WICHITA, Kan. ― “We’re already fucking domestic terrorists. They’re just looking for an excuse to come snatch you up.”
It was about a month before Donald Trump was elected president, and Patrick Stein was in a hilly field in western Kansas near a lake and an outhouse. Stein, a right-wing militia member who thought Trump was “the Man,” dubbed himself “Orkinman.” Muslims were “cockroaches,” he thought, who needed to be exterminated. The weapon dealer he was meeting in this remote field, Stein believed, would help him pick a poison.
“I’m sick of seeing these motherfuckers coming into this country,” Stein told the man, referring to Muslim refugees. “They’re here for one reason and one reason only.” Unless they did something soon, Stein said, the Muslim takeover would begin.
The weapon dealer was an undercover FBI agent. Days later, the feds would indeed snatch Stein up, charging him with a litany of federal offenses in connection with a bomb plot targeting Somali refugees residing in an apartment complex in Garden City.
Eighteen months later, Stein and his alleged co-conspirators Gavin Wright and Curtis Allen are on trial in Wichita in a case that touches on some of the hottest issues of the day: Islam, Facebook, guns, terrorism, the FBI and Donald Trump.
The trial, now in its third week, is expected to last for six. Wednesday saw testimony from the undercover FBI agent who posed as a weapon dealer. Wearing what the government called “light disguise,” he testified about his dealings with Stein as members of the public listened in from a separate courtroom. HuffPost was the sole media outlet covering his testimony.
“Brian,” as he was called in court, testified that he was brought into the case to serve as a “fresh set of eyes” who could help determine if the trio of anti-Muslim militiamen posed a real threat. FBI agents thought the fastest route to introduce Brian into the plot would be for Dan Day, the FBI informant in the case, to introduce Brian as a high-level illegal weapon manufacturer and deliverer who could supply the group with what it needed. Only Stein ended up meeting with Brian, and defense attorneys for Wright and Allen are pushing the notion that the two weren’t as committed to the plot as Stein.
Meeting Stein out in a remote field with an entourage of undercover agents also posing as weapon dealers, Brian testified, helped “bolster the legend” the FBI created while also mitigating the threat to the public and the agents.