.jpeg) |
| (Facebook) |
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 described 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."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 that 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 multiple 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment