Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. announced today that 23-year-old Christopher Brown has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for possessing a firearm in connection with a failed terror plot against the Jewish community in New York. According to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, Brown, whose scheme was thwarted the previous year, pled guilty on September 18 to one count of Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Second Degree as a Crime of Terrorism.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office was informed by D.A. Bragg of the verdict’s significance: “Today Christopher Brown was sentenced to a significant prison term for arming himself with an illegal firearm as part of his plan to commit an act of terror targeting Manhattan’s Jewish community.” Additionally, he underlined the coordinated use of “every tool possible in coordination with our law enforcement partners to keep them safe.” The case against Matthew Mahrer, Brown’s co-defendant, is still pending and has not yet been resolved.
According to court documents, Brown’s unsettling social media behavior demonstrated his support for accelerationism, a more extreme kind of extremism driven by racial and ethnic hatred, and Nazi philosophy. Brown’s discussions about wanting Nazi tattoos and his sympathy for Brenton Tarrant, who was responsible for the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacres, were referenced in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office release.
In accordance with his guilty plea, Brown used the handle @VrilGod to post many threatening messages on Twitter between November 12, 2022, and November 18, 2022. He posted frightening things like “This time I’m really gonna do it” and “God wants me to shoot up a synagogue and die.” According to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, Brown had paid Mahrer $650 to procure a loaded weapon in Pennsylvania in advance of the attack. After that, on November 18, 2022, Brown was taken into custody at Penn Station after police discovered a ski mask, a dagger, and a Swastika armband in his hands.
This case, which involved cooperation with the NYPD’s Intelligence Bureau and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, was prosecuted by Assistant D.A.s Edward Burns and Bonnie Seok, under the direction of Assistant D.A. David Stuart. In the statement, the district attorney expresses gratitude to a number of law enforcement and analytical personnel who played a crucial role in the investigation and eventual averting the possible attack.
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