The white supremacist jailed on charges of terrorizing the residents of Leith, N.D. almost walked out of court as a free man on Thursday.
Craig Cobb pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor menacing charges and one felony in a deal that got him a one-year suspended sentence and four years of supervised probation, the Bismarck Tribune reported.
But he wasn’t allowed to leave jail as expected because District Judge David Reich deferred that sentence, according to the Tribune. Reich ordered an investigation into the terrorizing incident in Leith and into the hate crimes charge that Cobb fled in Canada and it could take up for a month for him to receive a report.
Cobb has said he plans to leave North Dakota for good whenever he resolves his legal issues. But the Tribune points out that’s not possible until another state agrees to supervise his probation.
He also already deeded away his ramshackle home and planned to deed out the other properties he bought up around town in hopes of starting an all-white enclave in Leith back to the city or to third parties, according to the newspaper.
The Tribune reported that Cobb gave one of those lots to Tom Metzger, one of the nation’s best known white supremacists and a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon. Metzger also founded an organization formerly known as White Aryan Resistance (WAR), which produces racist propaganda.
Metzger emailed the Tribune after hearing of Cobb’s plea deal to say he would no longer support the white supremacist if he pleaded guilty to a non-crime.
“The presences in North Dakota will continue as before _ covertly [sic],” Metzger wrote.
