A federal judge has revoked 36-year-old Brad Spafford’s $25,000 bond, finding the Isle of Wight County man has “shown the capacity for extreme danger” by stockpiling what a federal prosecutor described as the largest seizure of homemade explosive devices in FBI history.

In an indictment handed down on Jan. 8, a federal grand jury found probable cause to support the original felony charge of possessing an unregistered short-barrel rifle and an additional felony charge of possessing an unregistered destructive device, both stemming from the FBI’s Dec. 18 raid of Spafford’s Foursquare Road home, where agents allegedly found the gun and more than 150 homemade pipe bombs, some hand-labeled “lethal.”

The Jan. 7 bond ruling by U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen overturned a Dec. 30 decision by U.S. Magistrate Judge Lawrence Leonard to release Spafford into the custody of his mother, Ann Rosenfeld, conditioned on his wearing an electronic tracking device.

Spafford has remained in custody at the Western Tidewater Regional Jail in Suffolk since his Dec. 17 arrest. Leonard had agreed to stay his release order pending the government’s appeal.

Allen wrote in her order mandating Spafford’s continued detention that he’d demonstrated “dishonesty and extreme recklessness even with regard to the safety of others in his own family” by allegedly storing some of the pipe bombs in an unsecured backpack in the residence that he shared with two small children, and having “lied to investigators” when they asked him whether they would find destructive devices on his property. Allen’s ruling also cited social media memes Spafford allegedly shared with an informant, whom Spafford had known as a friend and neighbor from before he moved in October to the Isle of Wight County residence. One meme, included with court documents as evidence in the case, states “peace is not always an option.” Another states “tread on those who tread on you.”

Most of the bombs, according to court documents, were found in Spafford’s detached garage, but some were found unsecured in the home’s bedroom in a backpack labeled “#nolivesmatter,” which the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness describes as an “accelerationist extremist ideology” that “promotes targeted attacks, mass killings and criminal activity, and has historically encouraged members to engage in self-harm and animal abuse.”

Detective Rachelanne Cardwell, a Suffolk police officer and member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, testified at Spafford’s Dec. 30 hearing that Spafford allegedly told the informant he owns an unregistered 10-inch barrel rifle.

The investigation began in 2023 when Spafford allegedly told the informant he’d lost several fingers to a homemade explosive explosive device on July 4, 2021.

Spafford allegedly told the informant in October 2024, two weeks after he purchased the Foursquare Road farm, that he’d moved many hundred-pound boxes of ammunition to the residence “but he does not have 10,000 rounds yet,” according to an affidavit supporting the criminal complaint that alleges Spafford was planning something that he “would not be able to do alone.”

Though Spafford’s lead attorney, Lawrence Woodward, described his client in filings as “a hard-working family man with no criminal record,” Allen’s order notes “the defense has not disputed that Mr. Spafford lost three fingers on his right hand in 2021 through an accident involving homemade explosives.” 

Cardwell testified on Dec. 30 that Spafford, in conversations with the informant, allegedly expressed a desire to “bring back political assassination” and had been using a photograph of President Joe Biden for target practice at a shooting range where he was pursuing a 300- to 400-yard sniper qualification. Following the July assassination attempt on then-candidate and now President-elect Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Spafford allegedly remarked to the informant, “Bro, I hope they don’t miss Kamala,” referring to Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.