When Natalie Rupnow and Solomon Henderson, two teenagers separated by more than 500 miles, carried out school shootings in late 2024 and early 2025, they were linked by a global online network that encouraged obsession with mass murder.

In a violent subculture in which the vast majority of mass shooters are white males, the two were unlikely candidates for infamy. Rupnow was a teenage girl. Henderson was Black.

But the communities that nurtured them on their paths to violence offered ironic memes and terrorist manuals promoting white supremacy, violent misogyny and homophobia.

When Rupnow, 15, carried a gun into Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis. in December 2024 and fatally shot a fellow student and teacher before killing herself, Henderson noted with satisfaction that they had followed each other on X.

A month later, Henderson, 17, imitated Rupnow by taking a picture of himself making an A-OK hand sign that white supremacists use to troll opponents. Then, at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tenn. he carried out an attack that was strikingly similar, fatally shooting a fellow student and wounding another before killing himself.

Those are not the only similarities between the two shooters, according to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

Rupnow and Henderson both created accounts on the website WatchPeopleDie, which traffics in footage of murder, torture, rape, executions, suicides and other forms of extreme violence.

They did so within two weeks of each other, propelling them on a course of radicalization that ended in their rampages 18 and 19 months later.

“They both started there,” said Carla Hill, senior director of investigative research at the Center on Extremism, of WatchPeopleDie.

“It was a gateway or entry point. We saw that through their online activity and posts. They started by following extremist content. Then they started re-sharing extremist content. And finally, they started posting their own extremist content.”

‘Multiple senseless killings’

Rupnow and Henderson’s escalation from online extremism to real-world violence brought them into the orbit of at least two violent white supremacist groups that are the target of U.S. government prosecutions.

A manifesto and diary left by Henderson contain lists of white supremacist mass murderers, terrorist manuals and obscure online groups so exhaustive it is difficult to isolate a single point of inspiration or motive.

Federal prosecutors flagged a Russian- and Ukrainian-based neo-Nazi accelerationist group.

In a motion for pre-trial detention in a case against Michail Chkhikvishvili, aka “Commander Butcher,” leader of Maniac Murder Cult, prosecutors argued that his “repeated solicitations of violence” have resulted in “multiple senseless killings” in the U.S. and beyond.

Prior to Henderson’s attack, according to the government, he posted audio that claimed he was taking action on behalf of Maniac Murder Cult, and stated in his manifesto that he would write the name of Yegor Krasnov, the group’s founder, on his gun.

Henderson described himself as an “accelerationist” — someone who embraces terrorism and other forms of spectacular violence to bring about societal collapse.

Rupnow joined a Telegram group chat set up to livestream an attack on a Turkish mosque in August 2024. The perpetrator, 18-year-old Arda Küçükyetim, posted a link to the livestream in a group chat for Terrorgram Collective, a group that received a global terrorist designation from the U.S. State Department in January this year.

“Come see how much humans I can cleanse,” Küçükyetim wrote.

Dallas Erin Humber, a Terrorgram leader from California who recently pleaded guilty to conspiracy, solicitation of hate crimes and other charges, noted that Küçükyetim posted Terrorgram documents online, along with white supremacist mass murderers’ manifestos.

“He was 100 percent our guy,” she wrote, according to the government. “But he’s not White so we can’t give him an honorary title. We still celebrating his attack tho, he did it for Terrorgram.

“We can hail him anyway. We can’t add him to the Pantheon. But yeah, it’s a great development regardless, inspiring more attacks is the goal and anyone claiming to be an accelerationist should support them.”

When Rupnow carried out her attack in Wisconsin in December 2024, Henderson celebrated her and Küçükyetim as fellow adherents in a daisy chain of viral mass murder.

“It’s weird how we had similar takes and views, but not really because she followed my account,” Henderson wrote in his diary.

“Arda was right!” he added, before quoting from a passage of Küçükyetim’s manifesto that argues the purpose of documenting mass casualty attacks is to inspire copy-cat violence.

Henderson’s links to Terrorgram went beyond his admiration for Küçükyetim: He posted links to four Terrorgram publications in his manifesto, which begins: “This book is dedicated to Accelerationism and violence by a N----- for victory.”

‘Entry point’

Regardless of the influence of Terrorgram, Maniac Murder Cult and other groups whose propaganda Henderson and Rupnow encountered, Hill with the Center on Extremism said the impact of WatchPeopleDie and similar websites shouldn’t be discounted.

“The evidence shows that that was really an entry point,” she said. “It was part of their escalation. They became more and more extreme from that time.”

WatchPeopleDie originated on Reddit, but was banned after a user posted clips of the livestreamed mass shooting by white supremacist Brenton Tarrant at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019.

It’s now an independent website. Users who embrace white supremacy and other forms of extremism make up a subset of users, Hill said. The report notes that some users downvote or greet white supremacist posts with derision.

But the researchers at the Center on Extremism found that extremist content — including white supremacist manifestos and mass-murder videos — is readily available on WatchPeopleDie.

The new report warns that young people “can access extremist content alongside graphic violence, potentially desensitizing them and increasing the risk of ideologically motivated violence.”

Researchers also found evidence that extremists use the site for networking.

One user who followed Henderson described himself as a national socialist “accelerationist who likes Mass [sic] shooters.” The researchers noted that the user’s profile page included a “recommended reading” section that included Terrorgram publications.

WatchPeopleDie runs off donations and paid membership and uses offshore webhosts out of reach for law enforcement, Hill said.

By exposing WatchPeopleDie and similar sites, Hill said she hopes to pressure webhosts to remove harmful content.

The report also aims to educate parents, educators and law enforcement about how online content that glorifies violence can start young people down a rabbit hole to radicalization.

“Youth internet subcultures are dipping more into extremist content,” Hill said. “We see it in TikTok and sites like WatchPeopleDie. The context is ironic; it’s still repeating exposure and indoctrinating kids into thinking this stuff is okay.”

The most effective measure of prevention, Hill said, is for parents to talk to their children.

“The more people are aware of it, the more you can push back,” she said. “Tell parents to talk to their kids about the content, and why it’s bad. They should ask their children what they’re looking at and why they’re on this site.

“‘What’s on this site that interests you?’ That’s a starting point. A lot of kids are in their rooms looking at this content. There’s no moderation. It’s our job to inform everyone of what the possibilities are.”

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False reports of active shooters that put Villanova University in Philadelphia and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga on lockdown and saw law enforcement swarming over campuses last week were likely perpetrated by an online swatting group called “Purgatory,” extremism researchers say.

Five Purgatory members hosted a voice call on Discord, a platform popular with gamers, on Aug. 21 to an audience of 41 people, livestreaming the bogus calls to authorities at Villanova and Tennessee, according to a report by Marc-André Argentino, a Canadian researcher.

Using a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service that masks caller identity and location, a Purgatory leader with the screenname “Gores” made calls reporting active shooters, per a report by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, or GPAHE, which also monitored the chat.

In a call archived by GPAHE, Gores attempted to duplicate the successful swatting attacks at Villanova and Tennessee by calling the security office at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania later the same day, as other Discord users laughed.

“Can you hear me?” Gores asked the woman who answered the call. “I’m currently at Bucknell University. I’m in the library right now. I just saw a guy walking around, six foot tall and it looks like he’s holding an AR-15. I think he’s heading towards me.”

Like the other active-shooter reports that day, it was a fabrication.

GPAHE reports that Gores attempted to provoke an armed police response at locations in Michigan on Aug. 21, but police departments recognized the hoax.

According to GPAHE, Gores sometimes used “the sound of a shotgun blast in the background.” That’s consistent with an official update by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga stating that the 911 telecommunicator who fielded the call for service reported hearing gunshots.

Purgatory is a subset of a larger decentralized online network known as Com, whose members engage in hacking, fraud, extortion, child sexual abuse material, and at the most extreme, murder and terrorism. The participants, many of whom are teenagers, commit crimes that they document for social standing. Some groups also advertise crimes-for-hire.

A post on Purgatory’s Telegram channel documented by Argentino and GPAHE advertises a price list. A swatting attack on a school, described as “institutional purge,” costs $20, while vandalism, using a brick to break out a window, costs $15.

Last month, Evan Strauss, the 27-year-old founder of Purgatory, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, cyberstalking, interstate threatening communications and threats to damage or destroy by means of fire and explosives.

Over two months in late 2023 and early 2024, Strauss and two co-defendants, who also pleaded guilty, placed calls to a Delaware high school threatening to shoot students and teachers, called in a bomb threat to the Albany, N.Y. airport, and called a sheriff’s office in Alabama threatening to burn down a trailer park, according to the government.

It is unclear whether there is a direct connection between the original Purgatory and the new group. The first posts of the Telegram channel for the iteration responsible for the Villanova and University of Tennessee swattings includes a link to the press release about Strauss’ guilty plea, according to GPAHE.

Since Aug. 21, swatting attacks have affected University of Colorado-Boulder, Kansas State University, University of South Carolina, University of Arkansas, Iowa State University, University of New Hampshire and Northern Arizona State University.

Argentino said the swatting attacks were likely carried out by Purgatory and a rival Com group called “Diddy Swats,” named for hip hop producer Sean Combs, recently convicted of prostitution-related offenses. Competition often drives criminal activity among the online groups.

Reflecting on how the false active-shooter calls resulted in mass panic, with students barricading themselves in classrooms, Argentino wrote that “the prevalence of school shootings in the United States makes these swatting calls especially traumatic for those on site” while draining public resources by prompting “large-scale tactical responses.”

But the attacks cause even deeper harm by eroding social trust, Argentino said.

“These dynamics also impose psychosocial costs on the wider campus community by heightening fear, normalizing rumor as evidence, and displacing official risk communication,” he wrote.

“Tertiary harms emerge as the content economy rewards rapid, sensational posts with reach and monetization, incentivizing copycat coverage and degrading the information environment for future incidents.

“Institutions face eroded trust, rising call volumes driven by misinformation, and response fatigue that slows decision making in genuine crises … In this way, swatting functions as an attack on social infrastructure, converting an unfounded report into cascading harms mediated by networked attention, algorithmic amplification, and weakened verification norms.”

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The Texas GOP’s hugely controversial push to draw five new U.S. House seats, thereby ejecting Democrats and protecting the Republican majority in Congress ahead of the 2026 midterms, has lit up national media amid high drama as Lone Star Democrats flee the state and GOP leaders demand their return or arrest.

Democratic resistance to this Republican gerrymandering scheme means the Texas situation remains in the balance. But there is stunning and recent precedent for why the GOP prizes the effort so highly.

Two years ago in North Carolina, like Texas a state trending demographically towards Democrats, Republican judges and lawmakers successfully threw out a fair electoral map.

The result: three Democrats were forced out of Congress.

The previous court-ordered plan, enacted in 2022, resulted in a North Carolina congressional delegation that included seven Republicans and seven Democrats, accurately reflecting a divided state where voters have elected Democrats for governor and attorney general since 2016.

But Republicans have tightened their grip on the legislature since taking control in 2011, now holding a veto-proof supermajority in the Senate and a firm, if not total, control of the House. In 2023, after the Republican-friendly state Supreme Court restored legislative control over redistricting, GOP lawmakers created a new map. The result: 10 Republicans and four Democrats representing the Tar Heel State in Washington.

“They took three districts that in 2022 were considered toss-up districts with Democratic incumbents, and not a single Democratic incumbent filed for reelection,” said Robert Orr, a retired North Carolina Supreme Court associate justice who now serves as counsel in a lawsuit challenging the districts in state court.

“In the next election, there wasn’t a serious Democratic contender in all three districts, and in one district, there wasn’t a Democratic contender at all.

“Is that a fair election?”

A former Republican, Orr changed his registration to unaffiliated after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

“I would say it’s not a fair election any time government is influencing or rigging the election,” Orr told Raw Story. “That violates our Constitutional rights, as citizens and voters.”

Tom Ross, a former leader of the University of North Carolina System, is a registered Democrat and a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Under the 2023 redistricting plan, Ross’s home, in the northern suburbs of Charlotte, was drawn out of the 12th Congressional District represented by Democrat Alma Adams.

“If you’re looking at the national picture, that was a … three-seat switch that allowed Republicans to expand their majority by six seats,” Ross told Raw Story.

“In the U.S. House, which is closely divided, it was a huge impact nationally.”

In January 2025, when the 119th Congress was seated, Republicans held a 220-215 majority. The gap has widened since, with the deaths of Sylvester Turner (D-TX), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA), and the resignation of Mark Green (R-TN).

Ross now lives in North Carolina’s 14th Congressional District. In 2024, its Democratic representative, Jeff Jackson, ran for state attorney general and won by almost three points. Jackson’s old district is now represented by Tim Moore — the Republican former state House speaker who was involved in approving the new electoral map.

Ross acknowledged that under any plan, some districts will lean Republican or Democratic. But he said the 2022 plan was more competitive than the one that replaced it.

“It’s only in those districts that all voters are in play that politicians have to voice positions that aren’t going to alienate a large segment of voters,” Ross said.

“I also think you get people who are more moderate and able to compromise. That’s one of the biggest concerns, is that you have these elections where the winners are determined in the party primary. The winners are the ones who have been pushed to the extreme.”

‘Winners and losers’

Ross and Orr declined to comment on the quality of the new Republican members relative to the Democrats they replaced in the North Carolina delegation, insisting their only interest is fairness to voters.

