13, 2019, U.S. District Judge George Hazel revoked the release order and kept Hasson in custody, acknowledging that “reasonable judges can disagree” on the question. Hasson has been detained ever since.
Guilty Plea and Sentencing
Hasson initially pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers moved to dismiss the silencer counts on Second Amendment grounds, to dismiss the § 922(g)(3) count as unconstitutionally vague, and to suppress the search-warrant evidence. After those motions were denied, he changed his plea in October 2019 and admitted all four counts.
At sentencing on January 31, 2020, in Greenbelt, Maryland, the government sought a terrorism enhancement under U.S. Sentencing Guideline § 3A1.4, which applies when an offense “involved, or was intended to promote, a federal crime of terrorism.” Prosecutors tied the weapons stockpile and silencers to 18 U.S.C. § 351, which criminalizes attempts to kill or kidnap members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, and certain executive officials. They pointed to the manifesto, the target list built on Breivik-derived criteria, the tactical gear, sniper training materials, and Hasson’s research into the movements and security of federal officials.
Judge Hazel applied the enhancement. It added 12 offense levels and pushed his criminal history to Category VI. Without it, the guidelines range would have been 41 to 51 months; with it, 151 to 188 months. The judge departed downward on the criminal history category to Category I and sentenced Hasson to 160 months, followed by four years of supervised release. U.S. Attorney Robert Hur said Hasson “intended to inflict violence on the basis of his racist and hateful beliefs.”
The Appeal and Supreme Court Petition
Hasson appealed to the Fourth Circuit on two grounds. He argued that § 922(g)(3), the ban on firearm possession by unlawful drug users, was unconstitutionally vague. He also argued that the terrorism enhancement was improperly applied because he had never been convicted of a terrorism offense, contending that the Sentencing Commission had overstepped its authority under the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.
A three-judge panel heard argument on March 12, 2021, and on February 22, 2022 issued a published opinion affirming both the conviction and the 160-month sentence. On the vagueness claim, the court held that because Hasson did not dispute that his own conduct fell “squarely within the confines of the statute,” he could not mount a facial challenge. On the enhancement, the panel confirmed that § 3A1.4 does not require a terrorism conviction, only that the defendant’s relevant conduct was “intended to promote” a federal crime of terrorism. Hasson’s rhetoric and weaponry “might not have justified the enhancement in isolation,” the court wrote, but taken together they showed he was in the “process of formulating a plan.”
Hasson petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court in July 2022, again pressing the vagueness challenge. The government’s September 2022 opposition argued he lacked standing to bring a facial challenge given his clearly proscribed conduct. The Court declined to hear the case.
Where the Case Stands
Hasson has been in federal custody continuously since February 15, 2019. Measured from that date, a 160-month term projects release in the early 2030s, before any good-time credit is applied. Four years of supervised release follow.