FBI seizes its largest ever cache of homemade explosives from alleged extremist's farm

The Justice Department is fighting to keep an anti-government extremist in custody after the FBI allegedly seized the largest cache of "finished explosive devices" in its history from a farm outside of Norfolk, VA.

Brad Kenneth Spafford, 36, was arrested on Dec. 17 for allegedly possessing an unregistered short barrel rifle. The single-count charge led to a search of Spafford's 20-acre farm, where federal investigators said they found a mass quantity of homemade explosives.

"When investigators searched his 20-acre property, in Isle of Wight County, they found in a detached garage more than 150 explosive devices — mostly pipe bombs, some of them labeled 'lethal,'" The New York Times reported. "They found more pipe bombs in a bedroom inside Mr. Spafford’s house, loosely stuffed in a backpack that bore a patch shaped like a hand grenade and a logo reading '#NoLivesMatter'.

According to the Times, "No Lives Matter is a nihilistic, far-right ideology that largely exists on encrypted online messaging apps like Telegram."

The Times' report continued, "No Lives Matter is an offshoot of the broader 'accelerationist' movement, which seeks to accelerate radical social change through sabotage and violence. Some scholars of far-right extremism believe it takes its name from a song entitled 'No Lives Matter,' by the pro-Trump Canadian rapper Tom MacDonald."

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Federal prosecutors filed court papers describing Spafford's explosives as they tried to keep him behind bars. The Times reported, "According to the court papers, which were reported earlier by the website Court Watch, the investigation into Mr. Spafford began last year, after a neighbor reached out to the authorities. Mr. Spafford had lost three fingers on his right hand while working with a homemade explosive device, the neighbor said, and he was stockpiling weapons and homemade ammunition.

"The neighbor reported that Mr. Spafford had told him that he and his friends were 'preparing for something' that he 'would not be able to do alone.'"

Local paper The Smithfield Times reported that during Monday's detention hearing, Spafford allegedly desired to “bring back political assassination” and used a photograph of President Joe Biden for target practice at a shooting range.

A federal judge agreed to release Spafford on $25,000 bond into the custody of his mother, "conditioned on his wearing an electronic monitoring device and surrendering his passport." The judge agreed to stay his order pending the government’s appeal.

Read the full story in The New York Times.