But some characteristics stand out — of both the former representatives who were pushed aside and their Washington successors.

From 2021 to 2025, Democrat Kathy Manning, the first and only Jew to represent North Carolina in Congress, represented the Sixth Congressional District — anchored by Greensboro, the state’s third-largest city.

Manning won her seat after leading fundraising for the city’s performing arts center and chairing the Jewish Federations of North America. In Congress, she was a staunch supporter of Israel, meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and sponsored bills to combat antisemitism and protect the right to contraception.

The new Sixth District, which incorporates a chunk of Greensboro and stretches almost 75 miles southwest to the Charlotte suburbs, to take in Republican areas, is represented by Addison McDowell, a 31-year-old former lobbyist endorsed by Donald Trump.

McDowell, who lives in rural Davie County, is focused on securing the U.S.-Mexico border to stem the flow of fentanyl. He often speaks about being motivated by his younger brother’s death as a result of an overdose. His legislative initiatives include improving oversight over opioid grant spending and ending mass immigration parole.

To the east, the redrawn 13th District forced out the Democrat Wiley Nickel, a member of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition who worked in the Obama White House. This year, Nickel mounted a campaign for U.S. Senate, only to withdraw in July, when former Gov. Roy Cooper entered the Democratic race.

Brad Knott, Nickel’s Republican replacement in Congress, is a former federal prosecutor who also received Trump’s endorsement. Knott is focused on enhancing criminal penalties to discourage unauthorized immigration.

The North Carolina Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Harper v. Hall, which made it possible for Republicans to flip three seats, was itself the result of a partisan election. In 2022, Republicans flipped two seats on the court, gaining a 5-2 majority. The court then vacated a decision made when Democrats held control, 4-3.

“Choosing political winners and losers creates a perception that courts are another political branch,” the Republican majority wrote in the 2023 decision that gave the General Assembly unfettered power to pursue maximally partisan redistricting.

“The people did not intend their courts to serve as the public square for policy debates and political decisions. Instead, the people act and decide policy matters through their representatives in the General Assembly. We are designed to be a government of the people, not of the judges.

“This case is not about partisan politics but rather about realigning the proper roles of the judicial and legislative branches. Today, we begin to correct course, returning the judiciary to its designated lane.”

Associate Justice Anita Earls, a former civil rights lawyer in the Clinton Justice Department, penned a searing dissent, calling the majority opinion a “shameful manipulation of fundamental principles of our democracy and the rule of law.”

“I look forward to the day when commitment to the constitutional principles of free elections and equal protection of the laws are upheld and the abuses committed by the majority are recognized for what they are, permanently relegating them to the annals of this court’s darkest moments.

“I have no doubt that day will come.”

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Michael Whatley, the Trump-backed Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, has made it his “mission” to “get more men and women of faith into the public square.”

Whatley’s own church, however, has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration over the past six months, as its national leader has embraced a reputation as a bulwark of “resistance” to the president’s agenda.

In a recent op-ed for Religion News Service, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Sean Rowe, wrote that the church is experiencing a “long-overdue reckoning” on its proximity to political power.

Rowe also said that what was “once the church of the Founding Fathers and presidents” is today “less known for the powerful people in our pews than for our resistance to the rising tide of authoritarianism and Christian nationalism emanating from Washington, D.C.”

For Whatley, that might have made for uncomfortable reading.

Now chair of the Republican National Committee, having led the North Carolina Republican Party, he said in a 2023 podcast interview it was “a personal mission of mine” and “a really big deal” to get people of faith into politics.

He added that he serves as the treasurer for his church, and previously served as a senior warden on the vestry.

But even that church has taken stances seemingly at odds with Whatley’s embrace of Trump.

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Gastonia describes itself as “a progressive parish” whose members volunteer for programs “to combat hunger, homelessness, racism and other significant issues.”

The St. Mark’s website notes that the Episcopal Church embraces “inclusion,” and that “people of all genders and sexual orientations serve as bishops, priests, and deacons in our church.”

The church’s donations page bears Whatley’s name, as stewardship chair, along with those of the rector and senior warden. A post on the St. Mark’s Facebook page, meanwhile, shows that Whatley delivered the “message” during “services” at the church in September 2020.

Whatley could not be reached for comment, either through his campaign or the Republican National Committee.

But Robert Orr, a former associate judge on the North Carolina Supreme Court and former Republican candidate for governor who is also a member of the Episcopal Church, told Raw Story he believes “all the basic tenets of Christianity are completely at odds with the policies being imposed by the Trump administration.”

Orr cited decisions to cut funding for school lunches, to end humanitarian aid to poor countries by shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development, and to “turn a blind eye to the humanitarian devastation going on in Gaza.”

“I think that those who are in lockstep with Mr. Trump have an obligation to explain how those kinds of policies are not inconsistent with the teaching that you hear on Sunday in your Episcopal church, your Baptist church, or your synagogue,” said Orr, whose alienation from the Republican Party began during the 2016 election before he switched his voter registration to unaffiliated following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

‘Intertwined and inseparable’

The intertwining of faith and politics has undoubtedly been a central theme of Whatley’s life.

In the 1990s, he earned a master’s degree in religion from Wake Forest University, then a joint degree in law and theology from Notre Dame. The Assembly reported that Whatley’s dissertation “centered on the Roman Empire’s occupation of Palestine just before and after the time of Christ,” in which he wrote that “religious and political power were intertwined and inseparable.”

Contemplating faith, Whatley also pursued politics.

As a sophomore at Watauga High School in Boone, N.C., he volunteered for the 1984 Senate reelection campaign of the Republican Jesse Helms — a hardline conservative leader.

After clerking for a federal judge in Charlotte, in 2000 Whatley volunteered for the Republican candidate George W. Bush’s recount effort in Florida, key to Bush’s presidential election win over the Democrat Al Gore.

Following stints working for the Bush administration, the staff of then North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, and an oil and gas lobbying firm, Whatley was elected chair of the North Carolina Republican Party in 2019.

In 2021, following Jan. 6, the state party censured then Sen. Richard Burr for voting to impeach Trump for inciting an insurrection. In early 2024, as Trump was locking up the Republican nomination, he backed Whatley to chair the national committee.

The current North Carolina Senate race is to replace Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican who announced his retirement after opposing Trump’s package of tax cuts and slashed domestic spending, known as the “big beautiful bill.”

When Whatley formally launched his campaign in Gastonia on July 31, his loyalty to Trump took center stage.

Six days earlier, Trump issued a “complete and total endorsement” on Truth Social, all but assuring Whatley’s victory in next year’s primary.

Trump wrote: “I need him in Washington, and I need him representing you!”

In his kickoff speech, Whatley thanked Trump for his “vision” and “leadership,” while pledging to support Trump’s “efforts to deport violent criminal illegal aliens.”

The Rev. Shawn Griffith, Whatley’s pastor at St. Mark’s, gave a nonpartisan invocation, asking for God’s blessing on Whatley and his family.

“We pray that you give Michael wisdom in seeking your will in the decisions he will face,” Griffith said. “We pray that you give him strength and courage to choose and do the right things rather than those that are popular.”

Whatley’s 18-minute speech eschewed religion, referencing Trump nine times. The word “faith” received zero mentions.

Whatley said he would champion “North Carolina values,” which he enumerated as “a healthy, robust economy, safe kids and communities, and a strong America.”

‘Win elections for faith’

Whatley hasn’t always shied away from faith in the political sphere.

In Charlotte in 2022, addressing the Salt & Light Conference — hosted by the Faith & Freedom Coalition, led by longtime political strategist Ralph Reed — Whatley said: “I work hard every day to make sure the North Carolina Republican Party is going to be the party of faith … I pray that I can use this platform that I’ve been given by the voters of North Carolina, and the Republicans of North Carolina to be an instrument of God.”

That year, Whatley teamed up with Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson to speak at a series of pastor luncheons hosted by the American Renewal Project, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has linked to an anti-LGBTQ agenda.

Robinson wound up badly losing his 2024 bid for governor after CNN reported that he had described himself as a “Black Nazi” on a pornographic website.

During a December 2023 interview for a podcast hosted by Clearview Church in Henderson, N.C., Whatley said he had appeared at “30 different pastor lunches across the state” and spoken to 4,000 pastors.

“We talk about how to win elections for faith, not Republican versus Democrat,” Whatley said. “This is good versus evil. How do we get everybody to engage on this? Because I can assure you liberal churches are engaged. How do you get the evangelicals and other conservative churches to engage?”

Whatley said then it was imperative to recruit “moral” people to run for office, because “I’ve never seen someone who became a more moral person after they got elected.”

Six months into the second Trump administration, Whatley’s church is moving faith into the public square.

One day after the inauguration, the Rt. Rev. Marian Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop for the Diocese of Washington, D.C. directly pleaded with Trump to “have mercy” on “gay, lesbian and transgender children in both Republican and Democratic families who fear for their lives.”

Budde went on to admonish Trump that while some “may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

The following month, the Episcopal Church joined more than two dozen Christian and Jewish groups in filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s move to give immigration enforcement agents more latitude to make arrests at houses of worship.

In May, the Episcopal Church terminated a partnership with the federal government to provide refugee resettlement services, in response to Trump’s move to classify white Afrikaners as refugees based on the discredited claim that they face racial discrimination in South Africa.

Most recently, the Episcopal Diocese of New York hired a lawyer to free a South Korean university student whose mother serves a priest in the diocese from ICE detention.

Orr told Raw Story the apparent drop-off in Republican rhetoric on religion since the 2024 election reflects “a political purpose.”

Voters who helped elect Trump in response to appeals to their faith, Orr said, “were used in a cynical way to exploit their beliefs on social issues and conservative flashpoints.”

Joe Kent, the newly confirmed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, once complained that federal agencies responding to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were promoting “a narrative that labels all of us terrorists or insurrectionists just for questioning things.”

It was September 2021, and Kent was an Iraq war veteran and candidate for Congress, speaking at the “Justice for J6” rally at the U.S. Capitol.

Kent claimed without evidence that the Jan. 6 defendants were “political prisoners” who had been “denied due process” — thereby pioneering a false claim Donald Trump would use in his 2024 presidential campaign.

Federal law enforcement and prosecutors were engaged in “banana republic stuff” when they investigated and charged those who attacked the Capitol, Kent claimed.

In fact, every Jan. 6 defendant held in jail before trial received a detention hearing, in which the government persuaded a judge that they posed a flight risk or a danger to the community.

“That happens overseas all the time,” said Kent, a retired member of the Army Special Forces and CIA paramilitary officer. “Unfortunately, we conducted operations like that when I was in Iraq serving overseas, and it did nothing but further radicalize people.”

Some analysts have traced the rise of ISIS to the power vacuum and destabilization created by the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Kent holds a painful connection to this history: his first wife, a Navy cryptologist and linguist, was killed by an ISIS suicide bomber in Syria in 2019.

At the Capitol in September 2021, Kent seemed to argue that arresting and jailing the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 attack risked further radicalizing them.

He could not be reached for comment for this story.

As director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Kent will be responsible for leading “U.S. government efforts to analyze, integrate, and share intelligence to prevent and respond to terrorist threats at home and abroad.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard praised Kent on Thursday for his “practical understanding of the enduring and evolving threat of Islamist terrorism, as well as the threats we face from the cartels’ human trafficking and drug trafficking operations.”

Left unmentioned was the threat from far-right extremists whom Kent suggested were unfairly labeled “terrorists or insurrectionists” through the FBI’s sprawling Jan. 6 investigation.

‘We’re at war’

During two unsuccessful runs for Congress, Kent continued to demonstrate a penchant for provocative statements and associations with extremists.

When the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private residence, in August 2022, Kent said on MAGA strategist Steve Bannon’s podcast: “This just shows what many of us have been saying for a very long time. We’re at war.”

Kent lost his 2022 general election to Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez after sitting for an interview with Nazi sympathizer Greyson Arnold, whom he later disavowed.

Arnold went on to threaten Washington state Gov. Bob Ferguson on X with a “judgement by lead.” The Washington State Patrol investigated but no charges have been brought.

During his rematch with Gluesenkamp in 2024, Kent hired a campaign consultant, Graham Jorgensen, who was revealed to be a member of the Proud Boys.

Photos of Jorgensen archived by an antifascist group show him attending two 2017 rallies in the Pacific Northwest organized by the far-right group Patriot Prayer, which frequently clashed with left-wing opponents.

Kent brushed off the matter during a debate when Gluesenkamp asked him to “apologize to southwest Washington for hiring a Proud Boy.”

“This is a complete distraction from your actual voting record of voting for more inflation, voting for a wide-open southern border, fentanyl killing our loved ones and neighbors,” Kent responded.

‘Domestic terrorism’

Contrary to Kent’s claims about Jan. 6, the FBI and at least two federal judges have decided the term “terrorism” fits the attack on the Capitol, which disrupted a joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

“That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple,” then FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress in March 2021. “And it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism.”

Two federal judges, sentencing leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys for seditious conspiracy two years later, ultimately agreed.

Prior to sentencing members of the Proud Boys leadership cadre, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly cited statements by members of an elite planning group convened on Telegram by Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.

On the morning of Jan. 6, one chat member wrote: “I want to see thousands of normies burn that city to ash today. The state is the enemy of the people.”

“I will settle with seeing them smash some pigs to dust,” another wrote.

