The co-workers of a New Jersey naval contractor charged in connection with the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot say he constantly talks about hating Jews and thought “Hitler should have finished the job.”
According to court documents first reported by Politico, the Naval Criminal investigative Service (NCIS), interviewed co-workers of Army reservist Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who worked as a security contractor at Naval Weapons Station Earle and held a secret-level security clearance.
Thirty-four out of 44 of Hale-Cusanelli’s colleagues interviewed by the NCIS said he held “extremist or radical views pertaining to the Jewish people, minorities, and women.”
One contractor colleague said Hale-Cusanelli would discuss his hatred for Jews every day and was reprimanded by a supervisor for sporting a Hitler moustache.
“A Navy Petty Officer stated that Defendant talked constantly about Jewish people and remembered Defendant saying ‘Hitler should have finished the job,’” the court documents say.
Hale-Cusanelli was arrested and charged Jan. 15 with unlawfully entering restricted grounds, obstructing a law enforcement officer, violent entry and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, demonstrating in a Capitol building, and obstructing government business.
At the time, prosecutors described him as an “avowed white supremacist” and Nazi sympathizer, based on evidence provided by a confidential source to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and his comments on his YouTube channel, according to Politico.
The results of the NCIS findings disclosed on Friday was meant to rebut a January letter supporting Hale-Cusanelli’s pretrial release by one of his supervisors at NWS Earle, Sgt. John Getz.
Sgt Getz said in his letter he was “appalled at how Hale-Cusanelli was slandered in the press in regards to him being a ‘white supremacist.’”
“I have never known him to be this way. I know that our co-workers would agree,” he added.
Sgt. Getz was interviewed again this month by NCIS in light of the new revelations that contradicts his letter.
Prosecutors said, “Sergeant Getz stated that he did not feel compelled to include his observations of Defendant’s conduct, as reported to NCIS, in his letter to the Court. Sergeant Getz elaborated that he wanted to ‘speak positively’ about Defendant for the bond hearing, and because he was not personally offended by Defendant’s conduct.”
Prosecutors are asking that Hale-Cusanelli be kept in jail until his trial date because if released, he will have nowhere to go and nothing to do since he was discharged from the U.S. Army reserves and debarred from NWS Earle because of his involvement in the Capitol riot, plus he had expressed a “fantasy of participating in another Civil War.”
