Valley Couple Found Guilty on Weapon Counts

A North Hills couple was convicted Friday of conspiring to manufacture and sell illegal weapons to an undercover FBI agent and an informant who posed as white supremacists seeking to buy machine guns and silencers.

Rejecting a defense of entrapment, a jury in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles convicted reputed white separatist Christian Nadal on 15 counts of selling and transferring illegal weapons, and Doris Nadal on a single conspiracy count, acquitting her of three other charges.

They were led away together after U.S. District Judge Ronald S. W. Lew revoked Doris Nadal’s bond, ruling that she posed a flight risk and that she had been convicted of a crime of violence. Her husband remained in custody before and during the trial, at which they both testified.

As the verdicts were announced Friday, Doris Nadal sat stone-faced and Christian Nadal glanced back several times, once raising his eyebrows, at friends and family members inside the courtroom.

Defense attorneys said they would appeal the convictions of the Nadals, who were arrested along with seven others in July and August after an 18-month federal investigation into white supremacist groups in Southern California.

The prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attys. Gregory W. Jessner and Lawrence S. Middleton, said they were pleased with the outcome.

Both prosecutors, however, took a reserved tone in an interview following the announcement of the jury’s verdict.

“Criminal trials are not happy things. . . . A marriage or a birth is a real cause of elation, but here you have people with families and loved ones going to jail,” Jessner said. “It’s a sad thing, but it’s better than the alternative.”

Joel Levine, Christian Nadal’s attorney, maintained that his client was the victim of entrapment and said he will appeal the verdict.

Visibly shaken, Thomas Nishi, attorney for Doris Nadal, said he also plans to appeal the verdict but declined further comment.

Doris Nadal worked at a San Fernando Valley real estate agency and drove a canary-yellow Mercedes coupe. Christian Nadal was an airline flight engineer with a private plane. Together, the couple had a boat docked in Marina del Rey, a swimming pool in the back yard of their $250,000 North Hills home and claimed a joint income of $8,000 a month, according to court documents.

Christian Nadal, 35, could receive a maximum sentence of 145 years in prison and Doris Nadal, 41, could be sentenced to five years. Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 6.

A co-defendant, Christopher Berwick, an Acton machinist, pleaded guilty last week to conspiring to manufacture and sell illegal weapons. Berwick faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The actions of government informants and undercover agents were central to the trial.

FBI Agent Michael E. German, who posed as Mike McCarthy, a white supremacist, testified that he purchased weapons from the Nadals on three occasions, two of which were clandestinely taped. Both the Nadals were found guilty of conspiring to make, sell or possess 31 machine guns and five silencers.

German also testified that neither he nor informant Joe Allen had pressured the Nadals into the weapons transactions.

In contrast, Levine maintained throughout the trial that his client was targeted by the government because of his political views and that he was a victim of entrapment, noting that his client sold weapons only to the undercover operatives and that he had not made a profit on the transactions.

Federal agents who searched the Nadals’ house found Nazi literature and paraphernalia, according to warrants made public in July. In one room, a Nazi skull-and-helmet coin bank and a framed photograph of Adolf Hitler were discovered.

During closing arguments, Christian Nadal was portrayed as a racist extremist who was eager to commit the crimes to support his belief that whites should unite and arm themselves.

Jessner emphasized testimony that showed Nadal said he wanted to use atomic weapons to force minorities to leave the country, that he wanted to drop bombs on South-Central Los Angeles and that he said if the federal government had automatic weapons, then white separatists should have automatic weapons.

Nishi raised the entrapment issue from the beginning of the trial, but during closing arguments he said his client was on trial because prosecutors mistakenly believed that she holds her husband’s views. He maintained that Doris Nadal had no idea what was going on in the weapons transactions.

Prosecutors portrayed her as someone with a knowledge of guns who helped her husband and drove him to deliver machine-gun parts.

A federal grand jury indicted Berwick, the Nadals and Christopher David Fisher of Long Beach in July.