During a melee at the Capitol, one Proud Boy, Dominic Pezzola, stole a police riot shield, which he later used to smash a window, resulting in the initial breach of the building. Pezzola was convicted of felonies including obstruction of an official proceeding, but not seditious conspiracy.

In a statement to the court, Capitol Police Officer Mark Ode, the victim of Pezzola’s assault and robbery, said Jan. 6 was “not a random response of a small group of angry demonstrators who simply disagreed with the political climate of the period,” but rather “a planned and organized attempt to overthrow our constitutional process by individuals” who “decided to use violence and terror to impose their will.”

Judge Kelly applied a terrorism enhancement to the sentences of Pezzola and Tarrio, along with Joe Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl, based on the finding that their crimes were “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.”

Judge Amit Mehta, who sits with Kelly on the District Court for the District of Columbia, applied the terrorism enhancement to Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes’ sentence.

“This is an additional level of calculation,” Mehta said. “It is an additional level of planning. It is an additional level of purpose. It is an additional level of targeting, in this case, an institution of American democracy at its most important moment, the transfer of power.”

Shortly after his 2025 inauguration, Trump pardoned Tarrio, while commuting the sentences of the other Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders.

Some of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are expressing wariness over the prospect of prolonged investigations into supposed crimes committed by former President Barack Obama and other high-ranking officials.

They note that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s accusation of a “treasonous conspiracy” about the 2016 election recycles narratives put forward by conservative influencers in Trump’s first term.

They want to go straight to arrests.

And like many, they see Gabbard’s case against Obama as a transparent ploy to distract attention from the Jeffrey Epstein case, in which Trump’s links to the deceased financier and sex offender are increasingly under the spotlight.

Patrick Howley, a journalist who cycled through conservative media outlets before moving on to conspiracy content and eventually flagrant white nationalism and antisemitism, is a case in point.

“I’m not going to stop talking about Epstein just because Tulsi Gabbard decides to confirm the 2017 Internet yet again…. If you arrest Obama, maybe I’ll tune in,” Howley wrote on X on July 21.

Howley doubled down the following day, writing, “I’m not going to do 2017 Crossfire Hurricane content again [a reference to the FBI investigation of Russian links to Trump] unless Obama and [former Secretary of State] Hillary [Clinton] actually gets arrested. I don’t have to pretend this stuff is new just because the Admin is in damage control mode over Epstein.”

In early 2017, having worked for conservative outlets including the American Spectator, Daily Caller and Breitbart News, Howley described his new project, what would become Big League Politics, to the Atlantic as an organ for “Trump administration policies that generally fall under a populist-nationalist window.”

Howley was part of a new cohort of media provocateurs who unabashedly promoted Trump while pushing supporters towards ever more radical positions. Stories suggesting a criminal conspiracy by national security officials in the Obama administration to undermine Trump by linking him to Russia were bread and butter.

Investigations by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmed the assessment of the Obama administration that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, including hacking Democratic National Committee emails, to benefit Trump.

Regardless, on July 21, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Obama himself manufactured the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, and numerous others participated in this, THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY!”

Trump’s recent post tracks closely with content Howley was producing more than five years ago, including a March 2019 story headlined, “HOWLEY: Here’s the Full Story of How Obama, Hillary and [former CIA Director John] Brennan Carried Out the Crime of the Century.”

In other stories from 2018 through 2020, Howley described a supposed conspiracy involving “vengeful government agents trying to play politics by bending the law against a populist candidate;” “evidence of a Democrat and establishment Republican effort to set up the Trump campaign for a future Russian collusion case;” and a “growing #ObamaGate scandal that threatens to disgrace his public legacy.”

Eclipsed by a new cohort of MAGA influencers that includes Charlie Kirk, the podcaster and CEO of Turning Point USA, Howley isn’t shy about expressing his resentment.

“That it took EIGHT YEARS to find out the Obama Intel apparatus manufactured intelligence to delegitimize and cripple the Trump administration is a scandal all unto itself,” Kirk posted on X on July 21, garnering 1.1 million views. “Why on earth did it take so long?”

“Because you guys just recycle the same old stuff at opportune moments while also ignoring certain stories at pivotal moments based on the whims of the handlers who run conservative media?” Howley retorted, pulling only 1,355 views.

Steve Bannon, MAGA’s lead strategist and a vocal proponent for Trump to arrest political enemies, once employed Howley at Breitbart and praised him as “smart, tough and aggressive.”

'Bits of red meat'

Howley’s impatience with perpetual promises of “arrests” appears to be shared by a growing number of Trump supporters.

Joe Biggs, a Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy who worked as a reporter for the conspiracy theory website InfoWars in 2016, posted on X on July 19: “I’ve been hearing Hillary for prison and so much more for years. Yet nothing ever happened. It’s the same ole song and dance; the only difference is the year. Republicans are spineless cowards. Always have been and always will. I hope they prove me wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.”

Owen Shroyer, an InfoWars host convicted of illegally entering the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 (and pardoned by Trump), lamented on X: “The only reason we’re talking about Obama and Russian Collusion Hoax is because no one was arrested in Trump’s first term. So is this the new Republican game? Talk about deep state criminals on the campaign but never arrest them?”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who was elected in 2020 after embracing the QAnon conspiracy theory, warned that Trump’s base will turn if he doesn’t deliver arrests.

“If you tell the base of people, who support you, of deep state treasonous crimes, election interference, blackmail, and rich powerful elite evil cabals, then you must take down every enemy of The People,” she posted on X on July 21. “If not. // The base will turn and there’s no going back. // Dangling bits of red meat never satisfied. // They want the whole steak dinner and nothing else will satisfy.”

For some Trump followers, the logical next step is violence.

Responding to Howley’s complaint that “influencers can come up with different strategies to try to dupe us or silence us about how nothing ever happens,” while “arrests and transformational change” remain elusive,” one X user responded: “Yes. // The only way s--- every gets done is violence.”

After Gabbard’s claims about a “years-long coup” and “treasonous conspiracy,” the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism clocked a surge of comments on the social media platforms Truth Social, Gab and Telegram “targeting Obama as treasonous and deserving of either imprisonment or a form of capital punishment.”

The MAGA base may be tearing itself apart over the Trump administration’s attempt to close the book on the Jeffrey Epstein case, but some of the president’s conspiracy-minded supporters are still pouring gasoline on an ugly antisemitic trope long associated with the deceased financier and sex offender.

Following Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail in 2019, Trump and his allies fed supporters’ beliefs that the case would unlock secrets about a cabal of global elites who would finally be brought to justice. The power of the saga over the collective imagination is that there are unanswered questions about how Epstein made his money and who else might be implicated in his crimes.

“It’s provided a launchpad for people’s imaginations to go wild,” Jared Holt, an extremism researcher and co-host of the Posting Through It podcast, told Raw Story.

“I think a lot of the antisemitic stuff is based on pure speculation. Someone came up with this idea, and people have taken it to the extreme.”

The undercurrent of antisemitism in the case rests on the unfounded assertion that Epstein was connected to Israeli intelligence and running a blackmail operation against world leaders.

Those who make the claim cite the facts that Epstein met with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak dozens of times, and Robert Maxwell, the late media baron father of jailed Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, forged close ties with Israeli leaders.

“I think for a lot of people who are mad at Trump for abandoning the Epstein case, it plays into a larger conspiracy theory about Jews running the world,” Will Sommer, a reporter at The Bulwark, told Raw Story.

The evidence that Epstein was involved with intelligence in Israel or anywhere else is circumstantial at best.

Naftali Bennett, another former Israeli prime minister, refuted the claim on X on Monday, writing: “The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false.”

Of course, for those who are inclined to believe antisemitic conspiracy theories, the word of a former Israeli prime minister is unlikely to move the needle.

Joe Biggs, a Proud Boys leader whose seditious conspiracy sentence for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was commuted by President Donald Trump, mocked Bennett, posting: “Hey everybody! This guy says they didn’t have anything to do with it. Guess we can just stop talking about it now and relax. It wasn’t the joos [sic] this time ok!!”

Holt told Raw Story the “subsection of the Trump base” that is hostile towards Israel “is a lot larger than people give credit for.”

The Epstein controversy dominated last weekend’s Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, where speakers included administration officials and Trump allies.

Tucker Carlson, the influential former Fox News host who helped mainstream the white supremacist Great Replacement theory and campaigned for Trump last year, was among those who took direct aim at Israel.

“It’s extremely obvious to anyone who watches that this guy had direct access to a foreign government,” Carlson said.

“Now, no one’s allowed to say that that foreign government’s Israel, because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty,” he added, to cheers from the MAGA crowd.

On social media, Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who attended the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, and who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, hailed the response to Carlson’s message as “directionally positive,” while asserting that Carlson was not a full ally.

“They are feeding something that they don’t yet understand,” Fuentes wrote on Telegram, a social media platform that serves as a haven for Nazis and other extremists.

“And it’s short sighted, which is why many are urging people like Tucker to pump the brakes. It’s like when those crime bosses hired the Joker to kill Batman.

“So, we can strategically accept that Tucker’s advocacy is good for us, but he isn’t us,” Fuentes added. “We have to take and take and keep coming back for more. Always audacity.”

'Palpable hostility'

The uproar among Trump’s supporters over Epstein comes at a particularly fragile time for American Jews, following the shooting deaths of two Israeli embassy workers outside a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C. in May, and the lethal firebombing attack on peaceful Jewish marchers calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Colorado in June.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has deployed an “antisemitism task force” against universities while moving to deport foreign students for speaking out against Israel and in support of Palestinian autonomy.

“There’s a palpable hostility towards Israel as the war against Hamas has dragged on and as civilian casualties continue to mount,” Holt said.

“It is the perfect window for influencers who hold not just criticism against Israel but genuinely antisemitic views such as questioning the loyalty of dual citizens and equating the state of Israel with the Jewish people — it’s an opportunity for them to drop in and wedge their own views into the discussion.”

On July 11, Stew Peters, an openly antisemitic podcaster, made an argument that echoed a white power talking point dating back to the 1980s: asserting that the U.S. government is controlled by an external Jewish foe.

“Whether you want to admit it or not, if you’re being bare-naked honest, you know why this is being covered up, and it’s because the pedophiles that are on the Epstein client list and the Epstein tapes and on the Epstein flight logs are active members of this fake occupied government, including active members of this White House,” Peters said.

White supremacists often talk of the “Zionist Occupied Government,” or “ZOG,” a body through which Jewish elites supposedly control U.S. life and use puppets to destroy the white race.

Peters also called members of the Trump administration “liars” while deploying an anti-Hindu slur against FBI Director Kash Patel, who appeared as on Peters’ podcast eight times to assail former President Joe Biden but has now found himself on difficult ground, seeking to quash Epstein conspiracy theories he previously eagerly promoted.

Holt said it was reasonable to ask questions about Epstein’s finances and associations. But he said that anyone who went to court and promised to prove that Epstein was linked to Israeli intelligence would likely find themselves sanctioned.

“Sure, there’s enough there to wonder, but that’s all we can do,” Holt said.

“These people making these bold assertions and digging their heels in, I think they’re in a different category because they’ve assumed the evidence and are using it to agitate in a completely different direction.”

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The U.S. Department of State is eliminating its Office of Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) as part of a sweeping round of layoffs affecting more than 1,350 employees that began on Friday, Raw Story has learned.

Raw Story revealed the threat to CVE in May, as the Trump administration pressed for mass layoffs in the federal government. The layoffs were paused by court challenges but this week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Trump’s favor.

The six CVE employees, who led the department’s international efforts to prevent violent extremists from radicalizing and inspiring acts of violence, are all being terminated, William Braniff, executive director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab at American University, told Raw Story.

“Eliminating the CVE office from the Department of State undermines our layered defense, allowing threats to get much closer to home before we have a chance to minimize them,” Braniff said.

“It decreases our ability to support upstream terrorism prevention programs overseas, making international terrorist recruitment easier. It decreases our ability to support rehabilitation programs, including for children born to the ISIS movement, making international terrorist ‘retention’ easier.”

Braniff was previously director of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships at the Department of Homeland Security, considered a “sister office” of CVE. He resigned in March, after the Trump administration began to dismantle the office.

Shuttering CVE flies in the face of Trump administration priorities, Braniff added.

“Overall, and in direct contrast to the stated goals of the administration, it increases the likelihood that terrorists will actually cross the U.S. border,” he said.

Ian Moss, who oversaw the CVE as deputy coordinator for counterterrorism during the Biden administration, previously told Raw Story CVE historically served as “the principal driver” in the U.S. government for “addressing racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism, including white identity terrorism.”

Alongside the U.S. Department of Justice, the CVE office helped organize three Counterterrorism Law Enforcement Forums in Europe, convening law enforcement, financial regulators and policymakers to address racially and motivated violent extremism.

In Europe, the State Department is focused on countering the influence of Nordic Resistance Front and Russian Imperial Movement, two groups that were named as specially designated global terrorism entities during the Biden and first Trump administrations, respectively.

Just before President Joe Biden left office, the State Department also designated the Terrorgram Collective as a terrorist group. Terrorgram, whose two U.S. leaders were federally indicted last year, has been linked to attacks in Brazil, Slovakia and Turkey.

CVE also played a significant role in the U.S. government’s efforts to counter Islamic extremism, principally ISIS.

