White supremacist sentenced to 2 years in bomb plot case

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A white supremacist who told an undercover FBI agent about his plans to firebomb a synagogue or attack a Las Vegas bar catering to LGBTQ customers was sentenced Friday to two years in prison.

Conor Climo, 24, apologized before U.S. District Judge James Mahan sentenced him to prison followed by six months of home confinement with electronic monitoring. Prosecutors recommended a 30-month prison sentence.

“I was truly wrong for all of this," Climo said. “I even have come to really regret everything, everything that I was involved with.”

The judge gave Climo credit for the jail time he already has served since his August 2019 arrest and agreed to recommend that he serves his prison time in Louisiana, near grandparents whom he plans to live with after his release.

“I'm going to take you at your word,” Mahan told Climo. “I think you have seen the error of your ways and you want to reform.”

Defense attorney Paul Riddle said his client is grateful that FBI agents arrested him when they did because he knows that he was on a “very dark path."

“But he's not on that path anymore, and he's the not same person that was arrested,” Riddle said.

The FBI said it began investigating Climo in April 2019 after learning of his encrypted internet chats with members of Feuerkrieg Division, an international offshoot of a U.S.-based neo-Nazi group called Atomwaffen Division. Climo told FBI agents that he joined Feuerkrieg Division but left because he “became bored with the group and their inaction,” according to a court filing.

Climo, in pleading guilty to a firearm charge, acknowledged that he discussed attacking a synagogue or other targets during his online communications with an undercover FBI agent and an informant. Agents who searched Climo's...