Man accused of stockpiling 150 homemade bombs must stay in jail until trial, judge rules

NORFOLK, Va. — A Virginia man accused of stockpiling the largest number of finished explosives in FBI history and using President Joe Biden’s photo for target practice must stay in jail until trial, a federal judge ruled, writing that he has “shown the capacity for extreme danger.” Brad Spafford, 36, is being held on a federal firearms charge for allegedly owning an unregistered short-barrel rifle. Prosecutors say he faces more potential charges for the explosives, including devices found in a backpack labeled “#nolivesmatter.” Spafford, a father of two young daughters, also stored a highly unstable explosive material in a garage freezer next to “Hot Pockets and frozen corn on the cob,” according to court documents. His attorneys also questioned whether the explosive devices found on Spafford’s property were usable because “professionally trained explosive technicians had to rig the devices to explode them.” “There is not a shred of evidence in the record that Mr. Spafford ever threatened anyone and the contention that someone might be in danger because of their political views and comments is nonsensical,” his defense lawyers wrote in a recent filing. In response, prosecutors acknowledged that Spafford “is not known to have engaged in any apparent violence.” But they argued that Spafford “has certainly expressed interest in the same, through his manufacture of pipe bombs marked ‘lethal,’ his possession of riot gear and a vest loaded with pipe bombs, his support for political assassinations and use of the pictures of the President for target practice, and his belief that ‘no lives matter.’ In Tuesday’s ruling, Allen wrote that the degree of danger that Spafford posed to his own family and community was “extreme” and noted “the sheer scale of the enterprise.” “The Court has not found a comparable case in terms of scale,” she wrote, “but even cases involving smaller numbers of destructive devices and other factors that were positive for the defendant have resulted in detention.”