A convicted felon linked to a US neo-Nazi hate group was paid over $100,000 by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) over the course of 18 years in order to provide information about his fellow group-members, a recent court document has revealed.
The informant, Joshua Caleb Sutter of Columbia, South Carolina, was a member of a neo-Nazi terrorist network called The Atomwaffen Division, listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and as a terrorist group by multiple governments.
Members of the Atomwaffen Division have been convicted of a number of murders, planned terrorist attacks and other criminal actions, including the alleged killing of a gay Jewish college student in January 2018.
Remarkable filing in the case of high-level Atomwaffen member Kaleb Cole outs Joshua Caleb Sutter, the publisher of Martinet Press (Iron Gates, Liber 333, Bluebird), AWD member & a key figure in the O9A Tempel ov Blood, as an FBI informant. Since '03 https://t.co/WDZNx5Eeen
— Ali Winston (@awinston) August 21, 2021
Sutter married the owner of a publishing house self-described as a "decidedly darker spiritual press" that printed neo-Nazi propaganda and eventually began to operate the company himself. He also worked as an employee at a store for racist memorabilia.
But Sutter has also secretly worked as an FBI informant since 2003 and accrued a nice salary, according to investigative journalist Ali Winston.
Winston's claim was based on information that she located in a court document in the case of a different Atomwaffen member and resident of Texas named Kaleb Cole that was filed two weeks ago. Cole was the subject of an FBI investigation under suspicion of designing racist and antisemitic posters and sending them as warnings to journalists whom they disliked. Some of the journalists were singled out as being Jewish and black.
The document was a motion to suppress evidence filed by Cole's lawyer. In the document, the lawyer argues that his client's house was searched illegally since the incriminating information against him was provided solely by Sutter and that the FBI affidavit did not mention that Sutter was being paid for his work, as required by the law.
Sutter was arrested and convicted in 2003 on charges of possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number and an unregistered silencer. He was drafted by the FBI to serve as an informant in exchange for cash and consideration regarding his sentence.
"Since 2003, he [the informant] has been paid over $140,000 for this work. More importantly, the CI [confidential informant] has been paid $78,133.20 plus an expense advance of $4,378.60 since February 7, 2018, which almost entirely coincides with his work on the investigation into Mr. Cole and Atomwaffen," the document reads.
"The CI is a convicted felon and currently owns and operates a publishing company that distributes white supremacist writings. The CI began his long career as a professional informant in exchange for consideration regarding his sentence on a federal conviction for possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number and an unregistered silencer. He has continued this work for pay."
Although Sutter is not mentioned by name, the only person associated with Cole and Atomwaffen who matches the description is Sutter, according to Winston.
JOSHUA CALEB Sutter was known in the past in the neo-Nazi underworld as Wulfran Hall, the High Counsel of Aryan Nations. The alias was removed from the group's online platforms in 2005 when an Aryan Nation pastor accused him of being an informant.
Sutter works at a memorabilia store in South Carolina owned by his father, David Sutter, himself a prominent member of a white supremacist and neo-secessionist hate group named The League of the South. The store flies a giant Confederate flag and sells Confederate army replica swords and pro-slavery revisionist history tomes, among other racist artifacts. The publishing house he operated, Martinet Press, printed texts with influences from Nazi esotericism and the occult.
"At Martinet Press, we concern ourselves with publishing texts that reflect the darkness that is endemic to real antinomian spirituality. In this we are unapologetic, and remain committed to making available texts that instruct, rather than entertain," the publishing house's website says.
In its Twitter feed, Martinet Press defined itself using hashtags such as Satanism, Satan and Islam.
One of the publisher's relatively known books is "The Devil's Quran," which offers "a path for those who are willing to enter Hell and claim the Devil as their lord," according to its online blurb.