Attorneys are asking to get off the case of a Signal Mountain resident and former Fourth District Congressional candidate charged with plotting the annihilation of a Muslim village in New York.
Attorneys Bryan Hoss and Janie Varnell said they have irreconcilable conflicts with Robert Doggart and communication has broken down.
They said Doggart has been meeting with another attorney and wants to make a change in representation.
The trial date for Doggart has been pushed back from a Jan. 19 date.
Instead, on that date Magistrate Susan K. Lee and attorneys will continue to discuss his representation.
The government has asked for a mental examination of Doggart, but that is opposed by the defendant (but not his current attorneys).
Doggart last May entered into a plea agreement acknowledging his guilt in the case which drew widespread attention in Upstate New York where the targeted community of Islamberg is located. He faces up to five years in federal prison.
However, Judge Curtis Collier rejected the plea agreement, saying the facts in it did not constitute a violation of federal law.
The plea was to have been to a one-count bill of information charging him with interstate communication of threats.
Doggart was first ordered detained, however, Federal Magistrate Susan Lee later allowed his release on certain conditions after attorneys said he had weaned himself from pain medication and had stopped abusing alcohol. The government opposed his release, saying he remains a danger.
According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chattanooga, much of the evidence against Doggart was obtained by FBI agents from numerous wiretap interceptions of the defendant’s cell phone calls authorized on March 15 by Federal Judge Sandy Mattice.
In addition to the phone calls during March and April, he also posted threats against the Upstate New York town on Facebook, according to an affidavit by FBI special agent James G. Smith.
Doggart “spoke on the phone with an individual in South Carolina as recently as April 9, 2015, regarding a plan to burn a mosque” in Islamberg, a small Muslim community near Hancock, NY, the affidavit reported.
Earlier, during a St. Patrick’s Day call, the former candidate for Congress “explicitly (said) the plan included burning down a school, a mosque and a cafeteria,” the complaint noted.
“In a call intercepted on March 17 pursuant to the wiretap, Doggart told a female, ‘When we meet in this state, the people we seek will know who we are. We will be cruel to them. And we will burn down their buildings (and) if anyone attempts to, uh, harm us in any way, our stand gunner will take them down from 350 yards away.”
“The standoff gunner would be me,” Doggart continued, according to the agent’s complaint.
As the conversation continued, the complaint went on, “We’re gonna be carrying an M4 with 500 rounds of ammunition, light armor piercing. A pistol with three extra magazines, and a machete. And if it gets down to the machete, we will cut them to shreds.”
He did not anticipate much trouble reaching the target community and carrying out the group’s plans,” the complaint says he told the woman.
“I actually think we can get in and out of there without getting caught,” he reportedly told her. “There’s only four policemen in town. The fire department is a volunteer department, so it’ll take them 35 minutes to get there while that building will be burned down already. And we’ll be long gone by then.”
In 2014, Doggart ran as an Independent candidate in the race for 4th Congressional District of Tennessee. He was defeated by incumbent Republican Scott DesJarlais in the general election on Nov. 4, 2014. According to his campaign announcement, he is an ordained minister in the Christian National (Congregational) Church and a former TVA employee.