A 24-year-old ex-Marine was sentenced to nine years in prison for firebombing a Planned Parenthood clinic in Orange County, CA in 2022, just one act in a laundry list of planned attacks by the defendant and his neo-Nazi associates.
Chance Brannon of San Juan Capistrano, California, was an active-duty member of the U.S. Marine Corps stationed at Camp Pendleton when he and another neo-Nazi firebombed the Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa. Brannon has been in federal custody since his arrest in June 2023.
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Brannon pleaded guilty in November to one count of conspiracy, one count of malicious destruction of property by fire and explosives, one count of possession of an unregistered destructive device, and one count of intentionally damaging a reproductive health services facility in violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.
On Monday, Brannon was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney to nine years in prison and ordered to pay $1,000 in restitution.
“Brannon’s deep-rooted hatred and extremist views inspired him to target individuals or groups who did not conform to his neo-Nazi worldview and, in one case, led him to carry out a violent attack which could have killed innocent people,” said Acting Assistant Director in Charge Mehtab Syed of the FBI Los Angeles Field Office following the sentencing.
For more than a year after the clinic firebombing, Brannon and his associates planned subsequent and ever more elaborate attacks in pursuit of their goal of “starting a race war”, according to the Justice Department.
In the months leading up to their arrests, Brannon and another defendant in the case, 22-year-old Tibet Ergul of Irvine, CA, also discussed and researched how to attack Dodger Stadium on Pride Night, including by using a remote-detonated device. As part of those conversations, Brannon shared a “WW2 sabotage manual” with Ergul, and discussed doing “dry runs” to “case” the stadium. The men were arrested two days before the event, according to court documents.
Brannon and Ergul also discussed starting a race war by attacking and disabling an electrical substation in Orange County. Brannon wore a thumb drive disguised as a Marine Corps necklace that contained an operation plan and a gear list for the planned attack. Items that Brannon assembled included a rifle with “Total [N-word] Death” written in Cyrillic and a recording of the 2019 mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, where a white supremacist murdered 51 people and injured 40 others.
According to the government’s sentencing memorandum, Brannon used racial slurs for various minority groups, “made hateful comments towards all non-white individuals,” and discussed “cleans[ing]” the United States of particular ethnic groups.
At the time of his arrest, Brannon possessed antisemitic writings, drawings, and literature in his bedroom and, according to witness testimony, had told fellow Marines, “All Jews deserve to die.”
In the weeks leading up to his arrest, Brannon texted a friend, “Can we just be done with elections and have the race war already” and complained that “[p]eople will never do anything if everyone keeps waiting for [a race war] to start on its own.”
