Trump regime's cover-up of the Epstein files, plus its alliance with Israel, seems to have alienated young men who now are suspects in plot against White House

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Two California men have been arrested in an alleged plot to attack Sunday night's White House UFC event, according to a jointly published report at The Los Angeles Times and Yahoo! News. Those are the latest arrests in the case, with the total number of suspects in custody now at five -- with the California suspects joining three arrestees from the Midwest (one each from Ohio, Nebraska, and Missouri). 

The LA Times/Yahoo! report focuses on the backgrounds  of the California men now in custody. Reporters Brittny Mejia and Grace Toohey write:

Two men from the Inland Empire have been arrested and charged in what federal officials describe as a plot to kill government officials and others at the UFC cage-fighting show staged at the White House last weekend.

The two Southern Californians are among five co-conspirators arrested across the country in the murder scheme that authorities said appeared to have been motivated by anti-government ideology.

Here's what we know so far about the men and the plot:

Who are they?

Michael Alan Thomas, 32, was arrested in San Bernardino County's Piñon Hills on Saturday, charged with conspiracy to commit murder, according to officials and records from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Bryan Omar Roa, 24, was arrested the same day about 50 miles south in Riverside County's Calimesa, also charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

According to the complaint filed in federal court in California, Roa and Thomas had been in touch virtually, but had met up at least once in the last month to practice marksmanship and tactics.

Investigators learned about the men's activities by tracking them through an iPhone app that Apple touts as a "secure messenger" that offers "privacy redefined: no user IDs." Mejia and Toohey write:

In messages exchanged on an encrypted messaging application called SimpleX, Thomas and Roa communicated in a chatroom titled "Vanguard of the Old Republic," according to the complaint. There, Thomas told Roa he was "up the hill behind LA," clarifying he was was Piñon Hills, to which Roa responded that he was in Yucaipa, which is located right next to Calimesa, where officials said Roa was arrested.

The two men were linked to the plot about a week before the UFC fight was scheduled, after a relative of an alleged co-conspirator alerted authorities. That co-conspirator, Tycen C. Proper, of Danville, Ohio, identified Roa and Thomas as part of the plot, and shared social media usernames, according to the criminal complaint. 

What was the goal of the plot?

Authorities said Thomas admitted to helping plan the attack and encouraging others to take part. In an interview with FBI agents, Thomas allegedly told authorities the aim of this attack and future ones was to create enough chaos to bring about the overthrow of the U.S. government, according to the criminal complaint.

Authorities said he indicated his belief that the U.S. government is run by an elite group of individuals who sacrifice and consume infants. According to the complaint, Thomas also mentioned the disgraced financier Jeffery Epstein, who was accused of sex-trafficking girls and young women, and said Epstein's associates are now protected by President Trump.

Roa later told authorities that he had planned to attend the UFC event only as a protester, but his vehicle malfunctioned and he had to return home. His family members, however, told law enforcement that Roa said one day they would wake up and he would be gone, and that he intended to travel to Washington, where "something big" would happen.

"Roa's family members also believed he intended to commit an act of violence during this trip due to his increased time spent shooting his weapons and a noticeable change in behavior including increased anxiety, irritation, and seclusion," the complaint states.

Both Thomas and Roa were arrested Saturday, the day before the event on the White House lawn.

FBI agents found firearms, a tactical belt, and radios inside Roa's car. Inside Thomas' home, investigators described finding a pistol, a hunting rifle, an AR-style rifle, and several 30-round ammunition magazines. 

What about the plot?

According to court records, co-conspirators allegedly discussed using drones to drop explosives on the north side of the White House to create panic and funnel event attendees toward locations where they would have snipers ready to kill certain high-value targets.

In Ohio, the FBI searched Proper's home and and found a journal in which he wrote about the government seeking to control people and sacrifice children and others to a demonic figure.

Who where the targets?

Authorities said the journal contained a list of about 46 names, which included celebrities and politicians. When authorities searched Proper's iPhone, "investigators observed chats on Signal groups that laid out detailed plans to conduct an attack in Washington, D.C., with several unidentified co-conspirators," according to the complaint.

