A 22-year-old former U.S. Army soldier is staring down decades in prison after pleading guilty Wednesday to trying to help ISIS ambush and murder Americans in the Middle East and New York City.
Cole Bridges, also known as Cole Gonzales, pleaded guilty in a New York federal court to charges of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization and attempting to murder U.S. military service members.
"Bridges' traitorous conduct was a betrayal of his comrades and his country," said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York in a statement.
Bridges was arrested in 2021 after the feds tricked him into chatting with an informant he thought was an ally of ISIS-the terrorist organization infamous for carrying out cold-blooded murders, ethnic cleansing, enslavement and rape throughout Syria and Iraq.
Bridges put himself on the feds' radar with a series of pro-Jihad and pro-ISIS social media posts he made after enlisting in 2019. The DOJ said records showed Bridges searched for propaganda promoting jihadists and shared some online.
Those posts prompted the feds to monitor Bridges, a cavalry scout stationed in Fort Stewart, Georgia. The FBI had an informant message Bridges to pose as someone with access to ISIS' top leaders-fooling Bridges into sharing hoards of incriminating messages and videos that became his own demise.
The feds say Bridges wrote that he'd grown frustrated with the Army and wanted to help ISIS. To do this, he sent over a U.S. Army training manual and gave guidance about military combat tactics, going as far as explaining how fighters could wire certain buildings with explosives to kill U.S. troops.
Killing American soldiers abroad wasn't Bridges' only goal. The feds say he also gave the purported ISIS official a list of potential targets in New York City for a terrorist attack-reportedly calling the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan a "key target."
The feds became more certain the man messaging them was Bridges after he brazenly sent two videos of himself-one of him donning body armor in front of an ISIS flag, the other of him narrating a propaganda speech in support of an ambush by ISIS on U.S. troops.
"Thanks to the incredible work of the prosecutors of this office and our partners at the FBI and the U.S. Army, Bridges' malign intent was revealed, and he now awaits sentencing for his crimes," said Williams.
A sentencing hearing for Bridges is scheduled for Nov. 22. He faces up to 40 years in federal prison.
Read more at The Daily Beast.