An 18-year-old who wanted to assassinate President Trump and then flee the country has pleaded guilty to murdering his parents.
Nikita Casap, 18, pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree intentional homicide in Waukesha County Circuit Court in connection with the deaths of his stepfather, Donald Mayer, and his mother, Tatiana Casap, last year. In exchange, prosecutors dropped seven other charges, including two counts of hiding a corpse and theft.
Each homicide count carries a mandatory life prison sentence. Judge Ralph Ramirez could choose to make Casap eligible for parole after he serves 20 years on each count when he is sentenced on March 5.
Casap was scheduled for trial in March but reached the plea deal with prosecutors last week. The murder of his parents was meant to be just the first step in a much bigger plan to kill President Trump and take down the US government.
Federal authorities have accused Casap of planning his parents’ murders, buying a drone and explosives and sharing his plans with others, including a Russian speaker. They said in a federal search warrant that he wrote a manifesto calling for Trump’s assassination and was in touch with others about his plan to kill Trump and overthrow the U.S. government.
“The killing of his parents appeared to be an effort to obtain the financial means and autonomy necessary to carrying out his plan,” that warrant said.
According to a story published last year ProPublica, Casap was part of an online group of extremists called Terrorgram.
The Terrorgram community, which has been linked to around three dozen criminal cases around the globe, including at least three mass shootings, was profiled last month in stories and a documentary produced by ProPublica and FRONTLINE.
The court documents allege that Nikita Casap, a 17-year-old from Waukesha, Wisconsin, wrote a three-page manifesto calling for the assassination of Trump in order to “foment a political revolution in the United States and ‘save the white race’ from ‘Jewish controlled politicians.’”...
Last fall, federal prosecutors accused two Americans of acting as leaders of the Terrorgram Collective and charged them with soliciting the murder of federal officials and a host of other terrorism-related offenses. The U.S. State Department has officially designated the Terrorgram Collective as a terrorist organization, as have officials in the United Kingdom and Australia. The two Americans have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
“Do absolutely anything you can that will lead to the collapse of America or any country you live in,” Casap allegedly wrote in his manifesto, according to an FBI affidavit. “This is the only way we can save the White race.”
An FBI investigation connected Casap to a Satanist group.
As part of the homicide investigation, Casap's cellphone and other electronic devices were seized and searched. According to a search warrant, investigators uncovered material on Casap's cellphone related to "The Order of Nine Angles." The group is described in FBI documents as a "satanic cult" with "strong anti-Judiac, anti-Christian, and anti-Western ideologies" that claims to "incite chaos and violence."
I'm not familiar with this group but they've apparently been around for decades. They have a pretty detailed belief system about the future of human society.
The ONA promotes the idea that human history can be divided into a series of aeons, each of which contains a corresponding human civilization. Adherents believe that the current aeonic civilization is that of the Western world, but that the evolution of this society is threatened by the "Magian/Nazarene" influence of the Judeo-Christian religion, which the Order seeks to combat in order to establish a militaristic new social order, which it calls the "Imperium". According to Order teachings, this is necessary in order for a galactic civilization to form, in which "Aryan" society will colonise the Milky Way. It advocates a spiritual path in which practitioners are required to break societal taboos by isolating themselves from society, committing crimes, embracing political extremism and violence, and carrying out acts of human sacrifice.
There's a lot more at the link if you're interested. The total number of adherents worldwide is estimated to be in the low thousands. It seems like quite a strange group but apparently their belief in accelerationism is what would have prompted Casap to want to kill President Trump. Trump's death would create a collapse which, in the view of these groups, is a step toward the next form of civilization.
There are all kinds of crazies out there and Trump seems to draw them out. I hope the Secret Service is on top of their job for the next three years.