"In those chats, law enforcement saw detailed imagery of the National Capitol Region and maps of the area with different potential sniper locations highlighted, potential drone launch locations identified, and other detailed tactical planning locations," the complaint states.

Where does the case stand now?

Roa and Thomas are being held in San Bernardino County jail, according to jail records.

The cases against Proper, 19, remain ongoing, as do the cases against the two other alleged co-conspirators: Daniel K. Eskridge, 32, of Kidder, Mo., and Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, 31, of Omaha, Neb.

What was driving the five known conspirators? That is a hard question to answer because they come from different parts of the country and seem to hold a mixed bag of beliefs. Proper's mother said he had engaged with a Christian extremist group and expressed sympathetic views of Adolph Hitler. On the other hand, Proper had identified President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and more than a half dozen Republican members of Congress as targets of the plot.

Occupy Democrats views the alleged conspiracy as blowback that the Trump regime brought on itself. From a post this week at the group's Facebook page:

BREAKING: MAGA TERROR! The men arrested by the FBI for plotting to attack Trump’s UFC event have been exposed as white pro-Hitler right-wing extremists who were targeting the Trump team for covering up the Epstein files!

Reap what you sow…

Trump’s idiot FBI director, Kash Patel, got in hot water yesterday by prematurely bragging about having foiled a plot to commit a terrorist attack Trump’s UFC fight.

He actually did nothing; the mother of one of the perpetrators called the cops on her son after he began stockpiling weapons and getting deeply involved in an “ultra-religious and anti-government” group on the internet. . . .

The charging documents for one of the men, 19-year-old Tycen Proper, says he joined a TikTok group called "Vanguard of the Old Republic."

His mother told the cops that “PROPER recently began interacting with a group online that was comprised of individuals who represented themselves as ex-military and that may share some Christian-based ideology.

“She stated that she did not know the name of the group, but that they expressed ultra-religious and anti-government sentiments, specifically citing grievances about government corruption, the handling of the Epstein files, data centers taking up all the water in communities, and other government actions.”

Proper himself had been posting pro-Hitler and anti-Semitic comments on social media.

The documents state that Michael Alan Thomas “believes the U.S. government is run by an elite group of individuals who sacrifice and consume infants who also were deeply involved with Jeffrey Epstein and are now protected by President Donald Trump. THOMAS places some of the responsibility of this corruption of government with Jewish people and blames them and Israel for the current war with Iran.”

The group was plotting to attack the UFC fight with drones, driving people towards sniper teams to be shot. Sen. Marsha Blackburn was one of their targets for her slavish devotion to AIPAC and Israel.

As its name implies, Occupy Democrats is a partisan organization, but the facts it cites have been reported at several respected news outlets, including The Los Angeles Times. That indicates -- to me at least -- that the group reached reasonable conclusions, based on facts as they currently are known. From their post:

This is a fascinating glimpse into the blowback that Trump and the right-wing propaganda machine has unleashed against themselves for spending years prompting outrageous conspiracy theories about satanic pedophile cabals…and then going above and beyond to keep the actual Epstein files hidden.

Once again, it is made clear that Trump and the right-wing are the sources of and perpetrators of political violence in America.

How ironic that they end up being its targets now.

Investigation of alleged White House terror plot adds to evidence that Kash Patel is an unqualified, impetuous FBI director who can't play well with others

Of all the loyalist butt sniffers Donald Trump has appointed to government positions, no one sniffs butts quite the way FBI Director Kash Patel does it. In the case of an alleged terror plot against Trump's UFC fight card on the South Lawn of the White House, Patel was in such a rush to claim glory for his inglorious agency that he jeopardized the investigation and got another agency highly pissed at him. We are talking about the United States Secret Service (USSS), and that should matter to Trump because one of the chief duties of the Secret Service is to protect the president and his closest subordinates. That is ironic in this case because a prominent feature of the terror plot was a plan to target Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Republican members of Congress. 