Moss told Raw Story CVE “worked hand-in-glove” to repatriate hundreds of women and children from Al Hol, a camp in northeast Syria for people displaced by ISIS, to their home countries in central Asia.

The office worked with the returnees’ home countries to ensure they received rehabilitative services so they could reintegrate into their communities.

“If there are not programs to de-risk these individuals, and if these individuals don’t have empowering opportunities elsewhere, they will find empowering opportunities with extremist groups again,” Braniff said.

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Late one night last October, at a church in a remote corner of Yancey County, North Carolina, government emergency medical workers participating in the response to Hurricane Helene gathered medications, records, laptops and radios, threw them into backpacks — and abandoned their field clinic.

More than two weeks after the massive storm ravaged the region, roads were badly damaged. Led by an ambulance, side lights illuminating the winding two-lane highway that follows Big Creek, the group made its way across the state line and into Tennessee.

Rumors about armed militia members threatening teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency had prompted FEMA to pause some operations. The same day in Rutherford County, roughly 70 miles from the field clinic in Yancey County, a 44-year-old man armed with an assault rifle was arrested for threatening to harm FEMA workers. In Tennessee, a sheriff said witnesses reported FEMA workers being harassed by armed people.

But the Oct. 12-13 evacuation of a state medical assistance team, including FEMA contract workers, on the order of a program director more than 250 miles away in the state capital, Raleigh, is being reported by Raw Story for the first time.

“It was late enough the community had gone to sleep,” said a FEMA contract worker who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We had a rotating cadre of [sheriff’s] deputies … They said, ‘We’re willing to set up an overnight guard.’

"The state medical team was like, ‘No, we’re not going to stay.’”

‘They know where you’re sleeping’

On Oct. 12, as darkness gathered, Dr. Tripp Winslow, medical director for the state Office of Emergency Medical Services (OEMS) and physician for the Yancey County site, paced in the parking lot at Big Creek Free Will Baptist Church.

A medic had delivered an alarming report — of observing snipers on rooftops and viewing a social media post indicating militias were hunting FEMA.

In another part of the parking lot, three unfamiliar men approached. One inquired about the medics’ sleeping accommodations. A FEMA contract worker told Raw Story one man wore a shirt bearing the insignia of Savage Freedoms, an armed volunteer disaster response group that had become a focal point of medical workers’ concerns.

“I mentioned to Dr. Winslow: ‘We had these three people come up, and they know where we sleep. They know we’re not in the clinic at night,’” the worker told Raw Story.

“The state was like, ‘We’re not comfortable with you guys staying here, especially now that they know where you’re sleeping.’”

Asked for comment, Winslow referred questions to the state Department of Health and Human Services.

A photo submitted to Raw Story by a member of the medical team shows Big Creek Free Will Baptist Church, where the NC Office of Emergency Medical Services set up a field clinic.

The church was a disaster-response hub for an area cut off due to a bridge washing out on the road to the county seat, Burnsville. By the time the state medical assistance team arrived, a group of military veterans, Keystone Dynamic Solutions, had established a “command center” to land helicopters for supply delivery and dispatch teams to assist residents, liaising with the church’s pastor and deacon.

Keystone, which provides tactical combat training to civilians, describes its role in the aftermath of Helene as “a crucial buffer between small isolated communities and the larger state and federal agencies.”

The Big Creek site also provided a base for the local fire chief whose volunteer department was destroyed by flooding, and a rotating set of deputies from across the state.

Marlon Jonnaert, a Marine Corps veteran who helped land helicopters at Big Creek, confirmed there was an effort to assess the threat to government and volunteer personnel.

Jonnaert told Raw Story that Stanley Holloway, the fire chief, received a phone call from the Yancey County Emergency Operations Center stating that “there was a militia threat that included Big Creek.”

Nathaniel Kavakich, leader of the Keystone Dynamic Solutions team and also a Marines veteran, said in a podcast interview he encountered 10 heavily armed men whose questions were markedly similar to those directed at the medics at Big Creek.

“Who are you with?” the men asked, according to Kavakich. “Where are you laying your head at night?”

Kavakich declined to comment.

Jonnaert told Raw Story he wouldn’t call Savage Freedoms a “militia” or characterize their actions as “threatening,” but said: “I will say that in those moments it seemed like they were energetically antagonizing the government and drawing attention to their operation.”

Adam Smith, a U.S. Army Special Forces operator turned motivational speaker who leads Savage Freedoms, told Raw Story his group deployed a “small team” to perform “human remains detection” in Relief, in Mitchell County, 22 miles from Big Creek Free Will Baptist Church.

But Smith said he doesn’t believe it was members of his team who asked questions about where medical workers slept, because the group didn’t receive its first shipment of T-shirts until late on Oct. 12 or early the next day.

“Whoever the medical team is claiming to speak to them, I don’t think it’s possible that they would have our shirt, and I don’t think it’s possible they had any affiliation,” Smith said.

Amid reports of threats across the region that weekend, Savage Freedoms found itself on the defensive, posting a video on Facebook warning against “imitators” and featuring Smith saying unnamed people “use the name to gain access” and “do things that we would not do.”

Following the arrest in Rutherford County for threatening FEMA, Smith said, a National Guard liaison visited Savage Freedoms’ base at a Harley-Davidson dealership in Swannanoa. Smith said the liaison asked: “Do you have any affiliation with any militia in North Carolina?”

“My answer was, ‘No, definitively not,’” Smith said.

Savage Freedoms’ activities also drew the attention of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, headquartered across the state at Fort Bragg. Smith told Raw Story “an individual with direct connections” to the command contacted him to inquire about “a rumor that I, Adam Smith, was leading militia forces to subvert the efforts of FEMA.”

‘Rumors about FEMA’

Hostility towards FEMA, fueled by misinformation, appeared to drive a wedge between the state EMS team and the local community, medical responders told Raw Story. With the storm cutting off communication in a region with a longstanding distrust of the federal government, conditions were ripe for rumors supercharged by partisan imperatives in the final stretch of the presidential campaign.

When the FEMA contract workers arrived in Yancey County, state counterparts advised them to remove FEMA placards from ambulances and remove FEMA IDs from their belts, the FEMA contract worker said.

“As the week that I was there went on, there was some rumors about FEMA,” Jerry Zimmerman, a paramedic on the state EMS team, told Raw Story. “That kind of started the division between the state-funded resources, and Keystone and the community.”

Zimmerman went home before the team evacuated, but on the day he left, he mentioned to Holloway “that those ambulances were FEMA-funded.” The response was “very stand-offish and very agitated,” Zimmerman recalled, adding that he apologized to Winslow for inadvertently creating a rift.

Zimmerman said the medical team wondered: “With these rumors going around, are we going to be lumped in with FEMA and is that going to cause an issue for us? It ultimately did.”

The decision to pull out was made by Kimberly Clement, program director for the state Office of Emergency Medical Services, the FEMA contract worker said. Clement referred Raw Story’s inquiry to the NC Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

A DHHS spokesperson confirmed the evacuation, but emphasized the input of the team on the ground while sidestepping a question about the role of state officials in Raleigh in the decision.

"On Oct. 12, 2024, several members of this team contacted the NC Emergency Medical Services (NCOEMS) staff at the State Emergency Operations Center and indicated they had concern related to the current operation of the site," said Summer Tonizzo, a DHHS press assistant. "Their concern justified the team leaving the site."

Justin Graney, chief of external affairs and communications for NC Emergency Management, told Raw Story: “The misinformation that occurred surrounding Helene was unprecedented and helped to generate mischaracterizations of what the response looked like, what resources were available, and how different levels of government were working together.”

‘They felt they were abandoned’

The medical team returned to Big Creek four days later and stayed another three weeks, but the evacuation had ruptured community trust.

“Several of us felt a lot of guilt,” the FEMA contract worker said. “This community had no access … These people who normally have a doctor’s office and pharmacy 20 minutes away, now it’s a two-and-a-half hour drive — if they can make it at all.”

Zimmerman noted that the area was already cut off by flooding.

“Whenever this happened, they felt like they were abandoned,” he said. “From the community in Yancey County, they had nothing. The only thing they had was each other. We come up there and provide services for the length that we did and evacuate for our safety. It’s almost like they were abandoned again.”

Members of Keystone Dynamic Solutions criticized the evacuation.

“We do not want to downplay the concern for safety of all government employees and soldiers,” one wrote on Instagram the day after. “We disagree with the decision to withdraw those federal and state personnel that the local population is trying to trust. What we are seeing is a catastrophic loss of rapport.”

An Instagram post by a member of the Keystone Dynamic Solutions team references the evacuation of the state medical team on the morning after.Instagram screenshot

The medical team left the Big Creek site without telling any of their counterparts, including Pastor Todd Robinson and the Keystone team, of their plan. Local residents who showed up for appointments the following day discovered the staff had vanished.

They left a trailer and tent. The FEMA contract worker who spoke on condition of anonymity said the team left behind antibiotics and steroids, but a deputy agreed to guard them. The worker said they personally kept all narcotics on their person and no controlled substances were left behind.

Ricky Wilson, who lives next to the church, told Raw Story: “The militia teams that was supposedly threatening them — I don’t know. I told them they didn’t have anything to worry about. Most people would take care of them.”

The medical team gave Wilson’s wife some medicine to help with her Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Wilson said. She has since passed away.

“They checked on people that needed medical help,” Wilson said. “Older folks that was pretty well stranded, they helped them with medications. They was very much a help to the community while they were here.”

Dante Capane, logistics operations chief for the Keystone Dynamic Solutions team, said the medics treated one of their volunteers for a cut on his eye. The FEMA contract worker said they treated another volunteer who got his finger stuck in a log splitter.

The medics also treated two boys involved in an ATV accident, the worker said. A helicopter evacuated one of the boys, the worker said, adding that the other boy sustained injuries that warranted evacuation but his mother refused to let medics treat him.

“We did a lot of family medicine, refills on heart medication, diuretics, people stopping by with rashes and bee stings,” the FEMA contract worker said.

Some members of the medical team questioned whether pulling out was the right decision. But Zimmerman, who left before the evacuation, said they made the right call.

“I agree wholeheartedly with the decision,” he said. “They felt there was a threat of violence. If I walk into a residence and there’s a threat against me, I have all the rights to evacuate that residence, and wait for law enforcement.”

The FEMA contract worker told Raw Story they believe the state Office of Emergency Medical Services chose not to publicly disclose the evacuation out of a desire to avoid controversy.

“I think the amount of negative coverage coming out of the area was already impinging on the government’s attempt to help the community,” they said.

“People were already scared. They had been spun up about the negative aspects. I think OEMS was hesitant to pour more fuel on the fire, especially when [the threat] couldn’t be proven one way or the other.”

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Since the fatal shooting of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband in an act described by a federal prosecutor as a “political assassination,” scrutiny has turned to suspect Vance Boelter’s ties to independent charismatic Christianity, in particular a movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).

Boelter is alleged to have posed as a police officer as he gunned down Democratic Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, in the early hours of June 14. In a separate shooting, he wounded state Sen. John A. Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette Hoffman. Investigators say Boelter visited two other lawmakers and had a list of 70 targets, including Democrats, civic leaders and abortion providers.

Boelter was described in a court filing supporting federal charges as embarking "on a planned campaign of stalking and violence, designed to inflict fear, injure, and kill members of the Minnesota state legislature and their families."

Researchers who study the Christian right have homed in on Boelter’s attendance at a Bible college in Dallas in the late 1980s and missionary work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he delivered sermons critical of abortion and LGBTQ+ people.

Christ For the Nations Institute (CFNI) confirmed that Boelter attended the college from 1988 to 1990, graduating with a “diploma in practical theology in leadership and pastoral.”

Christ For the Nations Institute has been a “merging space” for trends in independent charismatic Christianity, Matthew D. Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic Christian Jewish Studies, told the “Straight White American Jesus” podcast.

Those trends include dominionism — the idea of Christians taking control over the world — and NAR, which emerged in the mid-1990s.

Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, described NAR to Raw Story as a movement whose adherents believe God speaks directly to modern-day apostles and prophets, and which seeks to “restore their vision of what they think 1st-century Christianity was.”

Both Taylor and Clarkson note that Apostle Dutch Sheets, one of the major proponents of New Apostolic Reformation, attended CFNI in the 1970s and taught at the college in the following decade, potentially overlapping with Boelter.

Sheets reportedly met Trump officials at the White House one week before the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Staff at Dutch Sheets Ministries declined Raw Story’s request for an interview.

In the early 2010s, Sheets was executive director at CFNI, where a sign in the lobby displays a quote attributed to founder Gordon Lindsay: “Every Christian ought to pray at least one violent prayer a day.”

Following the Minnesota shootings, the institute said its leadership was “absolutely aghast and horrified that a CFNI alumnus is the suspect,” and that it “unequivocally rejects, denounces, and condemns any and all forms of violence and extremism, be it politically, racially, religiously or otherwise motivated.”

The statement rejected any notion the college’s teachings were “a contributing factor” to Boelter’s “evil behavior.”

The statement also claimed Lindsay’s comment about “violent prayer” has been misrepresented.

“By ‘violent prayer’ he meant that a Christian’s prayer life should be intense, fervent, and passionate, not passive and lukewarm,” the statement said, “considering that spiritual forces of darkness are focused on attacking life, identity in God, purpose, peace, love, joy, truth, health, and other good things.”

