A law enforcement search of Spafford’s farm in Isle of Wight County turned up 150 homemade pipe bombs, “assessed as the largest seizure by number of finished explosive devices in FBI history”, federal prosecutors said in a court filing.
Most of the bombs were found in a garage detached from the main property, some bearing handwritten markings that read “lethal”, prosecutors said.
Agents said in court documents that they also found a vest with explosives; a jar filled with an explosive compound next to some food in a freezer inside the garage; various bombmaking tools and materials; and an unsecured backpack with explosives in a bedroom, labelled “#nolivesmatter”, an apparent reference to an extremist ideology that promotes anarchist violence and mass killings.
Prosecutors said Spafford lives with his wife and two children, and that his wife thought the firearms were registered and was not aware of the explosives.
Authorities detonated most of the explosive devices at the scene and tested a subset, according to a court filing from prosecutors.
An FBI affidavit said the informant “reported that Spafford and his friends are preparing for something that Spafford would not be able to do alone” and that he was making “approximately 50 rounds of ammunition per day”.
He allegedly discussed putting a 360-degree turret atop his property, as well as conspiracy theories that missing children in the news had been taken by federal agents to be trained as school shooters.
“Several weeks after the assassination attempt of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, the defendant stated that he hoped the shooter doesn’t miss ‘Kamala’,” according to a court filing from prosecutors, referring to Vice-President Kamala Harris, then the Democratic nominee for president.
A lawyer for Spafford, who faces a prison sentence of up to 10 years if convicted of the unregistered firearm charge, declined to comment today.
Spafford boasted to the confidential source that his short-barrel rifle was not registered with federal officials, as required by law, according to prosecutors.
Defence lawyers noted in a court filing that prosecutors are not alleging that Spafford “ever threatened to use that gun in the commission of any crime”.
A federal magistrate judge in Norfolk ruled that Spafford could be detained pending trial at his mother’s home with electronic monitoring. Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia are appealing the ruling to a federal district judge. Spafford will remain in jail at least until that process concludes.
“There was no evidence introduced that Mr Spafford is a danger to the community and in fact, the evidence showed he had never used any explosive device, never threatened to use one, and never threatened any individual or group,” lawyers Lawrence Woodward and Jeffrey Swartz said.