How did all of this play out? MS NOW provides details under the headline "Kash Patel 'jumped the gun' with announcement of UFC plot arrests, sources say; Secret Service officials are angered by the FBI director's early morning social media post that was shared before some suspects were arrested." How significant is this story? The MS NOW byline -- "by Carol Leonnig, Ken Dilanian, Marc Santia and Lisa Rubin -- provides a hint that it is big. The MS NOW reporters write:

Secret Service officials are angered that FBI Director Kash Patel prematurely announced on Tuesday the details of a largely sealed and ongoing criminal investigation into an alleged plot to attack Sunday’s White House UFC event with drones, according to three people familiar with the incident.

Secret Service and FBI agents had been partnered on the investigation into a group of individuals discussing plans for a drone attack at the White House in the last week, and had discussed unsealing the case and making a joint announcement Tuesday afternoon, according to sources.

The problem with Patel’s social media announcement, the sources say, was that the case had been sealed in court and roughly 10 suspects had not yet been arrested and placed in custody at the time Patel shared his post. Sources said Secret Service and FBI officials were surprised by Patel “jumping the gun.”

“We all woke up this morning to see this on Twitter,” said one administration official, who, like others, asked to speak confidentially to discuss sensitive matters.

This is an instance of Kash Patel not playing well with his own teammates. For an agency that handles all manner of sensitive cases, that is not a desirable quality for its director to possess. The MS NOW team reports the case involved coordination between the USSS and the FBI right from the start -- except that Kash Patel could not be counted on to handle his role like a professional:

The threat to the UFC event became known to the Secret Service and FBI in the last week when the mother of one of the suspects contacted local police in the Cincinnati area, according to two people briefed on the probe, and reported that her relative was talking about engaging in a vague plot in Washington.

An advanced threat interdiction team at the Secret Service, with the help of the FBI, began seeking a subpoena for an encrypted Signal chat thread and was able to identify the plot being planned and some of the people discussing using drones and possible snipers to attack the UFC fight event at the White House’s South Lawn.

Authorities then arrested one suspect, 19-year-old Tycen Proper of Danville, Ohio, on June 13 and moved immediately to seal the case so the FBI and Secret Service could continue investigating, identifying and arresting additional suspects. 

Tuesday afternoon, the Justice Department announced the arrests of five men, including Proper, for an “alleged plot to carry out an attack to kill government officials and others” attending the Sunday event, according to a DOJ press release. 

This obviously was a "life and death" matter -- with the use of drones and snipers apparently part of a plan to sow chaos at the event. At stake was the safety of government officials, celebrities in attendance, fight participants, and regular folks who simply wanted to get close to the action. It would have been nice if the FBI director had understood the nature of the investigation. But he was too busy grandstanding to take that into consideration. From the MS NOW report:

Before the UFC event, the Secret Service had dramatically increased its security plans as a precaution and issued an alert to its law enforcement partners to be on the lookout for people with drones in downtown Washington and other identifying information.

Matt Quinn, the Secret Service’s deputy director, appeared to allude to Patel’s premature announcement in a Tuesday news conference but did not use his name and said the Secret Service made a conscious decision not to reveal the existence of the probe prematurely.

“I’ll tell you a phrase I learned early in my career in the New York field office and that’s ‘Don’t choke on your own smoke,’” he said. “I’ll tell you the Secret Service led that investigation from the beginning. I’ll tell you that case is ongoing. In order to maintain the integrity of the investigation and the security plan, we chose not to leak it.”

He said he was choosing not to discuss extensive details of the case because at least some charges remained sealed and ongoing.

--------------------------------------------

Like his boss, Patel appears to have the emotional maturity of a 3-year-old (with apologies to 3-year-olds). Patel's inability to play well with others has become a pattern. From the NS NOW report:

Patel’s public announcement of the probe fits a trend in which the FBI Director has often rushed to make announcements that credit the FBI with stopping a possible attack or catching a criminal suspect in a high-profile case.  

On Sept. 10, 2025, the day conservative Trump ally Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, Patel rushed to post on X at 6:21 p.m that the FBI had great news: “The subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody.”

“I stated in that message that we had a subject and that we were going to interview him, and we did, and he was released,” Patel said. “Could I have worded it a little better in the heat of the moment? Sure. But do I regret putting it out? Absolutely not.” 

