ST. PAUL, Minn. – The attorney who successfully prosecuted Michael Hari for bombing a Moslem mosque said the verdict represents a condemnation of hatred and upholds the fundamental American right to live and worship free from violence and discrimination. U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald said that Hari was “driven by hatred and ignorance.” She cited anti-Islam excerpts from Hari’s manifesto, The White Rabbit Handbook. Her evidence to jurors included phone records and testimony of federal investigators who tracked Hari down to rural Clarence, Illinois, 120 miles south of Chicago, where Hari and two co-defendants lived. At the trial Hari’s co-defendants, Joe Morris and Michael McWhorter, described Hari as a father figure. They testified that he taught them how to throw the pipe bombs like the one at a suburban Bloomington mosque in 2017. They quoted Hari telling them that the mosque trained ISIS fighters.
MacDonald. Hari accomplices turned him. No longer a “father figure.”