CHICAGO (AP) – Prosecutors claim an Illinois white supremacist leader wanted a federal judge murdered and said so on tape, but defense attorneys insist an FBI informant is the only one who advocated violence on the recording.

The trial of Matthew Hale, scheduled to begin Wednesday, is expected to boil down to how jurors interpret a few words uttered by the self-styled “Pontifex Maximus” of a now largely defunct group calling itself the World Church of the Creator.

The group, based in East Peoria, was largely unknown until 1999, when a 21-year-old follower named Benjamin Smith went on a shooting spree that targeted minorities in Illinois and Indiana, killing two people before killing himself.

Hale, 32, was never charged in the shootings, but three years later he was arrested on charges of soliciting the murder of U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow of Chicago.

Hale organized an anti-Somali gathering in Lewiston last year, but only 32 people showed up while more than 4,000 people gathered at a counter-rally urging Mainers to reject racism and embrace the state’s new wave of immigrants. Hale’s arrest came a few days before the Lewiston rally, and he didn’t attend because he was in jail.

“The key issue in this case is whether jurors will be able to get beyond Hale’s rhetoric and political beliefs and view the evidence objectively,” said Hale’s attorney Thomas Anthony Durkin.

The case stems from Lefkow’s 2002 order directing Hale to stop using the name World Church of the Creator because it was trademarked by another group.

Ten days after the order, prosecutors allege Hale e-mailed an FBI mole who had joined the group after the shooting spree and headed Hale’s security force. Hale allegedly wrote that Lefkow’s order “in effect places us in a state of war with this federal judge.”

Prosecutors say that in a second e-mail, Hale asked the informant for Lefkow’s home address and those of three attorneys involved in the trademark case. He later met with the informant, who secretly recorded the conversation.

On the tape, the informant says he got the e-mail about “you wanting his (address) and the other rats.”

“That information, yes, for educational purposes and for whatever reason you wish it to be,” the transcript quotes Hale as saying.

“Are we gonna exterminate the rat?” the undercover agent asks.

“Well, whatever you want to do, basically,” Hale says.

A minute later he adds: “My position has always been that, you know, I’m going to fight within the law and, but, ah, that information’s been provided if you wish to, ah, do anything, yourself, you can. So that makes it clear.”

“Consider it done,” the informant says.

“Good,” Hale replies.

Prosecutors say the tape records Hale plainly hinting that he wants Lefkow killed.

Durkin and co-counsel Patrick W. Blegen point to Hale’s remark that he would “fight within the law” as evidence that he had no violent intentions. They note it is the informant, not Hale, who asks if they would “exterminate the rat.”

AP-ES-04-04-04 2156EDT