Patel's impetuous nature was on display again not long after the Kirk shooting:

That same month, the director faced scrutiny and questions about his leadership when he posted photographic evidence from a shooting at a Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.

And in December 2025, Patel prematurely posted news that authorities had a “person of interest” for a shooting at Brown University in custody. He soon had to correct that claim when the individual was released and found to have no ties to the shooting. 

This is the kind of behavior you get when a president persists in nominating unqualified individuals for important positions -- and a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate refuses to take seriously its constitutional duty under the Appointments Clause to vet and confirm nominees. How in the world did Kash Patel get confirmed by the U.S. Senate? That might be one of many questions that grow out of the White House terror-plot case.

Ohio teen with a mixed bag of beliefs is at the heart of a probe that uncovered a plot to attack the White House UFC event -- with Trump and Vance among the targets

Danville, Ohio, is Amish country (whiteoakinn.com)

An Ohio teen, in custody as an alleged planner of a plot to attack Sunday night's White House UFC event, told authorities he and co-conspirators planned to target President Donald Trump, who helped organize the mixed martial arts fight card, Vice President J.D. Vance, and more than a half dozen members of Congress -- all Republicans -- according to a report yesterday at ESPN.

The targeting of Trump and other prominent members of the GOP is peculiar because Tycen Proper, 19, of Danville, Ohio, appears to have adopted an ideology that leans conservative. As of last night, court documents show an investigation of Proper led to the arrest of at least four other individuals. How did an investigation of a plot against some of the biggest names in U.S. politics come to be launched in a tiny village in north central Ohio that is home to 1,019 people? ESPN's Robert Klemko explains:

What began with a concerned mother calling police on her son ended in the thwarting of a terror plot involving drones and snipers aimed at members of U.S. Congress attending Sunday's UFC event at the White House, the government alleges in a criminal complaint filed against one of the plot's admitted leaders, an Ohio teen.

Tycen Proper, 19, of Danville, Ohio, told federal investigators on June 11 he intended to "jump-start" a revolution in the U.S. with an attack on June 14 that would begin with drone bombings over the north side of the arena. Co-conspirators, the charging documents allege, planned to take up sniper positions overlooking southern evacuation routes and shoot "high value targets" including U.S. politicians the group identified as supporting Israeli interests. 

Who is Tycen Proper, and how did he come to compete for space in worldwide news outlets with a deal to end the U.S./Israel war against Iran? That's hard to say because Proper seems to hold a mixed bag of beliefs that defy labeling. This much is clear: He doesn't sound like any liberal I know. Klemko writes:

Proper was hospitalized with homicidal ideations, on the evening of June 10, after his mother called police in Danville expressing concerns over his recent purchases of firearms, ammunition and ballistic plates; his affiliation with a Christian extremist group on TikTok; preoccupation with Jeffrey Epstein and government corruption; online posts sympathetic to Adolf Hitler; and his stated intention to conduct "hit and run missions."

Proper is charged with, among other offenses, attempted murder of an officer or employee of the United States. 

What about the others who have been arrested? They are based mostly in the Midwest, with one outlier from California. ESPN has details about the known conspirators and their targets:

Federal criminal complaints indicate authorities arrested at least four others in connection with the plot and as a result of the investigation into Proper: Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez in Nebraska, Bryan Omar Roa and Michael Alan Thomas in California, and Daniel Eskridge in Missouri.

In an interview with law enforcement, Proper described a conspirator using the moniker "Shepherd" as the group's chief organizer. A criminal complaint alleged that user was Alvarez, and that he used coded terms in encrypted chats to describe priority targets, including President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose attendance at the event had been the subject of online rumors, and Elon Musk. Netanyahu did not attend the event.

Investigators said the group also planned to target congresspeople, including U.S. Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ar.) Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn), Jim Justice (R-W.Va.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), and U.S. Reps. Carol Miller (R-W.Va.) and Riley Moore (R-W.Va.). 

