A member of the anti-government Boogaloo Bois pleaded guilty Wednesday to attempting to provide weapons to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, in the months following protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Benjamin Ryan Teeter, 22, could face up to 20 years in prison for the federal felony.
Appearing via video and wearing orange jail garb, Teeter told the judge and prosecutors he came to Minneapolis from North Carolina after Floyd’s death. He and Michael Robert Solomon, 30, another Boogaloo Bois member who’s also charged with the same crimes, met several times with two men they believed represented Hamas, but were really working covertly for the federal government. They negotiated selling gun suppressors and a “drop in auto sear” — a device that converts semi-automatic weapons into illegal machine guns.
Teeter acknowledged in court he believed the suppressors would be used by the militant wing of Hamas. “I mean, why would someone buy suppressors if they weren’t going to deliver them to a militant wing?” he said.
Teeter said they hoped Hamas would help “to exit the country and open a training facility” for Boogaloo Bois, a loose-knit group bent on starting the next American civil war. He and Solomon also planned to bomb a courthouse in northern Minnesota, and then changed their target to an unspecified courthouse in the Twin Cities, he said.
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