An avowed white supremacist was sentenced on Friday to 19.5 years in prison after pleading guilty months ago to a federal hate-crimes case stemming from a botched plot to bomb a historic Colorado synagogue in 2019.

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Richard Holzer, 28, appeared in a federal courtroom in Denver for a sentencing that capped an undercover FBI investigation of a plan to blow up Temple Emanuel in Pueblo, Colorado, the second-oldest synagogue in the state.

Although the plot was thwarted, US District Judge Raymond Moore said Holzer had sought "to terrorize the Jewish community" of Pueblo, a city of 112,000 residents about 100 miles south of Denver.

"It is one of the most vulgar ... evil crimes that can be committed against an entire group of people," Moore said while imposing the sentence sought by prosecutors.

Holzer declined to speak at the hearing.

The defendant pleaded guilty in October to one count of trying to obstruct religious services by force, and one count of attempting to destroy a building used in interstate commerce, according to his plea agreement.

Holzer, who lived in Pueblo, was arrested in November 2019 following an undercover sting by federal agents tracking his social media postings, in which he professed a hatred of Jews, according to an FBI arrest warrant affidavit.

Posing as fellow racists, undercover agents reached out to Holzer and later met with him as he broached the idea of blowing up the synagogue, the affidavit said. Ultimately, the agents provided him with inert pipe bombs and sticks of dynamite before arresting him, court documents showed.

The judge rejected arguments by defense lawyers that Holzer has renounced his racist views, noting that since his arrest he has reached out to other white supremacists and continued to invoke Nazi imagery.

"The notion that he's turned some corner is fantasy," Moore said.

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Richard Holzer, 28, pleaded guilty to attempting to stop people from exercising their religion with an explosive or fire and attempting to destroy a building used in interstate commerce in a plea deal with prosecutors.

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While each of the two crimes carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison, prosecutors in return promised not to ask a judge to impose a sentence of more than 20 years when Holzer is sentenced Jan. 21.

Holzer was arrested Nov. 1, 2019 after receiving phony pipe bombs and dynamite from undercover FBI agents he had been meeting with.

One agent posing as a white supremacist had reached out to him online after seeing Holzer's social media posts promoting white supremacy and violence, according to the facts agreed to by both sides as part of the plea deal.

As he accepted the fake explosives hours before he planned to use them at Pueblo's Temple Emanuel synagogue, Holzer, displaying a Nazi armband and carrying a copy of Mein Kampf in his backpack, the plea deal said.

Holzer also allegedly thanked the agents for their efforts and called the planned attack a "move for our race," the document said.

After his arrest, Holzer told police that he did not plan to hurt anyone by bombing the synagogue in the middle of the night, but acknowledged he would have gone ahead with his plan if the building had been occupied because anyone there would be Jewish, the plea deal document said.

The Temple Emanuel is the second oldest synagogue in Colorado. It was built in 1900 largely by descendants of immigrants from central and eastern Europe.

In a statement about the deal, Colorado US Attorney Jason Dunn called the law enforcement effort on the case "the most important work that we can do – protecting our communities by stopping an attack before it occurred."

Holzer's guilty plea is a reminder that hate crimes will not be tolerated in the state, Scott Levin, the director of the Anti-Defamation League Mountain States Region said.

"Hate crimes damage the social fabric of our society and fragment communities. It is critical that those who seek to harm others because of their religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation or any other defining characteristic, be held accountable for their crimes," he said.

According to the league, the number of anti-Semitic incidents reported in Colorado increased 56% from 2018 to 2019.

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Arthur Jones, 71, did not mention his contentious views to many voters when he asked them to sign petitions allowing him to appear on the ballot in the upcoming March primary, several people told the Chicago Sun-Times. In the 2018 Illinois congressional primary, he received 20,681 votes, according to the AP Election Research and Quality Control.

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Anthony Sarros, executive director of the state's GOP, said the party is planning an awareness campaign that could include digital advertising, Facebook ads, or mailers ahead of the primary, to lay out Jones' beliefs and remind voters that there are two other Republicans running.

"We want to make sure that the Republicans, Democrats, and any Illinois citizen know that this is not a candidate that we support and we don't want him winning the election," Sarros said. "We hate this. We don't want this to happen and now I kind of want to know how this happened and how do we prevent this."

Jones is a retired insurance agent from Lyons who has run for the GOP nomination eight times before in the 3^rd Congressional District, a heavily Democratic district stretching from Chicago's southwest side to suburban Western Springs and LaGrange. He's also an outspoken Holocaust denier, anti-Semite, and white supremacist who founded the American First Committee, whose membership is exclusive to "any white American citizen of European, non-Jewish descent."