Were the conspirators angry with Trump -- perhaps because of his alliance with Israel and Netanyahu in the Iran war, or maybe because the president is tied to an economy that has been causing strain in the nation's Heartland? We do not have an answer to that question, but it might be worth remembering that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is led by Trump loyalists, such as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel -- both having displayed tortured relationships with the truth. They are controlling the release of news about the investigation, raising this question: What if they falsely portray Trump and his allies as targets, looking to gain public sympathy for Republicans -- and perhaps even attempting to create a way to blame Democrats? Such a scenario is not hard to imagine.

We already have seen signs that Patel is engaging in chest thumping, almost as if he's trying to prove to the public that, contrary to appearances, the FBI is competent on his watch. Robert Klemko reports:

The FBI learned about the alleged threat four days before the mixed martial arts extravaganza on the White House's South Lawn, "and thanks to the rapid action of the FBI, our partners, and the Department of Justice in a multi-state operation, multiple individuals are now in custody and allegedly planned attacks were stopped cold," FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on X on Tuesday morning. The Secret Service "worked around the clock to identify those responsible and hold them accountable," Director Sean Curran said in a separate statement.

Trump, who celebrated his 80th birthday at the UFC event Sunday, sought to tie the fights to larger celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Despite empty seats in some areas on White House lawn, UFC bouts show Trump's knack for appealing to America's lowest common denominator still pays off

Donald Trump has the best seats in the house (NBC)

Sunday night's Freedom 250 fight card on the South Lawn of the White House showed that Donald Trump still can count on his moneyed allies to pitch in cash for purposes of creating a spectacle. But vacant seats  -- prevalent both in sections reserved for celebrities and in sections set aside for everyday Americans --were a sign that Trump's drawing power isn't what it used to be. That is the chief take-home message from an event that might have been more at home in a sports venue like New York's Madison Square Garden rather than having the iconic home of American political power serving as a backdrop. It also might have helped if Americans had not been facing price shocks at gasoline pumps and in grocery stores, forcing Trump's approval ratings to record lows, according to a report at Variety. Under the headline "With UFC Freedom 250 at the White House, Trump has reached peak 'Idiocracy'," Marlow Stern writes:

At no point has the Trump presidency more closely resembled a scene out of “Idiocracy,” Mike Judge’s 2006 satire about a Philistine society that abhors intellectualism, than on Sunday night, as the White House played host to UFC Freedom 250 — a series of MMA brawls on the South Lawn ostensibly meant to commemorate the 250^th birthday of America, but really to honor the 80^th birthday of President Donald J. Trump, a man whose thirst for adulation and public spectacle will never be quenched.

The garish ceremony was broadcast live on Paramount+, a streaming platform owned by David Ellison, a Trump loyalist who’s been reshaping CBS News to be more MAGA-friendly. Just days before the event, Trump’s Justice Department formally approved Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Trump, for his part, reportedly purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock in TKO Holding Group, the UFC’s parent company, just a couple of weeks after the UFC Freedom 250 lineup dropped.

The opening moments of the event were fitting for an administration that seems to be driven more by bombast and theatrics than any genuine interest in policy. Stern writes:

After an opening sequence where memorable UFC fights were projected onto the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and various monuments around Washington, D.C — including Conor McGregor, a man found liable for rape, raising his gloves in triumph against the Washington Monument — we were treated to… a half-hour rain delay. At around 8:30 p.m. EST, things finally kicked off with Trump and UFC President Dana White slowly ambling out of the White House and toward The Claw, an 80-foot-tall tarantula-like canopy hovering over the octagon on the South Lawn. During this seemingly interminable walk, ads for Trump-related products like Trump Coins, Truth Social and World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto coin gambit, served as event sponsors.

“I have seen some surreal things in my life,” offered UFC commentator Joe Rogan. “This is the most surreal.”

I’m not sure if it was more surreal than seeing a violent mob of thousands of Trump supporters lay siege to the Capitol, with some smearing their own feces on its walls, on Jan. 6, but it was more bizarre than the last time Trump transformed the White House into a giant ad in order to return the favor to one of his prominent supporters.

