SANTA ANA, California
An Orange County man who firebombed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa and plotted other attacks – including an attack on the Orange County power grid in furtherance of a race war, an attack at Dodger Stadium during an LGBTQ+ pride night celebration, and the home invasions of Jewish homes in Los Angeles – was sentenced Monday to nine years in federal prison.
Chance Brannon, 24, of San Juan Capistrano, who was an active-duty member of the United States Marine Corps stationed at Camp Pendleton at the time of the firebombing, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney, who also ordered Brannon to pay $1,000 in restitution.
Brannon has been in federal custody since his arrest in June 2023.
Judge Carney said Brannon “engaged in cruel and indefensible domestic terrorism.”
Brannon pleaded guilty in November 2023 to one count of conspiracy, one count of malicious destruction of property by fire and explosives, one count of possession of an unregistered destructive device, and one count of intentionally damaging a reproductive health services facility in violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
“Mr. Brannon’s deep-rooted hatred and extremist views inspired him to target individuals or groups who did not conform to his neo-Nazi worldview and, in one case, led him to carry out a violent attack which could have killed innocent people,” said Mehtab Syed, the Acting Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “I’m proud of the hard work and collaboration by the JTTF whose members built this case and apprehended Brannon before additional acts of domestic terrorism could be carried out, as well as the hard work by prosecutors and agents leading to today’s sentencing.”
In February and March of 2022, Brannon and his co-defendants – Tibet Ergul, 22, of Irvine, and Xavier Batten, 21, of Brooksville, Florida – conspired to use a Molotov cocktail to destroy a commercial property, officials stated.
Brannon considered various targets, including the Anti-Defamation League office in San Diego, but ultimately chose to target a Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa to scare pregnant women, deter doctors and staff from providing abortion services, and encourage similar violent acts.
During the early morning hours of March 13, 2022, Brannon and Ergul ignited and threw the Molotov cocktail at the clinic, striking the clinic entrance and starting a fire before fleeing. Brannon and Ergul returned hours later to surveil their work.
In its sentencing memorandum, the government argued that “rather than allow the judicial and legislative systems to unfold, [Brannon] took matters into his own hands, weaponizing fear and intimidation to achieve his political ends.”
In May 2022, Brannon counseled Batten on how to “get away with” committing a similar attack to the Costa Mesa one.
In June 2022, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, its 1973 ruling that recognized a constitutional right to abortion, Brannon and Ergul planned to use a second Molotov cocktail to damage or destroy a second Planned Parenthood clinic.
Ultimately, Brannon and Ergul abandoned their plan because they saw law enforcement near the clinic they planned to target.
Beginning sometime in 2022 and continuing through the time of their arrests, Ergul and Brannon discussed starting a race war by attacking an electrical substation with the goal of disrupting the functioning of the power grid in Orange County.
On a thumb drive disguised as a military-style necklace bearing the motto for the Marine Corps, Brannon kept a file containing an operation plan and a gear list for targeting a Southern California Edison substation.
Brannon possessed several items on the gear list, including a rifle with “Total [N-word] Death” written in Cyrillic and a recording of the 2019 mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, where a white supremacist murdered 51 people and injured 40 others.
According to the government’s sentencing memorandum, Brannon used racial slurs for various minority groups, “made hateful comments towards all non-white individuals,” and discussed “cleans[ing]” the United States of particular ethnic groups.
In the weeks leading up to his arrest, Brannon texted a friend, “Can we just be done with elections and have the race war already?” and complained that “[p]eople will never do anything if everyone keeps waiting for [a race war] to start on its own.”
Throughout the early summer of 2023, Brannon and Ergul also discussed and researched how to attack Dodger Stadium on a night celebrating LGBTQ pride using a remote-detonated device.
As part of those conversations, Brannon shared a “WW2 sabotage manual” with Ergul, discussed doing “dry runs” to “case” the stadium, and conducted research on Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. Brannon and Ergul were arrested two days before the event, according to court documents.
Brannon was motivated by an extremist neo-nazi ideology, prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. Brannon frequently greeted his friends using “88,” which is coded language for “Heil Hitler,” and he called Adolf Hitler “a great man who loved his people and tried to save us all from the jews,”
According to the sentencing memorandum. Brannon possessed antisemitic writings, drawings and literature in his bedroom at the time of his arrest and made comments to his fellow Marines including “All jews deserve to die.”
Just days before his arrest, Brannon began planning with a friend to rob Jewish residents of the Hollywood Hills.
As prosecutors argued in court documents, Brannon’s “use of racial and homophobic slurs, casual expressions of misogyny, and persistent expressions of violent intent went far beyond empty words; rather, the defendant intended – and in many instances planned – to take overt action that would at the very least scare and intimidate women, racial minorities, and the Jewish and LGBTQ+ communities, and would at worst harm or even kill real victims.”
At the time of his arrest, Brannon possessed a short-barreled rifle and two silencers, which he had not registered with the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. According to the government’s sentencing memorandum, in 2022, Brannon placed calls to two foreign adversaries, hoping to offer himself up as a “mole” by providing U.S. intelligence.
Batten and Ergul pleaded guilty earlier this year to criminal charges in this case and have sentencing hearings scheduled, respectively for May 13 and May 30.
The FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigated this matter, with substantial assistance from the Costa Mesa Police Department and the Costa Mesa Fire Department.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathrynne N. Seiden of the Terrorism and Export Crimes Section prosecutes this case.