Cole Bridges, Terrorism, New York, 2023

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DEFENDANT PLEADS GUILTY TO TERRORISM CHARGES

U.S. Army soldier Cole Bridges, 22, of Stow, Ohio, has pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization and attempting to murder U.S. military service members.

According to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, Bridges joined the U.S. Army in September 2019 and was assigned as a cavalry scout in the Third Infantry Division based in Fort Stewart, Georgia. However, beginning in 2019, Bridges began researching and consuming online propaganda promoting jihadists and their violent ideology.

Bridges also expressed his support for ISIS and jihad on social media and began communicating with a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) online covert employee (the ‘OCE’) in October 2020. During these communications, Bridges provided training and guidance to purported ISIS fighters who were planning attacks, including advice about potential targets in New York City.

In December 2020, Bridges began to supply the OCE with instructions for the purported ISIS fighters on how to attack U.S. forces in the Middle East. He diagrammed specific military maneuvers intended to help ISIS fighters maximize the lethality of attacks on U.S. troops and provided advice on how to fortify an ISIS encampment to repel an attack by U.S. Special Forces.

Bridges further provided advice on how to wire certain buildings with explosives to kill U.S. troops and sent a video of himself in his U.S. Army body armor standing in front of a flag often used by ISIS fighters and making a gesture symbolic of support for ISIS.

Bridges is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Lewis J. Liman on November 2, 2023, at 2:00 p.m. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for each of the two crimes he has pleaded guilty to.

U.S. Attorney Williams praised the outstanding efforts of the FBI’s New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, which primarily consists of investigators and analysts from the FBI, the New York City Police Department, and over 50 other federal, state, and local agencies.