Although McKay had earlier claimed he was entrapped by an FBI informant, he told a federal judge at a plea hearing that he and Bradley Neal Crowder would have made the bombs with or without the informant.
"I think we would've done it anyways," he said of he and Crowder.
With that admission, the 23-year-old Texan entered guilty pleas to the three felony counts against him, avoiding a retrial. He used an entrapment defense at his first trial in January, and it ended with a hung jury.
Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Davis accepted the plea bargain and said that since the conviction involved a violent crime, he had no choice but to order McKay taken into custody. He had been free on bond following his mistrial.
The hearing came just hours after McKay's aborted attempt to enter a guilty plea the day before. In that hearing before Davis, McKay said that while he wanted to take responsibility for what he did, the government informant, Brandon Darby, had a role in those actions.
Davis refused to accept the plea and adjourned the hearing until today to give McKay and his attorney time to either decide to accept the government's offer of a plea bargain or get ready to start picking the jury for his re-trial.
With a night to think about it, McKay decided to tell the judge that Darby played no role in the decision to make the Molotov cocktails during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last summer.
Although he claimed that he and Crowder and Darby had discussed making firebombs, he said couldn't remember who first came up with the idea. But he and Crowder intended to do violence, he said.
"We didn't need Brandon there to make them," he said of the bombs.
In January, Crowder pleaded guilty in a plea bargain with federal prosecutors and now awaits sentencing. When he entered his plea, he told Davis that he and McKay alone came up with the idea to build the Molotov cocktails and that nobody influenced them.
Crowder was not called as a witness at McKay's trial. But last Friday, the government filed a motion to compel Crowder to testify at the re-trial, which was to start Monday.
When Davis granted the government's request, McKay decided to enter his guilty plea.
The men were part of a group from Texas who came to St. Paul to protest at the convention, which was held at the Xcel Energy Center. When police raided the apartment house they'd been staying in, they found eight Molotov cocktails in the basement.
There was no question that McKay and Crowder made the bombs, according to officials. Rather, the issue was whether Darby influenced or induced them to do it. When McKay testified at his trial, he said the Molotov cocktails were Darby's idea and that he persuaded them to build them.
Darby was a longtime Texas activist who gained national attention for his relief work in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. But he has said he became disenchanted with some of the radical and violent elements of the activist community, and had acted as an informant for the FBI in another case.
When federal agents began watching the Austin group that McKay and Crowder belonged to, they asked Darby to infiltrate it and report on the group's activities. He accompanied them to St. Paul.
McKay pleaded guilty to making and possessing unregistered firearms, which is how federal law classifies a Molotov cocktail. He also pleaded guilty to possessing firearms that lacked serial numbers.
Davis ordered a pre-sentence investigation, but did not set a date for sentencing.
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