According to the FBI, a former GA sheriff’s deputy bragged in text messages with members of an alleged extremist group that he planned to charge Black Georgians with felonies to keep them from voting. He also bragged to the group that he beat a Black man who was in custody, but the incident apparently never happened. Via the Belleville News-Democrat:

The ex-Wilkinson County deputy, Cody Richard Griggers, of Montrose, was fired last November after the FBI contacted the sheriff there about an investigation into illegal guns and their alleged ties to a California man said to have made violent political statements on Facebook.

Griggers, 28, a former Marine, pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court in Macon to one count of possession of an unregistered firearm, a crime the authorities discovered in their probe, which began last summer. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in July.

He seems nice, doesn't he?

This gentleman “also expressed viewpoints consistent with racially motivated violent extremism, including the use of racial slurs, slurs against homosexuals and making frequent positive references to the Nazi holocaust,” prosecutors said in a statement yesterday.

The FBI reports finding a machine gun “with an obliterated serial number” in his patrol car.

Between Griggers' residence and his patrol car, feds found 11 illegal firearms.

According to the FBI affidavit, Griggers texted that he “intended to charge black people with felonies in order to keep them from voting.”

Griggers had worked as a deputy in Wilkinson County for just over a year, the sheriff told a reporter.

According to the affidavit, Griggers also discussed “killing liberal politicians” with his pals, testing they could “make it look like Muslims” were responsible.

Sheriff Richard Chatman, who is Black, said Griggers apologized when he was fired last fall, saying, "That wasn't really him."