BROOKLYN (CN) - A 21-year-old man from the eastern European nation of Georgia recruited fellow white supremacists to carry out violent attacks, including a plot to poison children in New York City by dressing as Santa Claus, prosecutors said Friday following his extradition from Moldova.
"The defendant is a neo-Nezi extremist leader who has spent years soliciting gruesome attacks from his followers," Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Reich said at Michail Chkhikvishvili's arraignment Friday morning.
Over a period of two years Chkhikvishvili, a leader of the international extremist group Maniac Murder Cult, also known as "MKY," rallied those who share his ideologies to attack racial minorities, Jewish people, the LGBTQ community and journalists, according to a government detention memo.
A 17-year-old student acting on behalf of MKY and at least one other group killed one person and injured another before taking his own life at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee, in January 2025, the memo says. The shooter's manifesto mentioned Chkhikvishvili by name and included references to MKY founder Yegor Krasnov, whose name the shooter said he would write on his own gun.
Chkhikvishvili, who calls himself "The Butcher," distributed a manifesto called the "Hater's Handbook" to MKY members and others, claiming he has "murdered for the white race" and encouraging others to commit violence and "ethnic cleansing" - specifically in the United States - via school shootings, using children to carry out suicide bombings, committing mass terror attacks and using vehicles to target festivals, parades and streets full of pedestrians.
In November 2023, the government says, he began planning a New Year's Eve attack in New York City that involved followers dressing up as Santa Claus and handing out candy laced with poison to racial minorities.
Chkhikvishvili also discussed homemade weapons, including how to extract ricin from castor beans and using Molotov cocktails, the detention memo says.
He corresponded for months with Nicholas Welker, a neo-Nazi who pleaded guilty in 2023 to conspiring to make interstate threats and was sentenced last year to 44 months in prison.
In Telegram messages between the two, Chkhikvishvili told Welker he was working for an Orthodox Jewish family caring for a now-deceased family member in a rehabilitation facility. Chkhikvishvili sent Welker photographs of the patient in his hospital bed, the sentencing memo says, and bragged, "I get paid to torture dying jew // I think I almost killed him today actually // If he dies soon that's killstrike on me."
Reich said he expects the guidelines for the four counts against Chkhikvishvili, if he is convicted at trial, to exceed 20 years in prison.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo agreed Chkhikvishvili poses a danger to the community and is a flight risk and ordered him detained. He did not present a bail package.
Chkhikvishvili's court-appointed defense attorney Sam Gregory asked Kuo to place his client on suicide watch and order a psychiatric evaluation so he can be prescribed any antidepressant medication deemed necessary.
Outside the courtroom, Gregory said he was still receiving information about the case.
"These are just allegations right now, which are easy to make and sometimes difficult to prove," he said.
Source: Courthouse News Service