Jones, who could not be reached for comment, said before that his perspectives on the Holocaust are not an issue.

"It never comes up. When I got my signatures, nobody asked me about the damn Holocaust," Jones told the newspaper in 2018. "It's totally irrelevant to my campaign. Totally irrelevant."

Jones amassed 844 signatures in areas that include Palos Hills, Hickory Hills, Stickney, and Oak Lawn, records show. Slightly more than 600 signatures were needed to get on the ballot.

Some of those who signed his petitions told the newspaper they did not know Jones' background.

Ronald Ogarek, a Palos Hills man who signed the petition prior to learning Jones' history, said he's a Republican and a President Donald Trump supporter, "but I don't support white supremacists."

"I had no idea that he was a neo-Nazi or a white supremacist," Ogarek added. "I would have kicked him out if I knew that."

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Police in 16 towns and cities from the Mediterranean island of Sicily to the Alps in northern Italy took part in the investigation, which was launched two years ago.

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The probe revealed a "huge and varied array of subjects, residents in different places, united by the same ideological fanaticism and willing to create an openly pro-Nazi, xenophobic and anti-Semitic movement", a police statement said.

Police did not say how many people joined the group or how many arrests were made. In Italy "defense of fascism" and efforts to revive fascist parties are considered crimes.

The new party was called the Italian National Socialist Party of Workers and police showed off a range of Nazi paraphernalia, including swastikas and pictures of Adolf Hitler seized during searches of 19 properties.

They also found a large number of weapons, including pistols, hunting rifles, and crossbows.

The group had forged links with extremist groups abroad, including in Portugal, Britain, and France, police said.

Police in July found a huge stash of weapons, including an air-to-air missile, linked to far-right extremists, while in November two men connected to another group of Nazi sympathizers were arrested on suspicion of planning to attack a mosque.

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Richard Holzer, 27, was approached by undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation agents posing as white supremacists who gave him inert pipe bombs and dynamite. He discussed his plan to explode the devices at Temple Emanuel in Pueblo, Colo., before dawn on Saturday, according to court documents.

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Holzer, who is from Pueblo, was arrested on Friday and charged with attempting to obstruct religious exercise by force and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison if convicted.

"The allegation in the complaint constitutes domestic terrorism under federal law because it involves a criminal act dangerous to human life and was intended to coerce a civilian population," US Attorney Jason Dunn told a news conference on Monday.

Video: Reuters

Hate crimes in the United States jumped by 17% and anti-Jewish attacks spiked 37% in 2017, the most recent year for which statistics are available, according to the FBI.

Holzer's arrest came just over a year after the worst attack on a Jewish community in the United States – an Oct. 27, 2018, mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh by a lone gunman who murdered 11 people.

It was not immediately clear if Holzer had obtained an attorney, and the federal public defender's office for Colorado declined to comment.

Following his arrest, Holzer waived his right to remain silent and admitted to planning to blow up Temple Emanuel synagogue, the court documents said.

Holzer had sent an unidentified Facebook user a message on July 11 saying he was "getting ready to cap people" and showing himself dressed in clothing with white supremacist symbols and holding firearms, including an assault rifle, according to the affidavit.

He later told the undercover agents he wanted to use explosives against Temple Emanuel, at first suggesting Molotov cocktails, to show Jewish people they were not welcome in his community and expressed support for a racial holy war, the court documents said.

Holzer on a number of occasions visited the synagogue in Pueblo, a city of 112,000 people that is about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Denver, and at one point sent an undercover agent a video of himself walking around the exterior of the building.

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John T. Earnest had no reaction when San Diego Superior Court Judge Peter Deddeh ruled that a trial will proceed for Earnest on murder and attempted murder charges in the attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue during services on the last day of Passover.

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Earnest, 20, will also be tried on an arson charge for a fire at a nearby mosque that happened before the synagogue shooting.

Prosecutors on Thursday played a 12-minute recording of the gunman calmly telling a 911 dispatcher that he had just shot up a synagogue to save white people from Jews.

Earnest could face the death penalty if he is convicted of murder as a hate crime, although prosecutors haven't said whether they will pursue capital punishment.

The 911 recording was heard publicly for the first time at Thursday's dramatic hearing, which included playing the surveillance video of the shooting and a congregant describing how he confronted the gunman and chased him away.

"I'm defending our nation against the Jewish people, who are trying to destroy all white people," said the caller on the 911 recording who identified himself as Earnest.

He provided details of where he was waiting for police and promised to leave his AR-15 assault rifle on the passenger seat. He said he would get out of the car with a supply of bullets hanging on the chest of his vest, as if his surrender had already been planned.

