A Coast Guard lieutenant stockpiled weapons and ammunition at his Maryland home in a plot to assassinate prominent Democratic lawmakers and members of the media as part of a vast white supremacist attack, federal prosecutors said.

Lt. Christopher Paul Hasson, who was assigned to Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, DC, and previously served as a Marine and in the Army National Guard, was arrested Friday on suspicion of drug and firearms charges. But this week, prosecutors revealed in a court filing that the 49-year-old was planning a series of violent, racist crimes that went far beyond the charges he faced.



“The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country,” prosecutors said in a motion filed Tuesday. “He must be detained pending trial.”

On Thursday, a federal judge ordered Hasson to be held for 14 days while prosecutors consider whether to add more charges in what appeared to be a domestic terror plot, according to court records.

Hasson currently faces no terrorism-related charges.

During the detention hearing Thursday, Hasson's public defender said his client had no past criminal record and argued that the charges against him were a "histrionic mischaracterization," according to the Washington Post.

The allegations were first reported by the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, and prosecutors said that Hasson was a longtime white supremacist. In recent years, he stockpiled weapons and ammunition, created a hit list, and drafted an email to a neo-Nazi leader about his desire to create a white homeland, prosecutors said. It wasn’t immediately clear if Hasson sent the email or tried to enlist other white supremacists in his plans.