‘Five soccer balls’

Researchers who track the Christian right have taken note of a sermon Boelter preached in Congo in 2023.

“They don’t know abortion is wrong, many churches,” Boelter said, in comments first reported by Wired. “They don’t have the gifts flowing. God gives the body gifts. To keep balance. Because when the body starts moving in the wrong direction, when they’re one, and accepting the gifts, God will raise an apostle or prophet to correct their course.”

Clarkson told Raw Story Boelter’s rhetoric had a familiar ring.

“Nobody but someone influenced by the New Apostolic Reformation movement would say something like that,” Clarkson said.

But Taylor saw a broader strain of charismatic Christianity in Boelter’s sermonizing, connected to the Latter Rain movement, a precursor to NAR that emerged after World War II.

“Many people today would say those are NAR ideas, but they were Latter Rain ideas before they were NAR ideas,” Taylor said. “I don’t know where he picked up these ideas. He’s very clearly charismatic in his theology and in his preaching as well.”

In a sermon in Congo in 2022, Boelter used an odd metaphor involving soccer balls to suggest he was burdened with regrets.

“Do you understand what God has given us?” Boelter asked. “He’s given us eternity — with Him. And what does he ask? He says, ‘Life didn’t go the way I wanted it for you. But it wasn’t my fault. Vance, you sidetracked. You messed up your life. You took your five soccer balls, and you wrecked ’em.’

“But He says he loves us so much he came and he died to pay for it all. And he says, ‘Vance, do you want to trade your five wrecked soccer balls for all of these? Do you want to live forever with me? Then get on your face, Vance, and repent of your sins.”

Clarkson told Raw Story he thinks both personal troubles and exposure to ideas in the realm of charismatic Christianity could have factored into Boelter’s turn to political violence.

“If he’s in NAR all the way, and his marriage and his finances are falling apart, he may lean into his faith to find purpose,” Clarkson said. “If he thinks his life as he knows it is over, he may be thinking about trying to go out in a meaningful way.”

Boelter reportedly texted his family after the shootings: “Dad went to war last night.”

“He’s been planning these things for a long time; he was armed for it,” Clarkson said. “It was literally war. He did seem to assume he would be killed … When people commit violence out of religious motive, that’s profound.”

‘Priming the pump for violence’

Clarkson said that if it turns out Boelter is an NAR adherent, “this would be the first major example of the violent vision and rhetoric of the New Apostolic Reformation movement manifesting.”

On the other hand, Clarkson said, “if it turns out that he’s not NAR, it’s still the case that there are all these NAR leaders that have been teaching people that they are in an end-times war. They’re priming the pump for violence in their lifetime.”

Taylor suggested a different way of looking at Boelter’s attack.

Political discourse in the U.S. is “at a high boil,” Taylor said. While Boelter might have been influenced by hostility towards abortion and LGBTQ+ rights in right-wing media, Taylor noted that political violence is manifesting against an array of targets, with a firebombing attack against Jewish demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza in Colorado this month only one example.

“There’s so much of this bile in the far-right and right-wing and independent media spaces about abortion, and about LGBTQ+ rights,” Taylor said. “And that’s something that Boelter touches on in his sermons as well — about trans people, about Muslims, about immigrants.

“I worry that this is the harbinger of what’s to come. And we could see more attacks like this in the coming time, because he fits a very common profile.”

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A 19-year-old Ohio man who set up an online group chat and wrote scripts for Purgatory, a nihilistic swatting gang that targeted a casino, airport, trailer park and schools, has pleaded guilty in federal court.

Brayden Grace of Columbus, Ohio, appeared before Judge Julie Rebecca Rubin in Baltimore on Wednesday and pleaded guilty to conspiracy, cyberstalking, threat to damage and destroy by means of fire and other charges.

Grace was responsible for developing swatting scripts for a two-month coordinated campaign that sought to sow fear and tie up law enforcement resources across the U.S. in December 2023 and January 2024, according to prosecutors.

Grace's sentencing was scheduled for Aug. 14.

According to the indictment against Grace and two co-defendants, the swatting incidents, which involved members contacting law enforcement through masked phone numbers to solicit armed responses, included threats to burn down a trailer park in Alabama, shoot a teacher and students at a Delaware high school, and bombing and shooting threats against a casino in Columbus, Ohio and an airport in Albany, N.Y.

Purgatory is described by Marc-André Argentino, a leading scholar of nihilistic violent extremism, as a “subset of 764,” a sprawling global online network committed to extreme acts of sadism.

Argentino commented in an analysis published in February that the investigation “exposes a deeply concerning evolution of cyber-enabled criminal behavior.”

He described Purgatory as “a multifaceted criminal enterprise that seamlessly blends digital tactics — such as swatting, cyberstalking, doxxing, and online grooming — with overt acts of violence and exploitation in the real world.”

The government alleges that Grace boasted in an Instagram chat in December 2023: “My swat scrips are crazy … That’s how u get like a bomb squad and a few swat trucks.”

Three days later, he started a group chat on the social media platform Telegram called “Purgatory GC.”

Court documents describe Grace as an instigator of the coordinated, multi-state swatting campaign. The indictment alleges that he posted identifying information about a former associate in Alabama, along with the address of the Hollywood Casino in Columbus in January 2024. In the same month, Grace allegedly sent a private message to co-defendant Owen Jarboe with a Google map for a Massachusetts high school, writing, “Ayo we got a school to do tmr.”

After Grace posted the address of the casino, the indictment alleges, two unnamed co-conspirators who were minors called the Columbus Police Department threatening to blow up the casino and to “start shooting” and “kill everyone here,” unless authorities delivered $100,000 in cash and a helicopter.

Prosecutors pointed to a tangle of motivations behind the Purgatory members’ coordinated campaign. A statement of facts filed in Grace's case on Wednesday said pro-Purgatory members “engaged in swatting and doxxing to strike out at perceived rivals, gain online notoriety, attempt to make money, and for their own enjoyment.

“They did so to cause armed police responses to locations with the intent to threaten, intimidate, and harass individuals and entities,” prosecutors added.

The larger 764 network has caused increasing alarm for global law enforcement, with the FBI deeming it a “tier one” terrorism threat and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police classifying it as an “ideologically motivated violent extremist” entity.

Court documents indicate the Purgatory members are dealing with significant mental health issues.

One of Grace’s co-defendants, Evan Strauss, pleaded guilty to cyberstalking and child pornography in a separate case.

Strauss was originally set to be sentenced in May, but his lawyer asked for a delay based on the discovery that Strauss has “autism” and was diagnosed “with significantly low IQ.” The lawyer is seeking to have her client examined by a forensic psychologist for testing and analysis that could potentially be used as mitigating evidence.

Grace also has a history of mental health challenges. According to a local news report, he was the subject of a “missing children” report issued by the Columbus Police Department in 2021, when, as a 15-year-old, he hopped a fence from a juvenile detention facility where he was being treated for “mental health issues” and “suicidal thoughts.”

In May 2024, Grace was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted List. A federal magistrate judge in Ohio ordered him into pretrial detention after finding that Grace had evaded law enforcement for several weeks prior to his arrest.

“Defendant has no place to reside if released, and has serious unaddressed mental health and substance abuse issues,” Magistrate Judge Kimberly A. Jolson wrote. “As charged, defendant engaged in computer/telephonic crimes that are difficult to monitor. He has been convicted of these types of crimes in the past, and his criminal conduct is escalating.”

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A far-right Pennsylvania activist and podcaster has suggested Donald Trump should be executed and FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino tortured, in both cases for failing to provide evidence in support of antisemitic conspiracy theories.

“Donald Trump, along with every other president since John F. Kennedy, is a traitor to their country,” Matthew Wakulik wrote on X last month. “This is just another example of why 95% of all federal government employees should be tried for treason and given the maximum penalty.”

Wakulik was angered by Trump’s failure to declassify government files on the Israeli military’s 1967 attack on a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Liberty, which was determined to have been a mistake.

In May, on The Berm Pit Podcast, which he co-hosts with Scott Siverts, a former U.S. Marine, Wakulik responded to a Fox Business interview in which Patel and Bongino discussed the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex trafficker who died by suicide in August 2019, in a New York jail.

Angered because Patel and Bongino failed to say Epstein was an agent of the Israeli intelligence services, Wakulik advocated “torture to get information, to extract information … whether it’s waterboarding or sleep deprivation.”

Wakulik has also advocated shooting Susie Wiles, Trump’s White House chief of staff.

The FBI and the Department of Justice declined to comment.

‘Show of force’

Since Trump entered politics in 2015, conspiracy theories wielded against political enemies have been a defining trait of his movement.

Wakulik, a Pittsburgh-area resident who regularly disgorges violent antisemitic rhetoric, recalled in the most recent episode of his podcast that in 2020, during Trump’s first term, he attended a rally in Richmond, Va. while armed with an AR-15 rifle that was meant as a “show of force,” to dissuade the then-Democratic controlled state legislature from passing gun control measures.

Days before the protest, Trump tweeted: “Your 2nd Amendment is under very serious attack in the Great Commonwealth of Virginia. That’s what happens when you vote for Democrats, they take your guns away.”

Wakulik recalled in a video posted to X on May 29 that he and his “militia” showed up at the rally “armed, full body armor, AR-15s and everything” at the rally. He attributed the legislators’ ultimate decision to vote down the gun-control measures to an “armed show of force.”

“There is nothing that works — and the government knows this — other than the threat of violence or violence itself,” Wakulik said.

While steeped in conspiracy theories familiar to the MAGA base, Wakulik appears to have become increasingly disdainful towards Trump.

Much of his ire appears to center on the Epstein case, which Trump aides have used to feed supporters’ appetite for conspiracy theories. For mainstream Trump followers, the case taps into suspicions about an ill-defined global elite, usually linked to Democrats. For hardliners inclined towards white nationalism and antisemitism, links to Israel or a mythical Jewish cabal are also common.

Before he became the FBI director, Patel promoted the idea that the U.S. government was engaged in a cover-up to protect powerful allies.

In December 2023, Patel told conservative media figure Glenn Beck that Epstein’s “black book” of contacts was “under the control of the director of the FBI.”

“And that’s the thing I think President Trump should run on,” Patel said. “On day one, roll out the black book.”

The same day, Patel told conservative influencer Benny Johnson the FBI was protecting Epstein “because of who’s on that list,” adding: “You don’t think [Microsoft founder] Bill Gates is lobbying Congress night and day to prevent the disclosure of that list?”

Patel added: “Put on your big-boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are. We have an election coming up, and we need to adjudicate this matter at the polls.”

After Trump’s victory, Patel was nominated as FBI director but did not stop pushing Epstein conspiracy theories. Speaking to Johnson in November 2024, Patel predicted Trump would “come in here and maybe give [the American people] the Epstein list.”

The political establishment was “terrified” at the prospect, Patel claimed.

In February, with Trump in power, Attorney General Pam Bondi attempted to placate supporters’ hunger for revelations by inviting conservative influencers to the Department of Justice to receive binders of Epstein case files. However, the stunt was widely ridiculed by Trump supporters who noted that it brought little new information to light.

This month, in a joint interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Patel and Bongino appeared to close the book on the Epstein case. As a lawyer with prosecutorial and defense experience who had visited detention facilities, Patel said, “you know a suicide when you see one, and that’s what that was.”

Bongino said: “He killed himself. I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself.”

The next day, Wakulik and Siverts took stock.

Siverts said: “As a government, why can’t we just say, ‘Hey look, this guy, he was Mossad, and what he was doing here was this.’ Will we ever hear that from a government official here?”

Wakulik responded that the solution was for people to “demand by whatever means necessary that the truth comes out.”

“People are mad, but they don’t do anything about it,” he complained. “How would one pressure anyone into getting the truth out of them?”

“Through physical force,” Siverts said.

“Yes,” Wakulik said. “This is why they call [it] torture, right? Torture to get information, to extract information. This is why you apply physical violence or any type of, like, uncomfortability when it comes to torture techniques, whether it’s waterboarding or sleep deprivation.”

Raw Story reached out to the FBI National Press Operations unit in Washington, D.C. to request a comment from Patel. The FBI declined to comment on Patel’s behalf.

In fact, Wakulik soured on the Trump administration long before Patel and Bongino talked to Bartiromo.

Following the 2024 election, Wakulik suggested grading Trump’s appointees “on a scale of how many bullets I put in their heads,” according to video archived by a pseudonymous researcher tracking his statements and provided to Raw Story. Asked by his co-host to rate Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, Wakulik responded: “Five bullets.”

In posts to X, Wakulik has equated supposed Israeli influence over the U.S. government with British colonial rule in North America, while calling for “1776 style action” against “ZOG,” a white supremacist acronym that stands for “Zionist Occupied."

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has made antisemitism its central rationale for deporting international students who support Palestine and defunding universities deemed improperly liberal. Such efforts include a Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, which the administration pledges will “eradicate antisemitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.”

The Department of Justice did not respond to an inquiry from Raw Story about whether Wakulik’s statements deserved attention from the task force.

‘Go kinetic’

Wakulik has suggested he might be willing to act on his violent beliefs.

In a May 2 X post, Walkulik suggested “the militia” should go to Rochester, Minn. to hold a rally in support of a white woman widely condemned for calling a child the N-word in a public park. When another X user suggested the time wasn’t ripe for such a display, Wakulik replied: “I admit I am in a different position than most: I have no children and I really don’t have much to lose. In that aspect I’m more eager to go kinetic.”

