A Florida lawyer pleaded guilty on Friday to placing a bag of explosives near the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., and trying to detonate it with a rifle, according to court records.
This was not the first time the lawyer, Christopher Rodriguez, had attempted a detonation, prosecutors said. He had previously set off explosives in 2022 that caused “significant damage” to a statue of the Communist leaders Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong in San Antonio, Texas, by shooting at canisters of explosives with a rifle, according to court records.
But when Mr. Rodriguez, 45, of Panama City, Fla., employed a similar tactic by shooting at a 15-pound backpack of explosives that he dropped near the fence of the Chinese Embassy on Sept. 25, 2023, he missed, and the explosives did not detonate, according to court records.
Mr. Rodriguez pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to damaging property occupied by a foreign government, using explosive materials to cause malicious damage to federal property, and receipt or possession of an unregistered firearm.
The charges cover his attack on the statue in San Antonio and his attempt to damage the Chinese Embassy.
On Sept. 23 and 24, Mr. Rodriguez drove from Florida to Washington and, in the early hours of Sept. 25, placed a backpack of explosives, including ammonium nitrate and aluminum, near the embassy, according to federal prosecutors.
When he failed to detonate the bag, law enforcement officers found the backpack and began to investigate, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said in a statement.
Images captured from security cameras showed Mr. Rodriguez wearing a mask and carrying materials that linked him to the attempted attack on the embassy, prosecutors said.
DNA on the backpack matched Mr. Rodriguez’s DNA, which was on file from an arrest in 2021 after California Highway Patrol officers found two firearms and the explosive Tannerite in his car, court records and prosecutors said.
Investigators were also able to connect Mr. Rodriguez to the 2022 explosion that damaged the statue “Miss Mao Trying to Poise Herself at the Top of Lenin’s Head” in San Antonio, which depicts Mao on top of Lenin’s head.
What prompted Mr. Rodriguez to target the embassy and the statue was unclear.
Mr. Rodriguez was a criminal defense lawyer who practiced in Panama City and Pensacola, Fla., according to court records. On Saturday evening, a lawyer based in Panama City by his name was listed on the Florida State Bar website as “eligible to practice law in Florida.”
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. Diane Shrewsbury and Eugene Ohm, public defenders who represented Mr. Rodriguez, also did not respond to a request for comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.
Mr. Rodriguez agreed with prosecutors that a prison sentence of seven to 10 years, followed by three years of supervised release, “is the appropriate sentence for the offense,” according to a plea agreement.
Chief Judge James E. Boasberg is scheduled to sentence Mr. Rodriguez on Oct. 28.
In 2018, a man was detained for detonating an explosive device made from fireworks outside the American Embassy in Beijing. And, in 2022, at least six letter bombs were mailed to several offices, including the American and the Ukrainian Embassies in Spain.
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