The man arrested with guns outside Donald Trump’s rally in Coachella, Calif. on Oct. 12 had spoken about assassination attempts against the former president less than two weeks earlier with a retired Army lieutenant colonel who calls himself Trump’s “secretary of retribution.”
Vem Miller, a 49-year-old former music video director who now produces conspiracy-driven documentary films, interviewed retired Lt. Col. Ivan Raiklin, known for circulating a “Deep State target list” against Trump’s political enemies. The interview was produced for the America Happens Network, a company co-founded by Miller that describes itself as “the anti-thesis of what the mockingbird media has to offer.”
“You know, you inspire me,” Miller told Raiklin during the interview, which was posted on the video platform Rumble on Oct. 1. “This episode’s actually going to be called, ‘What are we going to do once they steal the election,’ because that’s certain, 100 percent certainty that they’re going to steal this. And we need to be prepared.”
“I already have a plan,” Raiklin responded. “I have the counter-strategy. I’ve already war-gamed basically their next 15 moves. I got 30 moves ahead of it. I’m doing worse-case [sic] scenario. And if worse-case [sic] scenario doesn’t happen, we win, right? But I’m always planning for the worse case [sic] scenario that they can do, both within their law, legal authority, and beyond of what they’re capable of.
“So, the categories of what they’re gonna do is they’re gonna continue to try to assassinate Trump,” Raiklin continued. “I already got a plan in response to that and what should take place.”
“Tell me that,” Miller interrupted. “Say it.”
“No, no, no,” Raiklin responded. “I don’t need to put it out. Because if I put it out, people are going to think I’m trying to advocate for that to take place. I’m not. But you always have to have someone planning out worst case already in advance that has already thought through it, so that immediate action takes place. I’ve already thought through that deliberately. I got a response for that. It’s going to be worse for them if that takes place.”
Raiklin added that he had already explained his thinking during an appearance on InfoWars with conspiracy trafficker Alex Jones in February 2024.
During that exchange, Raiklin told Jones: “This is a message directly to every single person on the Deep State target list. My assessment — Ivan Raiklin’s assessment that if you assassinate any political presidential candidate, whether it’s RFK, whether it’s Trump, guess what? America will do the following: Immediately, they will respond in kind.
“If they do that, option 2 behind Trump is going to be so much better for us, and so much worse for them,” Raiklin continued.
“I was about to say, if they kill him that’s best-case scenario,” Jones agreed. “From a sick level, from a sick level medium, oh, please kill him. It’s so good after that.”
Raiklin added: “It’s going to be the best cleansing and the fastest cleansing that we’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I assess with almost certainty, with the highest level of confidence, that if they assassinate Trump, it is so game over for them.”
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, himself a fervent Trump supporter, told reporters during a press conference that a deputy arrested Miller when he stopped his vehicle at the inner perimeter of the rally. Miller had been allowed to drive through the outer perimeter, Bianco said, because it appeared that he was either a VIP or press.
But at a checkpoint for the inner perimeter, the sheriff said the deputy noticed that the “interior of the vehicle was in quite disarray.” The deputy also noticed a homemade license plate that led him to conclude that the driver was a sovereign citizen. Bianco said the deputy found multiple driver’s licenses and passports with different names. Eventually, the deputy also found a loaded handgun and a shotgun, the sheriff said.
The arrest took place before Trump arrived at the rally. Bianco said Miller was arrested for illegal firearms.
"If you're asking me right now, I probably did have deputies that prevented the third assassination attempt," Bianco said.
Miller denied that he had any intent to assassinate Trump, calling himself “100 percent a Trump supporter” in an interview with Fox News. He also denied that he is a sovereign citizen or that he was carrying fake documents.
Mindy Robinson, one of Miller’s partners at the America Happens Network, angrily posted on X that Miller’s arrest was retribution from the “Deep State.” Miller and Robinson released a six-hour documentary, which opens with an apocalyptic assessment of current events centered on the first assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pa. before moving to its main subject: the armed standoff in 2014 that pitted the Bundy family and their supporters against the FBI.
“Vem just exposed a huge Deep State coverup involving the feds and the Bundy ranch scandal,” Robinson wrote on X on Sunday. “So, I firmly believe this is 100% some kind of setup in retribution for exposing it. That, or Trump’s security team is a bunch of dips---s trying to make up for how badly they failed in Pennsylvania with any kind of ‘win’ they can get, fake or not.
“There isn’t a universe his intention was to kill Trump,” Robinson continued. “He’s worked too hard in this movement to expose the Deep State and all the people against him. If he had guns in his car that were illegal, whooptie-f---ing do As a pro-2A advocate, ask me if I give a s--- about a good guy with a gun in an unsafe s---hole like California. It doesn’t even make sense why his passes would be fake either when we’re both usually invited as media to these things.”
Raiklin’s response to the news of his associate’s arrest was uncharacteristically muted.
“My hunch is there will be lots of retractions,” he posted on X on Sunday. “And the sheriff will have egg on his face as his stunt will be the end of his gubernatorial run before it even started.”
Vem Miller (right) speaks with Ivan Raiklin about assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump.roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms