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Donald Trump speaks at a 2016 campaign rally.
Photo: Andrew Renneisen / Getty Images
In October 2016, just four weeks before Donald Trump's presidential victory, three Kansas men were indicted for a heinous plot to kill Somali immigrants at home.
According to a criminal complaint, Curtis Allen, Gavin Wright and Patrick Stein called themselves "the Crusaders". In early 2016, their group was infiltrated by an FBI informant. Over the next eight months, they developed a plan to "wake up people" by creating a "bloodbath" that killed the people they referred to as "cockroaches".
Two years after their arrest and six months after their conviction, both men are on the verge of being sentenced. And on Tuesday, one of their lawyers asked the court to take into account the hateful rhetoric of the then candidate as he decided how long Allen, Wright and Stein should be in jail.
"The court can not ignore the circumstances of one of the most rhetorical, violent, terrible, hateful and controversial presidential elections in modern history, driven in large part by the rhetorical bull of China, who is now our president Stein wrote in a pain memo.
The man was a "full and long-time" supporter of Trump, the lawyers said. They argued that Trump's surprise victory in November 2016 would have upset the plot that men had spent months brewing. Fox 4 Kansas City produces:
Trump's victory "changed everything" because men would only have the urgency to take action and the feeling of a lost battle would be eliminated, they said. The conspiracies – including President Barack Obama would not give up power – would be refuted. He said the attack would probably never have occurred in the world that would have existed after Trump's election.
Prosecutors, who claim that the planned attack had "a deep and lasting impact on the victims' sense of security," are demanding a life sentence. They want to prevent potential bombers from harming anyone and deter those who might be considering similar crimes.
But Wright's lawyers argued that a life sentence would have no deterrent effect as long as Trump continued to sow hatred of the White House. They cited Trump's tweets that fuel racial division, including a recent claim that "unknowns from the Middle East" are heading to the United States with the Central American migrant caravan.
Wright's lawyer wrote: "As long as the executive condemns Islam, recommends and encourages violence against so-called enemies, the punishment inflicted by the judiciary generally does not deter people from to engage in such conduct as they think to protect their against countries identified by their own commander-in-chief. "
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