In late April, the researcher tracking Wakulik’s statements submitted a report to police where Wakulik lives, in Washington County, southwest of Pittsburgh.

“We were previously unaware that Mr. Wakulik resided within our jurisdiction, and the information you have shared will be valuable in allowing us to maintain a vigilant watch,” Sgt. Gary Scherer of the North Strabane Township Police Department wrote in an email reviewed by Raw Story.

“As part of this, we will conduct a threat assessment, consult with our local FBI office, and likely speak to Mr. Wakulik.”

The following day, Wakulik posted a video reporting that his landlord told his wife a police officer visited their house to confirm that he lived there and that the officer “said it was for another agency.”

Wakulik said, “We are being surveilled currently, probably followed by either the FBI or [the Department of Homeland Security] or both.”

A spokesperson for the FBI’s Pittsburgh office told Raw Story the agency was unable to provide additional information.

Sgt. Scherer’s email said it appeared that Wakulik’s statements fell under First Amendment protections, but he would consult with the district attorney’s office to obtain a legal opinion. The Office of the Washington County District Attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Wakulik could not be reached for comment.

In recent weeks, Wakulik and Siverts have discussed their plans to attend a reunion of USS Liberty veterans, scheduled to take place in Norfolk, Va. this weekend. Siverts said Wakulik was scheduled to speak at the event, and that both men had been issued press passes.

Moe Shafer, executive director of the Liberty Veterans Association, told a local news outlet that “any agenda for antisemitism or Jew hating… will not be allowed.”

Emails to the Liberty Veterans Association from Raw Story seeking clarification on Wakulik’s participation went unreturned.

Stew Peters, a podcaster with a history of antisemitic statements, has also said he plans to speak at the event. But last week an event organizer told WTKR News 3 that Marriott Bonvoy, the owner of the Sheraton Norfolk Waterside Hotel, where the event will take place, banned Peters from the premises.

Siverts expressed concern on the podcast last week that he and Wakulik's statements might put them in legal jeopardy, especially in light of the fatal attack on two Israeli embassy aides in Washington, D.C. on May 21. Siverts said he worried that “the FBI can come back from an incident that’s a violent incident where somebody was harmed or somebody was killed, and they go, ‘Well, he watched this podcast, and we need to hold this podcast accountable, too.”

Wakulik was unrepentant.

“They come and try to get me, I’m going to defend myself from violent criminals trying to commit an act of violence — a violent crime against me,” Wakulik said.

“But they’re police, Matt,” Siverts replied.

“If they break the law and use violent force to break the law against me, I’m going to defend myself from violent criminals,” Wakulik insisted.

U.S. officials who specialize in terrorism prevention are bracing for their office to be eliminated or broken up as the State Department readies to root out what Secretary Marco Rubio calls a “radical political ideology” embedded in a “sprawling bureaucracy.”

The plan to eliminate the Office of Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), along with offices that further human rights and prevent war crimes, was first reported by the Free Press. Rubio appeared to confirm the reporting, sharing a link and describing “the real exclusive on how we’re making the State Department Great Again.”

“I don’t know what the plans are, and I’m not sure that the department or Secretary Rubio knows,” Ian Moss, a former counterterrorism official, told Raw Story. “But to dilute the concerted efforts by the office and push it out to other parts of the department will have real fundamental impact on our ability to engage in thoughtful preventive action. And it will ultimately make us less safe.”

Moss oversaw CVE during the Biden administration, as deputy coordinator for counterterrorism, and now practices at the law firm Jenner & Block. While the “speed” and “thin justification” for cuts across the federal government belies the notion that there is any coherent plan, Moss said, he believes former colleagues are “anticipating that their office will be closed.”

Part of the Bureau of Counterterrorism, CVE uses tools including counter-messaging, international cooperation and intelligence sharing, and rehabilitation.

The State Department did not directly address a question from Raw Story about plans for CVE, but instead pointed to a proposed organization chart that showed the Counterterrorism Bureau moved to report to the Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security. The move “will make the office stronger and better postured to stay ahead of America’s adversaries,” the department said, in a statement attributed to an unnamed senior official.

Moss said: “If you are successful on your CVE effort at one end of the spectrum, then you don’t have to drop bombs at the other end of the spectrum.”

That was a striking contrast to the philosophy of Sebastian Gorka, the White House counterterrorism advisor who likes to highlight a military strike ordered by President Donald Trump against an ISIS base in a cave complex in northern Somalia as indicative of the administration’s new counterterrorism policy. Gorka’s X biography includes the acronym “WWFY&WWKY,” which stands for “we will find you and we will kill you.”

From 2022 to 2024, Moss had a unique view of how CVE’s work intersected with other areas of counterterrorism because he also oversaw the Office of Terrorist Detentions. He said the offices “worked hand-in-glove” to repatriate hundreds of women and children from Al Hol, a camp in northeast Syria for people displaced by ISIS, to home countries in central Asia. CVE worked “to help returnees receive rehabilitative services and reintegrate into their communities of origin.”

“That would be devastating if that work goes away,” said William Braniff, executive director at the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab at American University. “If there are not programs to de-risk these individuals, and if these individuals don’t have empowering opportunities elsewhere, they will find empowering opportunities with extremist groups again.”

In March, after eight probationary members of his staff were terminated, Braniff resigned as director of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, better known as CP3, at the Department of Homeland Security.

Braniff said he expects that office will be shut down completely. Braniff described CVE and CP3 as “sister offices”, one focused abroad, the other on the homeland.

‘Extremists of all stripes’

Trump officials are signaling diminished interest in combating the threat of white supremacist terror. In 2017, Gorka said white supremacy was not a problem. Since returning to the White House in January, he has remained silent on the matter.

FBI Director Kash Patel previously accused the Biden administration of fabricating the threat of domestic terrorism as a pretext for harassing conservatives. Following his FBI nomination, a spokesperson for the Trump transition told Raw Story Patel would “protect Americans from terrorism,” without addressing his view of white supremacist threats.

While more of CVE’s work has focused on Islamist extremism and “misuse of technology by extremists of all stripes,” Moss said the office “has also been the principal driver of addressing racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism, including white identity terrorism.”

The National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, released under Joe Biden in 2021, identified white supremacist and anti-government extremism as the most lethal terrorism threats to the United States. Academic research consistently supports that conclusion.

“The reality is, unfortunately, the United States is a propagator of white identity terrorism,” Moss said. “REMVE [racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists] actors and white identity actors abroad draw inspiration and community — both virtually and in person — with folks who are based in the United States … That has implications if the United States is pushing out an extremist ideology.

“It’s akin to how folks characterized Saudi Arabia in the context of Islamist extremism. We are the Saudi Arabia of white identity terrorism.”

In January, the State Department named the Terrorgram Collective as a specially designated global terrorism entity. Court filings by federal prosecutors have tied the two American leaders of Terrorgram to attacks in Brazil, Slovakia and Turkey.

“The CVE bureau has REMVE as part of its portfolio, which will go away,” Braniff said.

The State Department did not respond to a question about how the loss of CVE might affect its ability to combat white supremacist violence.

The Trump administration’s move to dismantle the prevention approach is not just a departure from the Biden administration’s counterterrorism program.

According to Christopher Costa, who was special assistant to President Trump and senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council in 2017, the U.S. government revised its terrorism prevention strategy beyond jihadism to address racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism during the first administration.

The National Strategy for Counterterrorism, released in 2018, prominently highlighted “prevention.” Since the 9/11 attacks, the strategy observed, the U.S. has “built a robust counterterrorism architecture to stop attacks and eliminate terrorists, but we have not developed prevention architectures to thwart terrorist radicalization and recruitment.

“Unless we counter terrorist radicalization and recruitment, we will be fighting a never-ending battle against terrorism in the homeland, overseas, and online,” the document warned. “Our strategy, therefore, will champion and institutionalize prevention and create a global prevention architecture with the help of civil society, private partners, and the technology industry.”

Costa told the journal for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point that broadening the scope of counterterrorism strategy allowed the State Department to name the Russian Imperial Movement as a specially designated global terrorist entity. The State Department issued the designation, the first against a white supremacist group, in the final year of Trump’s first term.

“Frankly, by virtue of the United States being the leading propagator of white identity terrorism, this country, in my view, has a moral obligation to marshal resources to mitigate that threat,” Moss told Raw Story.

Under Biden, the State Department, the Department of Justice, and Europol organized three Counterterrorism Law Enforcement Forums focusing on the threat of transnational racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism, most recently in July 2024 at the Hague.

In remarks at that conference, Moss highlighted a racially motivated stabbing in Finland by a member of Nordic Resistance Front, a specially designated global terrorist group. He went on to say that “the forum serves as the only platform solely focused on REMVE that brings together law enforcement officials, criminal justice practitioners, financial regulators, and policymakers from over 40 countries and multilateral entities, as well as non-government experts.”

CVE handled preparation for the conferences, Moss said.

National interest first

The report about State Department reorganization that received Rubio’s approval — based on unspecified “internal documents” — appears to reflect both Trump’s lack of interest in white supremacist threats and his preoccupation with Mexican drug cartels. The Free Press reported that “officials in the Trump administration are of the mind that the CVE programs” at the Bureau of Counterterrorism “duplicate others in the agency, including programs at a bureau focused on international narcotics.”

Moss said there was no rational basis for merging the two programs.

“I’m pretty sure that Gen. [Michael] Kurilla at Central Command would not tell you that battling ISIS is the same as battling the Sinaloa Cartel,” he said.

The State Department did not respond to a request for a timeline for the reorganization, but Defense One recently reported that undersecretaries are expected to submit staff-cut plans by May 19, and office eliminations and reduction-in-force notices will go out starting June 2. But that timeline could be pushed back due to litigation brought by federal employees.

Rubio has signaled that the Trump administration is more focused on narrow national interest than multilateral cooperation.

“In its current form, the department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition,” he said last month.

Braniff said the implosion of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships at the Department of Homeland Security meant Americans can expect less financial assistance to prevention programs in the form of grants to cities, counties and tribal governments, therefore reducing free training on behavioral threat assessment and management teams designed to divert perpetrators of school shootings and other mass casualty attacks.

Based on his familiarity with the State Department, Braniff said the demise of CVE was likely to produce dismal outcomes.

“Foreign fighter recidivism is more likely overseas, including among international terrorist organizations that seek to attack the United States at home and abroad,” he said.

“There’ll be fewer development programs overseas that are addressing underlying factors that can lead to international terrorism overseas. Less focus on transnational REMVE, which increases the likelihood of it thriving domestically and abroad.”

Dexter Ingram, the current CVE director, alluded to the shift away from prevention in a video posted to YouTube on Monday. His remarks were geared towards encouraging young people to enter public service, but he acknowledged the political climate.

“One of the things that I love [is] seeing the formers — the ones who almost crossed that line [to committing an attack] — firsthand get involved,” he said. “I’ve seen that happen in Europe, in the UK, in Vienna, in Oslo. There are university centers now that are popping up and networks of universities and mayors getting involved in this, and sharing best practices.

“And I’m afraid that where we are right now is kind of pulling back on some of those issues and priorities and funding, and some of those just conversations are going to make us, as a nation, more vulnerable and make the world more dangerous.”

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Ed Martin, Donald Trump’s embattled pick for U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, once told an AR-15-toting fringe religious group that institutions preventing Trump from overturning the 2020 election would fall like Jericho, according to footage reviewed by Raw Story but now seemingly removed from the internet by the group concerned.

“We’re gonna have Jericho March, Jericho March all around,” Martin said, alluding to the Biblical story of how Joshua led the Israelite army to attack the city of Jericho and slaughter its inhabitants.

“And if these principalities won’t yield to the truth and the Constitution, we know what happened in Jericho.”

Martin was then a Missouri Republican activist best known for leading Eagle Forum, a group formed by the arch-conservative Phyllis Schlafly.

He spoke outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 9, 2020, less than a month before Congress would convene a joint session to certify the electoral votes for the next president.

On Jan. 6 2021, when Congress convened, a mob of supporters who Trump told to “fight like hell” in his cause stormed the Capitol building. The attack failed to overturn Joe Biden’s election win but is now linked to nine deaths. In January, after Trump returned to power, he issued pardons and commutations for about 1,500 people in relation to the attack.

After being named top prosecutor for D.C. in an acting capacity, Martin personally dismissed charges against Jan. 6 defendants still awaiting trial.

Now, though, Martin’s chances of being confirmed in a permanent capacity appear to be foundering, amid concerns about his connections to the Capitol attack and his role in the “Stop the Steal” movement that fueled it.

‘We speak His truth’

Amid a frenzy of reporting on Martin's chances of confirmation, Martin’s speech outside the Supreme Court on Dec. 9 has been little remarked. But it reveals a startling moment.

Martin spoke to Rod of Iron Ministries, a breakaway sect from the Unification Church that worships with AR-15 rifles and is led by Pastor Sean Moon, son of the late Sun Myung Moon, who is revered by followers as the second coming of Christ.

On Jan. 6, Sean Moon would lead followers to the Capitol. Later, in an Instagram post, Moon celebrated rioters who he said “took dominion of the Satanic temple,” while sending “the most powerful people on the planet scurrying away, like rats, in total fear, total panic, in tunnels.”

