A Las Vegas man pled guilty on Feb. 10 to possessing bomb-making components in order to bomb a synagogue, attack the Las Vegas Anti-Defamation League (ADL) headquarters and conduct a shooting at an LGTBQ bar, federal authorities said.
Conor Climo, 24, pled guilty to charges of possessing materials to make an explosive device and to the charge of possessing an unregistered firearm. He also admitted to being a member of the Feuerkrieg Division, an international neo-Nazi group that calls for violence against its perceived enemies and is an offshoot of the Atomwaffen Division. According to the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism (COE), Atomwaffen “has been implicated in five murders nationwide.”
Additionally, Climo admitted to being in contact with an FBI informant on an encrypted online chat in which he communicated his plans with the informant, according to the Associated Press. He was initially arrested in August.
Climo is scheduled to be sentenced on May 14; he could face up to 10 years in prison. He will also undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
According to the COE, Climo reportedly told the informant that he wanted to utilize “an eight-man sniper platoon for a shooting attack targeting Jews” as well as “a Molotov cocktail to set fire to a synagogue.” Additionally, Climo had July 2018 chats on Discord, an internet chat platform for video gamers, that read, “F— The K— Laws” and “St. Roof did nothing wrong.” “St. Roof” is an apparent reference to Dylann Roof, who was sentenced to death in 2017 in the shooting deaths of nine African Americans at a prayer service in Charleston, S.C., in 2015.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted, “Our team at @ADL’s Center on Extremism warned law enforcement about the suspected neo-Nazi’s online activity & provided them background on the neo-Nazi group he allegedly belonged to.”
Our team at @ADL’s Center on Extremism warned law enforcement about the suspected neo-Nazi’s online activity & provided them background on the neo-Nazi group he allegedly belonged to. More here: https://t.co/TeuzSNIvOV https://t.co/WllH7tPnlo
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) February 11, 2020