The historic event was broadcast exclusively on Paramount+. Streaming viewership numbers have not been officially published, but total global viewership may be released by Paramount Skydance or the UFC in the coming days, according to a report at The New York Times.  Those numbers might prove to be substantial, but the empty seats that could be readily seen around "the Octagon" and elsewhere on the White House grounds indicate the number of fans who chose to watch the event in person was so-so, at best. From the Variety report:

The UFC is said to have footed the entire $60-million bill for UFC Freedom 250, with White viewing it mainly as a promotional play. Of the estimated 4,300 seats, TMZ reported that 1,000 tickets were given to Trump, 200 were controlled by White, and 200 were for TKO Group Holdings CEO Ari Emanuel, while the rest were given to members of the military. Another 85,000 tickets were doled out to fans who could watch the event on giant screens from The Ellipse. Various reports, however, claimed that sponsorship packages, including ringside seats, were selling for between $1 million to $1.5 million.

A number of those seats surrounding the Octagon appeared to be empty by fight time, while The Ellipse looked far from capacity. The biggest non-Trump celebrity in attendance was probably Mark Zuckerberg, whose company Meta showered the telecast with ads. With President Trump’s approval rating at historic lows, it seems the showman doesn’t have the pull he once did. It also was odd how Trump milked the military for his 80^th birthday event, with cameras often cutting to shots of service members in the crowd, and historical scenes of American heroism on the battlefield aired between fights. This is a man who, according to his own lawyer, invented an injury to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War, and who reportedly called fallen American soldiers “losers” and “suckers” for getting killed.

Perhaps more than anything, the event seemed designed as an opportunity to heap praise on Trump and put him at center stage. Dana White seemed plenty willing to do his part, Stern writes:

Trump, White and the UFC have a bit of history. White served as a Trump surrogate during his three presidential campaigns, and gave some insight into their allyship at the 2016 Republican National Convention. “Arenas around the world refused to host our events,” White told the crowd. “Nobody took us seriously. Nobody. Except Donald Trump… I will always be so grateful to him for standing with us in those early days, so tonight I stand with Donald Trump.”

Yes, White has repeatedly painted Trump as the UFC’s savior, a counterpoint to detractors like the late John McCain, who famously branded it “human cockfighting.” That version of events has been called into question by UFC insiders, according to a recent investigation in Vanity Fair, who claim that this mythmaking surrounding Trump and UFC began around 2016. Ant Evans, the former head of UFC PR agreed, writing on Twitter, “Former head of UFC PR here. Trump’s name didn’t appear in a single press release, one-sheet briefing, talking point, UFC-produced document, book, or piece of content before 2016. The only time I recall his name being mentioned within my own earshot was execs laughing about his involvement with the money-pit that was Affliction MMA. This narrative is simply false.”

Another outrageous narrative came courtesy of Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who, while promoting his boss’s birthday event, compared Dana White’s founding of the UFC to America putting a man on the moon. 

As for the actual fights, they almost became an afterthought as the night wore on -- even though they produced plenty of action, and a fair amount of blood, and the event attracted some of the bigger names in mixed martial arts. Stern writes:

The fights themselves, of which there were seven, were secondary to venerating Trump. Michael Chandler got whooped again (surprise!) by Mauricio Ruffy, who proposed to his gal after (Chandler has now lost six of his last seven fights). Sean O’Malley knocked out Aiemann Zahabi with a straight-left and overhand-right, likely granting him a title shot, before saluting the troops; Cyril Gane made mincemeat of Alex “Chama” Pereira, who was a step slower since moving up to heavyweight; and Justin Gaethje pounded Ilia Topuria’s face in to hand him his first loss and capture the lightweight title. The unreasonably-long event ended well after 1 a.m. EST..

But it was Josh Hokit’s absurd antics that perfectly encapsulated UFC Freedom 250: After earning jeers for fake-vomiting at his weigh-in, the heavyweight bruiser beat the living daylights out of an out-of-shape Derrick Lewis, then gifted Trump a medallion and announced, “Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?” to cheers from the crowd -- and an apparent smirk from Trump.

More than anything, though, UFC Freedom 250 was a vulgar display of power by President Trump, who views America as one giant sandbox filled with toys for him to play with. Though his Freedom 250 Concert imploded, you can expect plenty more embarrassing stunts to come.