On Dec. 9, Martin approached the group, which was preparing to rally in support of Trump. Dressed in a tan overcoat, he asked if he could borrow their microphone.

Introducing himself as “one of the founders of Stop the Steal,” Martin sought to encourage Moon and his followers to not get too hung up on whether Trump’s effort to overturn the election got snagged at the Supreme Court, and to keep fighting regardless.

Speaking with religious fervor, Martin entwined a vision of a Christian nation with unstinting loyalty to Trump.

“We are a republic founded on a Constitution and the rule of law,” Martin said. “But the Constitution and the rule of law mean nothing if you do not have the Judeo-Christian values that underlie it.

“Every one of us has turned to repent to the Lord; our nation has too. But we also turn to our fellow man, and say, ‘Do your job.’”

“Do your job! Do your job!” Rod of Iron members chanted.

The “fake news,” Martin warned, would say the Supreme Court’s decision on whether to hear challenges to the election would determine the winner. Not true, claimed Martin: “We all know at the end of today, the winner’s Jesus Christ almighty God.”

Trust the lawyers to fight the legal battles, Martin said, adding that the Rod of Iron members should stay focused on a greater truth.

“We speak His truth,” Martin said, “and then we bring our truth down here. And we have to be — like the old days — evangelizers of the truth, in the country, in this nation, because there’s too much at stake for us to turn away now. So, here’s the thing: Be encouraged. Be strengthened. Be fortified. And pray. But be ready to keep fighting.”

Martin then invited the Rod of Iron members to come back to the Supreme Court in three days for a “Jericho March,” alluding to the grisly fate of that city.

Video of Martin’s speech was filmed by Kyle Yoder, a supporter of Sean Moon, and posted on a YouTube channel named “Kingdom Generation” under the title “The Second King in front of the US Supreme Court,” an apparent reference to Moon.

Raw Story reviewed, transcribed and took screenshots of the video in July 2021. The video now appears to have been taken down.

Ed Martin (right) and Pastor Sean Moon, leader of Rod of Iron Ministries, hold up a "Stop the Steal" sign at the Supreme Court on Dec. 9, 2020.Courtesy Kingdom Generation YouTube channel

On Dec. 12, 2020, a “Jericho March” went ahead. One of the speakers was Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, who called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act or face a “much more desperate, much more bloody war.”

After the Capitol attack, Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 18 years in federal prison. He was released in January after receiving a commutation from Trump.

Martin was present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but was not charged. As an attorney, he represented some Jan. 6 defendants and became a fixture on conservative outlets that sought to recast the rioters as patriots duped by either “antifa” — leftwing groups — or the FBI.

In one 2024 podcast, Martin said he supported pardons even for defendants who were violent on Jan. 6, reasoning that “this whole thing was such a setup that, while I would never condone hitting a cop, the people that were put in a position and charged with that were put in a position.

“It’s not entrapment — it’s much more sophisticated than entrapment. It’s much more like an incitement on behalf of the entire system to get a result, and then to name it [insurrection]. And so I’m for pardoning all the people that were related to January 6, because I think it was such an egregious thing.”

‘No tolerance for anybody who entered the building’

After Trump’s return to power, Martin’s nomination as U.S. attorney for D.C. seemed set to succeed.

But Martin’s comments on Jan. 6 appear to have become a dealbreaker for some Republicans. While U.S. attorney appointments typically move through the Senate to confirmation without controversy, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who chairs the Judiciary Committee, hasn’t scheduled a vote on Martin’s nomination.

In a more worrying sign for Martin, at the Capitol on Tuesday, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a key swing vote, told ABC News that after meeting with Martin, he could not support him.

“I think anybody who breached the perimeter should have been in prison for some time,” Tillis said, of those who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6. “Whether it’s 30 days or three years is debatable, but I have no tolerance for anybody who entered the building on January 6, and that’s probably where most of the friction was.”

When Trump was impeached for inciting the Capitol attack, Tillis voted to acquit, though he said Trump’s “words and actions were reckless and he shares responsibility for the disgrace that occurred on Jan. 6.”

Since Trump’s return to power, Tillis has expressed opposition to Jan. 6 pardons. But he must walk a political tightrope, towards a reelection bid in North Carolina that is expected to be among the closest contests next year. Angering Trump would put him at risk of a primary defeat.

Trump has spoken to senators. Nonetheless, on Tuesday, majority leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters he thought Tillis’s opposition would leave Martin’s nomination stuck in committee, and thus doomed. ABC said Tillis could still vote to advance Martin’s nomination to the full Senate, just without his support.

Raw Story requested comment from Martin, via the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He did not respond.

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National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was removed this week but a key Trump counterterrorism official remains in place at the White House — and he's planning a change in strategy to focus on jihadists rather than white supremacist groups that one leading expert said remain a significant domestic threat.

"The call is coming from inside the house," said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. "We all understand why the right doesn't want to tackle domestic violent extremism — it's their base."

The Trump official is Sebastian Gorka, an Anglo-Hungarian-American academic who spent seven months in the first Trump White House as a national security strategist before being removed. Closely connected to Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon, Gorka's far-right views have proved consistently controversial. His return to the White House generated protests from former Trump advisers, who called him names including “conman” and “clown.”

Regardless, Gorka is promising a new policy focused on “killing jihadis,” thereby downplaying, if not altogether abandoning, a Biden-era emphasis on white supremacist threats.

Now deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism in the National Security Council, Gorka is by his own estimation an expert on “Middle Eastern jihadism, al-Qaida [and] ISIS.” His X biography includes the acronym “WWFY&WWKY,” which stands for “we will find you and we will kill you.”

This week, Gorka wrote for Breitbart News that Trump has “already engineered a complete reversal in American counterterrorism policy.”

Gorka recounted a meeting with Trump and Waltz during the second week of the new administration. Gorka and Waltz laid a map on the Resolute Desk, showing a cave complex in northern Somalia that was being used as a base by ISIS, Gorka said.

“Kill them, and kill them now,” Trump said, according to Gorka. Thirty hours later, he said, the men were in the Situation Room “watching living hell rain down” on the caves.

'Back to the basics'

Speaking last week at Semafor’s World Economy Summit, Gorka said the new counterterrorism plan, expected to be ready in the coming month, will be “utterly, completely” different from the strategy under Joe Biden. Gorka said the new plan will “go back to the basics,” as “the majority of threats we face are jihadi terrorists.”

In his preface to the 2021 National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, Biden highlighted white supremacist attacks: the 2015 massacre of Black worshipers at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh that was targeted for supporting immigrants, and the 2019 slaughter of Latinos at a Walmart in El Paso, Tex. by a gunman who echoed the Trump epithet “invaders.”

Though it cited an array of violent ideologies, the national strategy asserted that “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (principally those who promote the superiority of the white race) and militia violent extremists are assessed as presenting the most persistent and lethal threats.”

Like other officials in the Trump administration, Gorka has said little if anything publicly about the threat posed by violent neo-Nazi accelerationists, who seek to bring about the collapse of society through mass shootings and industrial sabotage.

But Gorka has in the past downplayed white supremacy. In 2017, as an adviser in the first Trump White House, he told Breitbart, where he was previously a national security editor, that where terrorism was concerned, white supremacy was not a problem. Three days later in Charlottesville, Va. a man who had rallied with the white supremacist group Vanguard America drove a car into a group of peaceful anti-racist protesters, killing a young woman, Heather Heyer. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the attack “domestic terrorism.”

Gorka could not be reached for comment for this story. Lewis, from George Washington University, worried that a national strategy on terrorism that erases references to racial motivation might discourage FBI agents from seeking authorization to investigate white supremacist plots.

“In the face of overwhelming statistical evidence, there is a complete unwillingness to acknowledge the reality, because it would fly in the face of their narrative,” Lewis told Raw Story. “It’s not going to go away. We can put our heads in the sand and pretend it’s not happening. There’s still going to be mass shootings, even if we don’t acknowledge that they’re motivated by white supremacy, and the FBI just calls them ‘sad white boys.’

“If anything, the complete inability of the administration to even acknowledge the problem will afford these individuals a more permissive environment to recruit, radicalize and carry out attacks.”

'Growing threat'

In his recent article for Breitbart, Gorka charged that the Biden administration “ignored the growing threat of global jihadism.”

Under the Biden administration, the FBI arrested an Afghan national who allegedly planned a mass casualty attack on Election Day in the name of ISIS. In total, Lewis said, 10 ISIS supporters were arrested in the U.S. in 2024.

On New Year's Eve, a man inspired by ISIS used his truck to attack revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 14 people. Before that, Lewis said, the last lethal jihadi attack on U.S. soil occurred in 2019, when a Saudi airman taking courses at Naval Air Station Pensacola murdered three U.S. sailors.

Since then, avowed white supremacists have carried out mass shootings targeting African Americans in Buffalo, N.Y., resulting in 10 deaths, and Jacksonville, Fla., with three deaths.

In terms of disrupted plots, a review by Raw Story found that since 2021, the FBI has disrupted at least three attempts to attack the power grid by white supremacists affiliated with the Terrorgram Collective, a group recently designated by the State Department as a global terrorist entity. In the same period, the FBI disrupted at least six plots by white supremacists to carry out lethal attacks against police officers and LGBTQ+ people.

Gorka has also promised changes in emphasis on resources used to counter terror groups. For Breitbart, he wrote that the centerpiece of Trump’s counterterrorism approach will be “allowing our special operators, the intelligence community, and the bravest warfighters in the world to deal death to those who have the blood of Americans on their hands or who are plotting to murder our citizens.”

ProPublica, however, has reported that the new administration has cut nearly 20 percent of the workforce at a Department of Homeland Security center responsible for “strengthen[ing] the nation’s ability to prevent targeted violence and terrorism nationwide, through funding, training, evidence-based resources and increasing public awareness across every level of government, the private sector, and local communities.”

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A former North Carolina National Guard member remains in reserve status — part of a pool of soldiers on standby for deployment — more than 18 months after the Army initiated an investigation into his extremist activities, Raw Story has learned.

The Army Human Resources Command opened an investigation on Christopher Woodall in September 2023 after Raw Story confirmed that while serving in the National Guard, he organized a “white nationalist” paramilitary group that held at least one weekend training in rural North Carolina. The report also revealed that Woodall used a Telegram channel to recruit for the group while claiming his experience included “running a state for the KKK”, or Ku Klux Klan, and demonstrating with the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group.

After leaving the National Guard in April 2023, Woodall went into the Individual Ready Reserve with a four-year service obligation through 2027. The reserve may be mobilized during natural disasters or in times of national crisis, as was the case during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Army completed its investigation of Woodall, now 36, in late 2024, Maj. Heba Bullock, a spokesperson for the Human Resources Command, told Raw Story. Woodall remains in reserve status, but Bullock indicated that could change once the Army notifies him of the outcome of its probe.

The Army is unable to disclose that outcome without Woodall’s consent, Bullock said. Once that is obtained, likely in about a month, she would be able to reveal if he remains on reserve.

Bullock indicated it was doubtful Woodall would be deployed in the meantime.

“If they got in trouble, they’d be flagged, pending the outcome of the investigation,” she said. “The next steps would be to notify them if they’re going to be processed for separation. Those that are marked for any type of flagged status won’t be sent to serve in any capacity.”

Woodall could not be reached for comment for this story.

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told Raw Story the Army’s process did not need to be so slow.

“I don’t understand for the life of me why this hasn’t been concluded, and he hasn’t been tossed out,” Beirich said. “The evidence is so clear. What is taking so long to settle this? He’s clearly dangerous. He shouldn’t be affiliated with the military in any way whatsoever.”

Guidance issued by the Department of Defense “expressly prohibits military personnel from actively advocating supremacist, extremist, or criminal gang doctrine, ideology, or causes or actively participating in such organizations.”

When Woodall was recruiting for his whites-only paramilitary group, he was also serving in the North Carolina National Guard, which can be called upon to respond to natural disasters and quell riots. His service overlapped with employment as a detention officer at the Greensboro Jail, from September 2020 to February 2022. Telegram chats reviewed by Raw Story showed that while Woodall was working at the jail, he was also organizing a chapter of a far-right group, the American Guard, that was closely aligned with the Proud Boys neo-fascist gang.

Woodall told Raw Story he was suspended from the detention officer job by the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office after getting into a fistfight resulting from a road rage incident. He was charged with misdemeanor simple affray, but local prosecutors dropped the charge.

Woodall said he left the sheriff’s office voluntarily because he didn’t appreciate how he was “treated by leadership” and found the job stressful.

In the private chat Woodall used to organize the paramilitary group, he made no secret that it was meant for white people.

“As stated before, I run a white nationalist training group here in Central Carolina,” he wrote in March 2023. “We train in firearms, combat tactics, gear setup, medical care, homesteading and general orientation of your favorite flavor of SHTF.”

Contacted by Raw Story, Woodall said “SHTF” — an acronym for “s--- hits the fan” was “a generalization” for preparing “for a societal collapse.”

In a post to his TikTok channel, Woodall used the phrase “RaHoWa.” A popular slogan in the white power movement dating back to the 1980s, the phrase is short for “racial holy war.”

Woodall told Raw Story he meant the phrase as “satire,” and did not espouse violence unless it was in self-defense. Nor, he said, did he espouse “overthrowing any government” or “a white takeover of any country.”

