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Washington PostBethesda man linked to Obama death plot sentenced to 5 yearsBy Dan Morse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
A 20-year-old Bethesda man linked to a plot to try to kill Barack Obama was sentenced to 61 months in prison Tuesday by a federal judge who said he had gone well beyond innocent role-playing.
"Nobody was assassinated. Nobody was wounded. Nobody was injured. But you were on the cusp," U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte told Collin McKenzie-Gude.
The judge technically sentenced McKenzie-Gude on his earlier guilty plea of storing bomb-making chemicals in his bedroom. But other factors came into play. Prosecutors convinced Messitte that McKenzie-Gude deserved additional prison time because he was plotting to kill Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, that he had fashioned an attack plan against another student who was possibly going to sell him untraceable guns, and that he had not accepted responsibility for his actions.
"You thought that perhaps you were above all this, and you thought what you could do was beyond reproach. Absolutely not true," Messitte told McKenzie-Gude.
The judge also criticized McKenzie-Gude's parents for giving their only child too much leeway. Inside his second-floor bedroom, in a house just outside the Capital Beltway, McKenzie-Gude stored the chemicals, three semiautomatic rifles, two shotguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, including armor-piercing rounds. Police also found assault plans on a computer storage device in the bedroom.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/19/AR2010011904460.html