Minneapolis judge sentences 'Boogaloo' member to 4 years on terrorism charge
A federal judge in Minneapolis on Wednesday sentenced another member of a far-right extremist group to prison on terrorism charges.
Benjamin Ryan Teeter, 24, of Hampstead, N.C., got on the FBI's radar after he and Michael Robert Solomon, 32, of New Brighton, Minn., showed up with guns at protests in Minneapolis two years ago that followed the police murder of George Floyd.
Teeter and Solomon were part of the Boogaloo Bois, a loose-knit organization that hopes to foment civil war in the U.S.
The men each pleaded guilty to supporting a foreign terrorist organization after trying to sell weapons to a member of Hamas who turned out to be an FBI informant.
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U.S. District Judge Michael Davis sentenced Teeter to four years in prison. The sentence is a year more than he gave Solomon in March. But Davis said he'd consider reducing Teeter's sentence to three years if he follows through on his agreement to cooperate with prosecutors.
Noting that the 48-month term is far less than other terrorism defendants he sentenced in recent years, Davis told Teeter that he got "one heck of a break."
In April, Davis sentenced Ivan Harrison Hunter of Boerne, Tex., to 52 months for rioting after Hunter admitted firing 13 rounds from a semiautomatic rifle into the 3rd Precinct police station as the building burned.
A fourth Boogaloo Bois defendant not charged in connection with the Floyd protests received a two-year sentence in January after pleading guilty to trying to sell machine gun parts to an informant.
The FBI said Michael Paul Dahlager, 28, of St. Cloud, Minn., conducted surveillance of law enforcement ahead of a pro-Trump rally at the Minnesota Capitol after the 2020 election and had expressed a willingness to kill police.