A Wisconsin man, known as James Morgan after legally changing his name from Karactus Blome, pleaded guilty yesterday to possessing chemical weapon precursors, the Department of Justice reported. According to a release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, the chemicals were capable of combining to create chlorine and chlorine gas and were not intended for any lawful purpose.
Upon executing a search warrant back on December 21, 2023, authorities found Morgan's stash of precursor chemicals in a storage unit, it was during his time studying chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater that Morgan had self-identified as a weapon designer uninterested in conventional weaponry, in a video Morgan exhibited these chemicals and brazenly claimed they were for the purpose of "making a lot of chlorine very quickly," messaging from 2022 revealed him describing his stockpile as "scary" because of the potential to quickly produce large volumes of chlorine gas, which could prove "effective if your enemy is not ready for it."
Morgan, whose sentencing is slated for August 1 of this year, discussed plans in 2023 messages about defeating the government should they attempt to confiscate his firearms, by generating a substantial quantity of chlorine gas capable of incapacitating approximately twenty government agents; as per reports, the FBI Laboratory confirmed that Morgan's chemical collection could indeed produce dangerously large amounts of chlorine capable of inflicting immediate serious health consequences or even death.
The joint investigation efforts of the FBI, Janesville Police Department, and Whitewater Police Department led to Morgan's current situation, where he ultimately faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, adding to this is a potential $250,000 fine, and a mandatory five years of supervised release after any duration of confinement; this case has been prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Scully in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Assistant U.S. Attorney Meredith Duchemin in the Western District, with Trial Attorney Justin Sher of the National Security Division's Counterterrorism Section lending support on both cases.
