Leaders of white supremacist group charged, face up to 220 years in prison

Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison, the leaders of the white supremacist terrorist group Terrorgram Collective are facing up to 220 years in prison on charges of soliciting hate crimes, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and soliciting the murder of federal officials.

The Justice Department announced Monday that Humber, 34, and Allison, 37, were arrested Friday. The pair were indicted on 15 charges. The charges include one count of conspiracy, four counts of soliciting hate crimes, three more of soliciting the murder of federal officials, three counts of doxxing federal officials, two counts of distributing information on making bombs, one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and a count of making threatening communications.

“Today’s indictment charges the defendants with leading a transnational terrorist group dedicated to attacking America’s critical infrastructure, targeting a hit list of our country’s public officials, and carrying out deadly hate crimes—all in the name of violent white supremacist ideology,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “Today’s arrests are a warning that committing hate-fueled crimes in the darkest corners of the internet will not hide you, and soliciting terrorist attacks from behind a screen will not protect you.”

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The Terrorgram Collective is based around the messaging app Telegram, and promotes the idea of white supremacist accelerationism, the Justice Department said. Accelerationism is an ideology that uses terrorism and political violence in hopes of speeding up a collapse of the government, which can then be replaced with a new system. In Terrorgram’s case, that new system would be a white ethnostate. In order to cause this destruction, Humber and Allison allegedly provided advice for committing crimes and disseminated a list of “high-value targets” of government officials and business leaders to be assassinated.

The Justice Department says it has linked Terrorgram with a shooting outside of an LGBTQ bar in Slovakia, a mass stabbing in Turkey near a mosque and a person who planned to attack New Jersey’s power grid. Terrorgram called those who had made attacks “Saints,” and the indictment includes a graphic explaining a five point criteria for “sainthood.” First is to “be White… obviously”; the incident must be deliberate; the motive must align with the white supremacist cause; there must be a body count, or “score,” of one or more; and the attacker must share a similar worldview to the group. Another graphic depicted the “Path to Sainthood”: Starting at “Grievance,” moving to “Violent Ideation,” to “Research and Planning”, to “Preparation,” to “Probing and breaching”, ending in “Attack.”

“Hate crimes fueled by bigotry and white supremacy, and amplified by the weaponization of digital messaging platforms, are on the rise and have no place in our society,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Make no mistake, as hate groups turn to online platforms, the federal government is adapting and responding to protect vulnerable communities.”

The case will be heard in federal court, in the Eastern District of California.