A former sheriff’s deputy in Georgia who was accused of racist posts was sentenced to three years in prison Tuesday for illegal possession of firearms, federal prosecutors said.

Cody Richard Griggers, 28, in April pleaded guilty to one count of owning an unregistered firearm and has been sentenced to three years and eight months in prison. 

FBI investigators found Griggers’s home to have 11 firearms, including a machine gun that was not issued to him. In a group text, he bragged about “manufacturing and acquiring illegal firearms, explosives and suppressors,” according to court documents.

Griggers also made statements “consistent with racially motivated violent extremism,” even going as far as bragging about beating a Black man as “sweet stress relief.”

“This former law enforcement officer violated his oath of office in many ways, the most egregious was by threatening the very citizens he was sworn to protect with his words of racially motivated violence,” Chris Hacker, special agent in charge of FBI Atlanta, said in a statement. “Now he is being held accountable by serving time in prison and never being able to wear the blue again.”

In addition to his extremist beliefs, Griggers also made “frequent positive references to the Nazi holocaust,” according to prosecutors.

“Cody Griggers disgraced that trust by espousing violent extremism and possessing a cache of unregistered weapons while on duty, including a machine gun with a silencer and obliterated serial number,” acting U.S. attorney Peter D. Leary said in the statement.