An army reservist who has been charged for taking part in the January 6 Capitol riots is a white supremacist, and a racist who did not hide his hatred of Jews, former co-workers told investigators, according to Slate.
A supervisor even said he once had to discipline the reservist for sporting a “Hitler mustache,” while one of his former colleagues recalled that he once said, “Hitler should have finished the job.”
Timothy Hale-Cusanelli of Colts Neck, New Jersey, who was a member of the US Army Reserves who works as a Navy contractor with a "secret" security clearance and access to weapons, was arrested on January 15. Hale-Cusanelli was accused of storming the Capitol, Slate reported. He was described by prosecutors as "an avowed white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer" who posted online videos espousing extreme political opinions.
A new court filing against him included results from an extensive Naval Criminal Investigative Service probe that revealed troubling details about his views that were well known to his co-workers, according to Politico.
The report revealed that investigators who interviewed 44 of Hale-Cusanelli’s colleagues found that 34 of them agreed he held “extremist or radical views pertaining to the Jewish people, minorities and women,” with one of them even adding that he talked every day about how much he hated Jews.
Prosecutors said that Hale-Cusanelli should remain behind bars because he has “harbored a fantasy of participating in another civil war,” which “makes him a danger to the community,” as his lawyers tried to have him released on bond.
Assistant US Attorney James Nelson added that Hale-Cusanelli might be even more dangerous now, as he has been discharged from the Army Reserves and no longer has a job, and he will be looking for “the adrenaline, the rush, the purpose” that he found from “squaring off against Capitol Police officers and storming the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.”