Testimony Describes Failed Neo-Nazi 'Murder Plot' Against Journalist, Others
Investigator, in case against two alleged neo-Nazis accused of trying to create a paramilitary unit, reveals talk of 'pawns that needed to be taken off the board.'
“What we have here,” the federal prosecutor argued, “is a foiled murder plot.”
It was a plot where a neo-Nazi allegedly talked in cryptic terms with an undercover FBI employee about “pawns that needed to be taken off the board.”
One of the pawns that the man, then 20-years-old, wanted to remove from the game was an independent journalist who had become a source of frustration for him and his white-supremacist gang, the North Bama Brigade.
And the neo-Nazi was allegedly clear that he was not talking about just harassing the journalist and two other men he identified as the “pawns.”
“What good is harassing a pawn and not removing it?” the man told the FBI operative.
That testimony earlier this year from a Huntsville police detective, who serves on the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, helped convince U.S. Magistrate Judge Herman N. Johnson Jr. to keep suspect Aiden Daniel Cuevas and his accomplice, Andrew Cole Nary, locked up until their trial on federal firearms charges.
As I reported back in February, the two men are accused of attempting to buy illegal, military-grade weapons as part of an effort to create a paramilitary unit capable of taking out “high-value targets.”
Last week, Guardian reporter Sean Craig—in a story headlined “US neo-Nazi plotted to kill journalist who reported on him, testimony reveals”—broke the news about the disturbing allegations from a January preliminary hearing for Cuevas and Nary in the Northern District of Alabama.
Craig shared the transcript with Hate Comes to Main Street.
Out of concern for the safety of the journalist, the Guardian did not identify him, nor will I. It is someone whom I personally know and respect, and with whom I have occasionally collaborated.
The transcript shows investigator Chris Hluzek testified that the North Bama Brigade is a self-identified neo-Nazi, white supremacist group, which came out of another outfit known as the 2119 Crew. Aiden Daniel Cuevas had confided about “his plans for the North Bama Brigade, how he wanted to take over North Alabama, establish leaders in different communities,” Hluzek testified.
Andrew Cole Nary, the investigator said, had previously created his own group, Automata, that was an offshoot of the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division. “Their goal was to, at that time in North Carolina, create a white ethnostate within a smaller government within that area,” Hluzek explained.
Nary’s attorney, Jerry Barclay, argued that his client was not the one doing the talking about taking pawns off the board.
“I think, as we go along, we’ll see that there was some terribly unwise decisions and statements that shouldn’t have been made—and some huffing and puffing and trying to be a part of a crowd—but I don’t think he has or has had the actual intention to cause the type of harm that the government suggested,” he said.
According to the testimony, the North Bama Brigade is an offshoot of the Tennessee Active Club.
Followers of my work may remember the Tennessee Active Club—run by neo-Nazi Sean Kauffmann—was the group that injected itself into the Franklin, Tennessee, mayoral race in 2023 in support of candidate Gabrielle Hanson.
One of the neo-Nazis who showed up at a candidates forum (seen below in a mask) has been mentioned in court filings as being a part of the North Bama Brigade, although he was not charged with Cuevas and Nary.
Kauffmann, who is not implicated in this plot, is currently sitting in a jail in Perry County, Tennessee, awaiting trial on domestic violence charges. His bond was revoked last December after he shot a bird at my station’s camera in open court.
Like myself, the journalist mentioned in the testimony had reported on the activities of the Tennessee Active Club and had faced previous harassment.
Here is how the Guardian described concerns “over increasing efforts by far-right extremists to intimidate, and in some cases attack or endanger, members of the press who seek to cover them”:
“They view journalists as enemies of the people, as part of the other,” said Jon Lewis, a researcher at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “The years-long campaign by the right to demonize and delegitimize the media inevitably has real world consequences. Right wing extremists also feel increasingly emboldened seeing allies in the [US] administration openly echo their extremist rhetoric.”
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In March, members of a Montréal-area neo-Nazi active club who the Canadian journalist, Rachel Gilmore, identified, showed up at a music venue where her boyfriend was performing to confront her about her reporting.
In the US, notorious Tennessee neo-Nazi leader, Sean Kauffmann, has in recent years organized efforts to intimidate journalists at the Southern Poverty Law Center publication Hatewatch by encouraging fellow extremists to send them antisemitic and racist slurs, videos of race-motivated mass murders and images of lynchings of Black men, the outlet reported. The Tennessee Active Club, which he leads, also circulated the home addresses of multiple journalists.
Another far-right Telegram channel, which the SPLC reported was run by a member of the US white supremacist group Patriot Front, targeted at least nine journalists by releasing information including their home addresses, phone numbers and photographs of them, leading to stalking and harassment in some cases.
One of those journalists, NewsChannel 5 Nashville’s Phil Williams, reported that Kai Liam Nix, the man behind the channel, sent him threats demanding the network air a white supremacist video.
“Obviously, what these acts are trying to do is intimidate you out of doing your job,” said Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies political violence and social and political polarization in the US.
Check out the Guardian’s work:
A final note: Sean Craig and Wiley Cope are doing incredible work covering the threats of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. Here are just a few examples of their reporting that I highly recommend:
June 2025: ‘Wolves in sheep’s clothing’: how a neo-Nazi cell infiltrated a martial arts school in Tennessee
October 2025: Revealed: how a Russian fight club expanded into the US with the help of American neo-Nazis
February 2026: US federal contractor hired white supremacist leader for wildfire relief
April 2026: Members of neo-Nazi ‘active clubs’ join combat events at secretive Virginia compound