A former Marine was sentenced to seven years in prison on Monday for manufacturing a short barrel rifle, a ruling tied to his participation in a neo-Nazi plot to attack energy facilities in and around Idaho, the Justice Department said in a news release.
Jordan Duncan, 29, and formerly assigned to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, was the final member of a five-man group sentenced in connection with the scheme. Three of those members sentenced to prison time — including Duncan — are former Marines.
The group emerged from a now-defunct neo-Nazi forum called “Iron March,” an online group where white supremacists gathered until it was shuttered in 2017. For the next three years, members of the group stole military gear, manufactured firearms and gathered information on nerve toxins and explosives as they plotted their targets, a dozen of which were discovered on a handwritten list during the investigation, according to court records.
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The group filmed themselves “training” near Boise, Idaho, while flashing the “Heil Hitler” sign under a Nazi flag and donning masks typically worn by members of Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist group also born from the remnants of the Iron March forum.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or NCIS, as well as the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigated what officials called a “domestic terrorist cell.”
“This NCIS-led investigation has been crucial in dismantling a domestic terrorist cell intent on targeting innocent people and destroying critical infrastructure,” NCIS Director Omar Lopez said in the statement released by the DOJ on Monday.
The other Marine veterans in the group were Liam Collins and Justin Wade Hermanson, both 25 and assigned as infantrymen during their time in the Corps, according to their service records. Collins — who was apparently booted from the Corps after three years as a lance corporal — attempted to recruit veterans into the neo-Nazi group, Military.com previously reported.
“Collins’ premature discharge is indicative of the fact that the character of his service was incongruent with Marine Corps‘ expectations and standards,” a spokesperson for the Corps said.
The pair were part of the same Marine Corps unit — 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment — out of Lejeune, and court records indicate that they began the plot while on active duty. The military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported that Duncan served in the Marine Corps between 2013 and 2018 and was also stationed at Lejeune.
“It demonstrates a lot of the difficulties that the DoD faces when it comes to weeding out a lot of these guys while they’re still in the service,” Luke Baumgartner, an Army veteran and research fellow with the George Washington University Program on Extremism, told Military.com in an interview Tuesday. “They started this planning process while they were all still on active duty or were still in the service.”
After a plea deal, Collins and Hermanson were sentenced in July to 10 years and more than one year in prison, respectively, according to a previous DOJ release. Paul James Kryscuk, 38, was also sentenced that month to six years and six months in prison for conspiracy to destroy an energy facility. Joseph Maurino, 25, a former National Guardsman, according to FOX 8, was sentenced to prison last week.
“This is an instance where military service acted as an aggravating factor in their sentencing. … They got pretty harsh sentences,” Baumgartner said. “I think that sends a message that, regardless of what some of these veterans involved in these spaces might think would happen to them if and when they get caught up in legal issues that surround these sorts of plots, your background as a veteran isn’t really going to save you.”
Baumgartner said that legal action against smaller extremist cells like this typically results in two outcomes. The group either collapses and it disappears “into the ether,” or more concerningly, he said, there could be other co-conspirators investigators did not have enough evidence to charge or convict who may be driven into hiding.
“Sometimes, legal intervention like this can drive them further underground,” according to Baumgartner.
In total, the group was sentenced to a collective 27 years in prison in connection to the plot. FBI Director Christopher Wray said in the DOJ news release that if the group had been able to carry out its plot, it would have “caused suffering to thousands of American citizens.”
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