A federal grand jury in New York City has handed down an indictment charging an alleged neo-Nazi leader with plotting a deadly attack on Jews and racial minorities.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced that a 21-year-old Georgian national named Michail Chkhikvishvili had allegedly tried to recruit people to commit hate crimes and a mass casualty attack in Brooklyn. Authorities say he was known as “Commander Butcher” and led a white supremacist group called the Maniac Murder Cult. He was arrested in Moldova on July 6, officials said.
According to a news release from the Justice Department:
Beginning at least as early as July 2022, Chkhikvishvili repeatedly encouraged others, primarily via encrypted mobile messaging platforms, to commit violent hate crimes and other acts of violence on behalf of MKY [the white supremacist group]. This included conspiring to solicit violent acts with a leader of a separate violent extremist neo-Nazi group and soliciting acts of mass violence in New York from an individual who claimed to be a prospective MKY recruit, but who, unbeknownst to Chkhikvishvili, was actually an undercover FBI employee (the UC).
Authorities allege that Chkhikvishvili gave the undercover agent tips about how to carry out an attack:
In a September 2023 conversation, the UC messaged Chkhikvishvili whether there was an application process to join MKY. The defendant responded, “Well yes we ask people for brutal beating, arson/explosion or murder vids on camera.” He further stated that “[p]oisoning and arson are best options for murder,” and suggested also considering a larger “mass murder” within the United States. Chkhikvishvili advised the UC that the victims of these acts should be “low race targets.”
One of the schemes Chkhikvishvili is accused of plotting involved having someone dress up as Santa Claus and give out poison-laced candy to racial minorities and children at Jewish schools in Brooklyn. (Chkhikvishvili had no defense lawyer listed in online court records, NBC News reported.)
By my count, this is the second federal indictment in a little over a month involving allegations of a foiled mass murder plot fueled by racist hate. In June, the Justice Department accused an Arizona man of plotting to spark a race war with a mass shooting at a rap concert in Atlanta.
Combined with a resurgence of racist hate speech on X and other social media platforms — along with neo-Nazis comfortably marching through city streets, as we’ve seen in Nashville recently — these indictments point toward a spike in unabashed racism. And they underscore a fact highlighted by officials from both Donald Trump’s administration and Joe Biden’s: White supremacists remain a top domestic threat to Americans.