A Florida lawyer pleaded guilty on Friday to trying to detonate explosives outside the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., as well as at the Texas Public Radio building a year earlier.
Christopher Rodriguez, 45, admitted to using a rifle to try to detonate approximately 15 pounds of explosives inside a backpack he placed roughly 12 feet from the Chinese embassy in the early hours of Sept. 25, 2023, federal prosecutors said.
According to investigators, the criminal defense attorney bought the backpack, explosives, gloves and a “burner” cellphone when driving from his home in Panama City to the nation’s capital on Sept. 23.
On the evening of Sept. 24, Rodriguez parked his car in Arlington, Va. and used the burner phone to hire a cab to take him just a few blocks from the Chinese embassy.
He then placed the backpack near the embassy’s back wall and tried to detonate the explosives by shooting at it with a rifle.
Rodriguez missed his target and the device didn’t go off.
According to a court filing accompanying his guilty plea, Rodriguez also admitted to using a rifle to donate explosives near a different target a year earlier.
In November 2022, Rodriguez detonated canisters containing explosive material that had been placed at the base of a sculpture depicting the communist leaders Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong, on display in a courtyard outside the Texas Public Radio building in San Antonio.
This time, the explosion “caused significant damage” to the target, officials said.
Rodriguez was arrested in Lafayette, La. on Nov. 4, 2023. He has been held since that date.
On Friday, he pleaded guilty to damaging property occupied by a foreign government, malicious damage to federal property using explosive materials and receipt or possession of an unregistered firearm.
He’s scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 28.
As part of the plea deal, Rodriguez and prosecutors agreed that seven to 10 years of imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release would be appropriate.
