A U.S. soldier is facing up to 40 years in prison for his alleged role in a plot to kill service members abroad, according to a report.
Per the Associated Press, Cole Bridges, who also goes by Cole Gonzales, plead guilty to providing material support to terrorists and trying to murder U.S. military service members at his arraignment in Manhattan federal court Wednesday.
Bridges, who hails from Stow, Ohio, has been in confinement since his apprehension in January 2021.
He joined the Army in September 2019 as a cavalry scout and was a Private in the Third Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia at the time he was taken into custody.
Today, U.S. Army Private First Class Cole Bridges pled guilty to terrorism charges for attempting to assist ISIS to conduct deadly ambush on U.S. troops.
Read the press release: https://t.co/1mFo0aQi2e pic.twitter.com/iETmn1OyOh
— U.S. Army Counterintelligence Command (ACIC) (@Real_ArmyCI) June 14, 2023
Court documents state that Bridges was 19 when he began consuming jihadist propaganda online and researching ISIS, as well as expressing his support for them in online social media posts.
In October 2020 Bridges began communicating online with an FBI informant posing as an ISIS supporter in contact with Islamic State fighters in the Middle East.
Bridges’ communication with the FBI informant posing as an ISIS supporter came before the Biden Afghan withdrawal disaster, when American troops were still conducting operations in the country.
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As Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned in 2021, ISIS was still a significant threat to the U.S. military in the region at the time.
At the plea hearing, Bridges confirmed that he did try to provide material support to ISIS and that he knows what he did was wrong.
“The support I provided included tactical advice, hand-drawn diagrams of potential troop maneuvers, pages from the Army Field Manual regarding troop movements and combat tactics, and a propaganda video,” he told Judge Lewis J. Liman.
“In providing such training and advice, I also knowingly attempted to assist the efforts of ISIS to repel and kill American soldiers engaged in official duties in the Middle East. I knew at that time that ISIS was a terrorist organization and had engaged in terrorist activity. I also knew that my conduct was wrong,” he said.
Bridges express frustration with the U.S. military during his online chats with the informant, court documents show.
Bridges’ attorney, Sabrina Shroff, declined to make a statement after the court hearings concluded.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said, “As he admitted in court today, Cole Bridges attempted to orchestrate a murderous ambush on his fellow soldiers in service of ISIS and its violent ideology. Bridges’s traitorous conduct was a betrayal of his comrades and his country.”
