(NewsNation) — A soldier at Fort Liberty in North Carolina has been removed from the Army after being indicted last week on charges of weapons trafficking and lying about his association with a white nationalist group, according to a service spokesperson.
Spc. Kai Nix, who served as an infantryman in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, was indicted by a grand jury on Aug. 14 and arrested the following day during a joint investigation by the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Army Criminal Investigation Division.
Nix allegedly lied on a federal application for a security clearance in 2022 when he initially enlisted in which he said he had never been a member of a “group dedicated to the use of violence or force to overthrow the United States government.”
According to prosecutors and reporting from The New Yorker, he was a member of the group Patriot Front, a white nationalist group known for advocating for white men to rule the U.S. and using explicitly antisemitic and white supremacist language.
Court records show that from late 2023 through February, Nix sold at least two stolen firearms. It’s unclear what type of firearms he allegedly sold, but those two weapons were not stolen from the Army, according to a service spokesperson.
Nix is being held in Raleigh, North Carolina, in pretrial confinement. He faces a maximum of 30 years in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina.