Justice Department files federal hate crime charges against alleged Buffalo gunman

The 18-year-old white man who is believed to have killed 10 people in a mass shooting in Buffalo last month, most of whom were Black, was charged with 26 counts of federal hate crimes on Wednesday.

Driving the news: "[Payton] Gendron's motive for the mass shooting was to prevent Black people from replacing white people and eliminating the white race, and to inspire others to commit similar attacks," prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York wrote in a court filing.

Gendron faces 10 counts of hate crimes resulting in death, three counts of hate crimes involving bodily injury and attempt to kill, 10 counts of use of a firearm to commit murder during and in relation to a crime and three counts of use and discharge of a firearm during a violent crime.

The big picture: The Department of Justice is investigating the shooting as a "targeted attack, a hate crime, and an act of racially motivated violent extremism, FBI Director Christopher Wray said last month.

"I want to be clear, for my part, from everything we know, this was a targeted attack, a hate crime, and an act of racially motivated violent extremism," he said.