A former member of the anti-government Boogaloo Bois was sentenced Wednesday in Minneapolis to four years in prison for plotting to provide weapons to Hamas in the days and weeks after the protests over the police killing of George Floyd two years ago.
U.S. District Judge Michael Davis sentenced Benjamin Ryan Teeter, 24, of Hampstead, N.C., to one year more than the defense had requested but far less than the 20 years prosecutors had sought.
In March, Michael Robert Solomon, 32, of New Brighton was sentenced to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty in connection with the same plot.
Teeter and Solomon had hoped to raise money for the anti-government movement, but their plan unraveled because the people they thought were members of the Hamas terrorist group actually were government informants.
The prosecution had asked Davis to give Teeter the maximum punishment allowed under federal guidelines — 20 years.
In a court filing months before sentencing, prosecutors used Teeter's own words to buttress their position, citing his quote in the alternative media Unicorn Riot: "If the police start shooting ... we're going to shoot back."
Teeter tried for months "to forge an alliance between the Boogaloo Bois and Hamas," the prosecution argued. "Convinced that they were ideologically aligned, [Teeter] sought to capitalize on his knowledge of firearms, silencers and machine guns, and on what he believes was the terrorist organization's need for that weaponry."
Although Teeter was dealing with a government informant and not an actual Hamas member, "the threat to public safety represented by his conduct and radicalized beliefs is no less significant."
In arguing for a three-year prison term, defense attorney Ian Birrell said Teeter "was very young — not yet 21 years old — and was highly radicalized."
Since his arrest in September 2020, he said, Teeter "has had a great deal of time to reflect. ... Both his words and actions indicate that he has no desire to participate in this type of activity in the future."
Birrell said his client's "moral compass got badly twisted, and a misguided sense of idealism and empathy brought him down an immoral and illegal path."
Teeter was quoted in a court filing as saying a combination of the pandemic-related shutdowns and the protests over Floyd's death in Minneapolis made coming to the city "a big shiny object" that he couldn't resist.
"I got disproportionately drawn in because something was finally happening," he said. "I could at least be doing something. ... In the beginning, I was doing exactly what I came out to do — just to help protesters ... make the point that if they are going to arrest people for being out, we're going to be out and make it harder for them to be arrested."
According to court documents:
Teeter belonged to the "Boojahideen," a subgroup of the Boogaloo Bois. Around the time of the riots, he and Solomon "discussed committing acts of violence against police officers and other targets in furtherance of the Boojahideen's stated goal of overthrowing the government and replacing its police forces," a witness told the FBI.
The pair discussed destroying government monuments, raiding the headquarters of a white supremacist organization in North Carolina and targeting politicians and members of the media.
In recorded conversations, Teeter and Solomon told undercover government sources they wanted to become mercenaries for Hamas to generate cash for the Boogaloo movement and that they shared anti-U.S. government views.
They met several times with undercover FBI personnel and in July 2020 bought a drill press to make firearm suppressors. Teeter and Solomon delivered five suppressors to undercover sources by the end of that month and agreed to make more, which they believed "would be used against Israeli and United States military personnel overseas."
Ivan Harrison Hunter, 24, the self-proclaimed leader of the South Texas Boogaloo Bois, pleaded guilty in September to firing an AK-47-style rifle into the burning Third Precinct police headquarters in Minneapolis while people were inside during rioting after Floyd's death.
Hunter, who prosecutors said also looted the building and helped set it ablaze, was sentenced in April to 4 1⁄3 years in prison.
Michael Paul Dahlager, 29, of St. Cloud was sentenced in January to two years in prison for illegally possessing auto sears — a device that coverts a semiautomatic gun into a fully automatic weapon.
Dahlager told a government informant of his plan to attack the State Capitol on Jan. 17, 2021, the day that a group of President Donald Trump supporters planned to protest the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to court documents.
Star Tribune staff writer Andy Mannix contributed to this report.
