Paid FBI informant, con man and traitor: Hal Turner

CHICAGO — A blogger who once kept tabs on extremist groups as a paid informant for the FBI was ordered held without bail today while awaiting trial on charges that he threatened the lives of three federal judges.

Hal Turner, 47, of North Bergen, N.J., represents too great a danger to the community to be freed from custody, U.S. Magistrate Judge Martin C. Ashman said.

“I don’t know of any combination of conditions that could alleviate the danger to the community,” Ashman said.

Turner wrote on his blog June 2 that three federal appeals judges “deserve to be killed” for their decision in a case involving ordinances banning handguns in Chicago and suburban Oak Park.

The three-judge panel declined to declare the ordinances unconstitutional, saying it was a decision that would have to be made by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Turner called the judges “scum” and said “their blood will replenish the tree of liberty.”

His attorneys say he never advocated the judges’ murder but merely gave his opinion, which was constitutionally protected free speech.

At the hearing, prosecutors acknowledged that for several years Turner was a paid FBI informant, saying in a letter to his lawyers he had supplied information on “right-wing white nationalist and white supremacist groups.”

Turner turned a .22-caliber silencer kit sent to him over to the FBI in July 2007, saying it was “the perfect item for an assassin.”

He also e-mailed agents in November 2007 with word that Ku Klux Klan members were planning an arson at Middle Tennessee State University because a student there had been “willfully antagonizing folks in the pro-white movement.”

Prosecutors said the relationship between Turner and the FBI had ended some time ago. But as recently as last November, Turner told federal marshals about a man who spoke of wanting to “lob mortars” into the rally held on election night in Chicago’s downtown Grant Park that was celebrating President Barack Obama’s election.

Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan told Ashman, however, that agents had located the man who turned out to be “a drunk in a bar.” He said nothing came of the matter.

In denying bond, Ashman focused on an incident at a jail in Newark, N.J., after Turner was arrested on charges of threatening the judges.

Ashman said Turner promised prosecutors he would stay off the Internet. While behind bars, however, he made a nine-minute phone call in which he gave the names of three FBI agents who had arrested him. The call was then broadcast over Internet radio.

The government tries to minimize publicity about the names of agents investigating cases involving potentially violent criminals.

“The information (about agents) he gave out might threaten somebody’s safety — the information that he broadcast could imperil somebody,” Ashman said.

Turner also is accused of threatening two Connecticut lawmakers after urging his blog readers to “take up arms” against them. His arraignment has been postponed to Aug. 18. Turner’s lawyer has said that case also is about freedom of speech.