Also at the hearing, Oscar Stewart spoke publicly for the first time about confronting Earnest as shots rang out from the lobby.

"People were falling over each other. It was chaos," he said. "I screamed [to everyone]. 'Get down! Get out here.'"

Stewart, 51, was standing toward the back of the service when shots rang. He said he took three or four steps to flee and turned around for reasons he still can't explain.

"He was firing in front of me," Stewart said. "I was paying attention to the rifle."

As the gunman struggled to reload, Stewart said he relied on combat training to try to distract him from his plan of attack.

"I told him I was going to kill him," said Stewart, who served in both the Persian Gulf War in the 1990s and Iraq after the 9/11 attacks.

Stewart walked across the street after the suspect fled, as shown in the surveillance video, and banged on the side of his car. He said he worried the shooter might attack a church next door or a grocery store down the street.

Stewart got out of the way after an off-duty Border Patrol agent at the service said from behind that he had a gun. The agent fired about five shots as the gunman drove away erratically.

Earnest is also charged with trying to burn down a mosque weeks earlier in nearby Escondido, where seven people on a spiritual retreat were sleeping. They awoke to flames and managed to extinguish the fire.

Outside the mosque, authorities say, the suspect had scrawled the name of a man accused of shootings at two mosques in New Zealand that killed 51 people earlier last spring.

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On July 11, James Reardon Jr., 20, tagged the Jewish Community Center of Youngstown in an Instagram post that featured a video of a man shooting a semi-automatic weapon. This launched what New Middletown Police Chief Vincent D'Egidio described as an "intense … rapidly evolving investigation."

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Police described Reardon as an "avowed anti-Semite and white nationalist" whose social media was full of racial slurs. He was arrested after the FBI raided his home on Friday and seized a stockpile of semi-automatic weapons and ammunition, bulletproof armor, and a gas mask, as well as anti-Semitic and white supremacist propaganda.

Reardon is currently being charged on counts of telecommunications harassment and aggravated menacing. The FBI has yet to announce if it plans to seek federal charges against the suspect.

In response to Reardon's arrest, the Cleveland branch of the Anti-Defamation League tweeted a message of thanks to the FBI and local law enforcement and "community partners."

"We will continue to employ all our resources to stop the spread of white nationalism and violent extremism," ADL Cleveland stated.

According to Action News 4 out of Pittsburgh, where an anti-Semitic shooter killed 11 people and wounded seven the Tree of Life Synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, local police in Youngstown said they intended to provide the Jewish community center with extra security.

Following the arrest, the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation issued a statement of thanks to local police and the Department of Homeland Security that described the pre-emptive arrest of Reardon as "a clear example of everything going right."

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The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that Conor Climo, 23, became the target of a Justice Department terrorism task force investigation after he reached out to a white supremacist group.

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Three years ago, Climo was featured on a TV news report, carrying an assault rifle and four magazines. The weapon appeared in a 2017 social media post in which Climo quoted Adolf Hitler.

According to the criminal complaint, Climo corresponded online with an FBI informant. During their discussions, he made racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-LGBTQ remarks. He also discussed plans to attack a synagogue in Las Vegas, as well as the local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League. Climo also told the informant he planned to make Molotov cocktails and explosive devices.

Climo has been charged with one count of possession of an unregistered firearm, which the Justice Department described in a press release as a component of "a destructive device."

US Attorney for Nevada Nicholas Trutanich said in the Justice Department press release that "threats of violence motivated by hate and intended to intimidate or coerce our faith-based and LGBTQ communities have no place in this country."

Trutanich added that Nevada law enforcement was determined to employ every investigative resource at its disposal to "prevent bias-motivated violence before it happens."

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On July 21, 2018, CCTV cameras captured Tristan Morgan breaking a window of the Exeter Synagogue and pouring flammable liquid inside. Morgan then tried to set the material on fire but was caught in a burst of fire that emanated from the window. Morgan sustained burns to his hands and face, as well as singed hair, a report from the Press Association said.

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Police Supt. Matt Lawler released a statement in which he said the camera footage demonstrated that Morgan had carried out the arson attack with a "level of planning, determination, and intent."

According to Supt. Lawler, "wider evidence … showed [Morgan] held extreme right-wing, anti-Semitic, and white supremacist views."

The Press Association report said that firefighters scrambled to the scene discovered a fire burning in the boiler room.

Witnesses told the authorities that they had seen him walking away from the building, holding a can of gasoline and laughing to himself.

When police arrested Morgan, he told them, "Please tell me that synagogue is burning to the ground. If not, it's poor preparation," the PA reported.

The PA report said it cost the synagogue more than £23,000 ($29,000) to repair the damages caused by the arson.

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