Tennessee man who plotted New York mosque attack won’t face terrorism charges
Robert Doggart was arrested in April 2015 after authorities discovered that he had been trying to recruit people to burn down a mosque in upstate New York .
Doggart, 65, who ran for Congress as an Independent in 2014, allegedly went on right-wing online forums and openly talked about using AR-15 assault rifles to attack Muslims because he believed the small upstate community was an extremist training camp, records show. Authorities intercepted Doggart’s alleged plot before anyone was hurt.
He’s facing one count of solicitation to commit arson, one count of solicitation to commit a civil rights violation and two counts of threat in interstate commerce. But he’s not facing any terrorism charges and has been on house arrest since his initial capture.
According to the Patriot Act from 2001, prosecutors can only charge a defendant with domestic terrorism if he or she had the intension to “intimidate” or “coerce” a civilian population, or influence the “policy of a government” to affect the conduct of government by “mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.”
Contrastingly, Amatul-Wadud claimed, the requirements are less stringent for pursuing terrorism charges if the alleged act has a foreign element to it, for example ties to international terror networks such as ISIS or al-Qaeda.