A former Navy SEAL has been convicted of transporting explosives with intent to kill, injure or intimidate after a convenience-store clerk in rural New Mexico wrote down his license plate and called law enforcement, Fox News reports. Jurors returned the verdict after a five-day federal trial and roughly three hours of deliberation.
Gregory Vandenberg, 49, was also convicted of attempted transportation of prohibited fireworks into California. Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico said he was driving from El Paso, Texas, toward San Diego ahead of the “No Kings” demonstrations on June 14, 2025.
According to prosecutors, Vandenberg stopped at a travel center near Lordsburg, New Mexico, on June 12 and bought six mortar-style fireworks and 72 M-150 firecrackers. While making the purchase, they said, he told a store clerk he intended to throw the explosives at law enforcement officers during the protests. He repeatedly asked how much gunpowder the fireworks contained and whether taping several mortars together would increase their explosive force, prosecutors said, and indicated he was interested only in their ability to injure officers.
Trial testimony indicated he also encouraged the clerk to attend the protests and hand fireworks out to others, saying his military background meant he would not be hurt. Employees were alarmed enough by the conversation that they recorded his license plate number and contacted authorities before he reached California.
Federal agents tracked Vandenberg to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, and arrested him the following morning as he slept in his vehicle. Prosecutors said he falsely claimed he was traveling for work despite being unemployed, and later told investigators he was going to visit friends in Phoenix.
A search of the vehicle turned up the fireworks along with clothing bearing extremist imagery, prosecutors said, including shirts and a hat displaying an Al-Qaeda flag, a shirt calling for the destruction of Judea, and apparel showing a variation of the Black Sun, a neo-Nazi symbol. Jurors were shown photographs of Vandenberg inside the travel center wearing a custom T-shirt reading “AMALEK,” which prosecutors said he told investigators meant “destroyer of Jews.”
His cellphone displayed a Taliban flag as its home screen, and a forensic review turned up antisemitic, anti-Israel and anti-American material along with messages discussing the coming protests, according to prosecutors. They argued those messages showed he believed the U.S. government, including President Donald Trump, was controlled by Israel and by Jewish people — evidence they said established his motive for targeting officers.
“People in this country are free to hold their own beliefs and to express them peacefully,” Acting U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison said in a statement. “What they are not free to do is use explosives to threaten or terrorize others.” Ellison said Vandenberg “intended to turn explosives into a tool of intimidation,” and that the verdict “sends the message that attempts to substitute violence for expressing one’s opinion has no place in our communities and will be met with federal consequences.”
Vandenberg was sentenced to 16 months in federal prison, where he remains in custody, followed by one year of supervised release. No comment from a defense attorney appeared in the report.