He said, “I don’t see it as an issue to have a white-friendly group of people that get together and teach each other.”

In April 2023, Woodall planned a second weekend training, posting an agenda that included a course on “firearms fundamentals/live fire,” one on “team movement” and close-quarters battle tactics (CQB), and another on patrols and assessing enemy capability.

Woodall wrote on Telegram: “I have 8 years experience in the Army (combat arms), and law enforcement. A further 2 years of private out-of-pocket training with various groups and instructors in CQB, contractor courses, and defense scenarios.”

Six days before the training, Woodall canceled it, citing lack of interest. Around that time, he separated from the North Carolina National Guard, on completion of a four-year contract.

The same year, while serving in the Individual Ready Reserve, Woodall posted videos on TikTok expressing support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and accepted a compliment from a pro-Russia account regarding his strength as a weight-lifter.

Despite U.S. government support for Ukraine, Woodall told Raw Story he believed his pro-Russia views were protected under the First Amendment and shouldn’t preclude him from serving in the U.S. armed forces.

Following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, by supporters of Donald Trump seeking to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a military stand-down to address extremism in the ranks. Austin established a working group with an ambitious set of goals, including improving screening to divert extremists from the recruiting process and standing up an investigative unit to weed extremists from the ranks. Two years later, a USA Today investigation found the unit had made almost no progress.

Later, a study commissioned by the Defense Department downplayed the existence of extremism in the military. According to an Associated Press report, it relied on outdated numbers.

“Under the Biden administration, which wasn’t super transparent about their efforts, at least they cared,” Beirich said. “You have to infer that this is no longer a priority.”

The investigation into Woodall, which stretched from September 2023 to late 2024, was completed before Biden left office. Efforts to root out military extremism are expected to halt under Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary in the second Trump administration.

In his Senate confirmation hearing in January, Hegseth shared his disdain.

“Things like focusing on extremism have created a climate inside our ranks that feels political when it hasn’t ever been political,” he said. “Those are the types of things that are going to change.”

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Ivan Raiklin, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who calls himself the “secretary of retribution,” has circulated a so-called “Deep State target list” of President Donald Trump’s political enemies for more than a year now.

Although his promise of spectacular “live-streamed” arrests of hundreds of political figures up to and including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on fancifully concocted charges of treason and other purported violations of law has yet to materialize, Raiklin was able to enlist new allies after Trump vacated the convictions of more than 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants.

Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, respectively the former leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, joined Raiklin on an X space on Sunday night to call for retaliatory arrests against those they hold responsible for the Jan. 6 prosecutions.

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The two men were both convicted of seditious conspiracy, with Tarrio serving a 22-year sentence and Rhodes serving an 18-year sentence. Alone among the leadership cadre of the two groups, Tarrio received a full pardon, while Rhodes’s sentence was commuted.

“These are people who have already committed treason,” Raiklin said during the call on Sunday night to discuss retribution against the vast array of government officials who played a role in holding the Jan. 6 insurrectionists accountable. “I’ve seen the evidence. Those that went to January 6^th and protested the illegal election knew and saw that these criminals were there.”

Tarrio joined Raiklin in urging Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to start making arrests.

“At what point do we say, ‘Enough'?” Tarrio asked. “At what point does the retaliation, the investigations, the arrests come for these people that wanted to put us in a concrete coffin?”

The FBI declined to comment on this story, and the Department of Justice did not respond to questions submitted through a web form.

But the wide-ranging discussion among Raiklin and his guests on the 99-minute X space revealed deep-seated frustration with Trump administration officials. While Trump promised “retribution” during the campaign, those seeking vindication for their roles in the effort to overturn the 2020 election have found their cause pushed aside during the second administration’s shockwave of new policies, including a global trade war, dismantling the federal government, purging DEI from the military and other institutions, menacing Greenland and the Panama Canal, threatening funding to universities, and disappearing lawful residents.

“I’ve already given up hope on Pam Bondi,” Tarrio said. He added that the recent decision by Patel to promote Steve J. Jensen, former chief of the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Operations Section, to the position of assistant director of the Washington Field Office “does not restore confidence for the American people.”

Tarrio and other pardoned Jan. 6 defendants are unhappy about Jensen’s promotion largely because of the congressional testimony of a former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst who told House Republicans that Jensen once described three individuals targeted for Jan. 6 investigations as “godd--- terrorists.”

Raiklin and Tarrio could not be reached for comment for this story.

The 98-minute discussion on Sunday often veered from the retaliatory arrests that Raiklin emphasized as the focal point.

Listeners complained that they could only hear every other word of Rhodes’ remarks, and the former Oath Keepers leader lamented that his X account had been suspended after he made a post calling for the release of another member held in custody on separate gun charges.

Compared with Raiklin and Tarrio’s remarks, Rhodes’ criticism of the Department of Justice and FBI was relatively mild.

“The more you wait, the more they’re going to destroy evidence,” Rhodes said. “So, you gotta go fast.”

Raiklin expressed the view that the Jan. 6 defendants’ best hope of retaliatory arrests lies with the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Edward R. Martin Jr., a former “Stop the Steal” campaigner.

Martin’s actions have given those who want to see Trump’s political opponents prosecuted some cause for hope.

In February, Martin sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) asking him to clarify comments he made at a March 2024 rally warning that Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh “will pay the price” and “won’t know what hit you if you go through with these awful decisions.” In a subsequent letter, Martin told Schumer: “Your cooperation is more important than ever to complete this inquiry before any action is taken. I remind you: no one is above the law.”

In a letter to another Democratic lawmaker in February, Martin requested that Rep. Robert Garcia (R-CA) clarify his comments on CNN that “the American public wants… us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight” against billionaire Elon Musk.

Martin’s probes prompted 10 lawyers, including four former Jan. 6 prosecutors, to file a letter on Monday requesting that District of Columbia Court of Appeals investigate Martin for potential violations of the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct.

“Announcing investigations against his political opponents” and other alleged misconduct, the attorneys argued, “are not worthy of the Department of Justice, undermine the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection of law, and violate Mr. Martin’s professional obligations.”

The attorneys also raised questions about Martin’s representation of Jan. 6 defendant William Pope before Martin was appointed to serve as U.S. attorney. The attorneys cited a court filing by Pope claiming that Martin suggested he request the government’s file in his case. The filing, according to the attorneys, raised questions about whether Martin “potentially gave legal advice to a defendant his office was prosecuting at the time.”

As a prosecutor, Martin has intervened directly on Rhodes’ behalf. In January, Martin successfully filed court papers seeking to overturn a federal judge’s order barring Rhodes and other convicted members of the Oath Keepers from visiting Washington, D.C. without permission. Last month, Martin spoke at a Florida political fundraiser that was attended by four of Rhodes’ Oath Keeper co-defendants, Mother Jones reported.

Asked whether Martin is considering investigating those responsible for the Jan. 6 prosecutions and potentially bringing federal charges, spokesperson Daniel Ball told Raw Story the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia is “unable to confirm or deny the existence of investigations.”

Tarrio and other guests on Raiklin’s X space provided few details on who they believe should be arrested and what crimes they might have potentially committed. Raiklin, meanwhile, outlined a highly technical and legally specious case for targeting Thomas DiBiase, the general counsel for the U.S. Capitol Police, whom he described as “the key individual that weaponized against J6-ers.”

“If we get to him, he can essentially squeal on everyone else, to include the number-one high-value target, Nancy Pig-losi [sic],” Raiklin said.

The U.S. Capitol Police did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story.

On Monday, Raiklin made an X post directed at Bondi, suggesting he wants Trump’s attorney general to rack up an arrest count equivalent to the FBI’s sprawling investigation of the Jan. 6 attack.

“Retribution or bust,” he wrote. “The ball is in your hands. Shot clock ends May 31. 6 weeks remain to conduct ~1500 live-streamed swatting raids of all members of the [Deep State target list].”

But compared to a viral video that garnered 10.3 million views last May when Raiklin’s plan for “livestreamed swatting raids” against his “Deep State target list” first gained notoriety, the recent post issuing an ultimatum to Bondi has garnered paltry results: 9,100 views, 134 re-posts and 21 comments as of late Monday.

The comments from MAGA users suggest Raiklin’s influence is waning.

“What happens on June 1^st?” one wrote.

“You are not going to do a god d--- thing! Blah blah blah,” another wrote.

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An East Texas man who broke into the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, and stood on a window ledge holding a crowbar and a bullhorn while exhorting pro-Trump rioters to “get in the building,” wants to go back — this time, as a member of Congress.

Ryan Nichols, a Marine Corps veteran, announced his plan to run for the 1^st congressional district seat in Texas, which is currently represented by Republican Nathaniel Moran, on Wednesday.

Nichols was sentenced to 63 months in prison after pleading guilty to assaulting law enforcement officers, before receiving a pardon from President Trump. He said during a press conference on Wednesday that he knows “what it feels like to have the full weight of the United States government on top of you.”

Nichols live-streamed himself marching towards the Capitol on a GoPro camera on Jan. 6, according to a filing by federal prosecutors, unleashing an expletive-laden rant against Vice President Mike Pence for his refusal to interfere with the certification of Joe Biden as president.

“I’m telling you if Pence caved, we’re gonna drag mother---ers through the streets," Nichols said. "You f---ing politicians are going to get f------ drug through the streets. Because we’re not going to have our f------ s--- stolen. We’re not going to have our election or our country stolen.”

According to the government, Nichols and his friend Alex Harkrider were outfitted with tactical gear. Nichols carried a crowbar while Harkrider carried a tactical tomahawk axe.

Later, during a pitched battle in front of the Capitol, Nichols hit law enforcement officers with two streams of chemical spray, according to the government. As detailed in a Department of Justice press release, Nichols entered the Capitol through a broken window and rummaged around a conference room.

Standing on a window ledge after emerging from the Capitol, Nichols reportedly held his crowbar in one hand and a bullhorn in the other, while shouting to other rioters: “Get in the building, this is your country, get in the building, we will not be told, ‘No.’” He also reportedly said, “If you have a weapon, you need to get your weapon!”

Nichols told reporters during his press conference that he expressed remorse when he stood before the judge to receive his sentence.

“I apologized to the judge that day,” he said. “I apologized to the officers who were there that day. I apologized to the members of Congress and to the people of Washington, D.C. Because ultimately they didn’t ask for all that to happen.”

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Some of President Trump’s most ardent MAGA fans are questioning FBI Director Kash Patel’s decision to elevate an agency veteran who played a key role in coordinating the sprawling Jan. 6 investigation to lead the Washington Field Office.

Steven J. Jensen previously served as chief of the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Operations Section, and was recently named by Patel as assistant director in charge of the office, according to a report by the New York Times.

“The anger and depression is hitting hard today,” Richard Barnett, a self-described white nationalist who was sentenced to 54 months in prison for raiding the Capitol on Jan. 6, wrote on X on Monday. Barnett, who was among some 1,500s rioters pardoned by Trump, complained that Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino “stabbed us in the back” and “actually promoted one of our tormenters, Steve Jensen, into a position of great power within the FBI.”

Kyle Seraphin, part of a group of former agents who called themselves the “Suspendables” for raising objections to the Jan. 6 investigations, called Jensen a “true J6 insurrection believer” and a “January 6^th hysteric” on X.

Seraphin’s criticism is especially notable because of his close relationship with the FBI’s current director and its deputy director. Seraphin was placed on leave from the FBI for contesting coronavirus vaccine mandates, and he went public in 2022 with his criticism of the FBI’s handling of the Jan. 6 investigations by appearing on the podcast of Dan Bongino, who is now the FBI’s deputy director.

Bongino at the time described Seraphin as “a brave guy and a patriot.” Bongino went on to say that Seraphin “gave up everything to give us this incredible, incredible account of what’s going on inside the now-broken FBI, some of the abuses taking place.

“Please listen to this and spread the word,” Bongino added. “It’s a really important interview.”

Following the Bongino interview, Seraphin recounted to the Washington Post that Patel, then a former Trump administration official, reached out to him to offer support. Patel’s foundation would up cutting a check to Seraphin for $10,000. Seraphin told the Post that his relationship with Patel has continued, and that the two spoke after Trump nominated Patel to lead the FBI.

In an X post over the weekend, Seraphin noted that Jensen was the subject of testimony to the House Weaponization Committee chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). George J. Hill, a former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst in the Boston Field Office who took a critical stance on the Jan. 6 investigation, testified to the House Republicans that “probably the most egregious and one of the things that pushed me over the edge was a tirade by Steve Jensen.”

Hill testified that Jensen pushed back against officials from the Philadelphia Field Office who expressed the view during a national conference call that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to pursue cases against three individuals suspected of Jan. 6-related offenses. According to Hill’s account, Jensen responded by saying, “I don’t give a blank, they’re goddamn terrorists, and we’re gonna round them all up.”

Disbelief and disillusion

Some Jan. 6 defendants are echoing Barnett’s disgust with Patel’s decision to elevate Jensen to the Washington Field Office.

“Seriously Kash? Why the f--- does this guy have a job, let alone a promotion?” Derrick Evans, a former West Virginia state lawmaker who served a three-month sentence for felony obstructing or impeding officers during a civil disorder, wrote on X.

Steve Baker, another convicted Jan. 6 defendant who is now a contributor to Blaze Media, posted: “I would admonish all Trump supporters to voice their opposition to the appointment of Steve Jensen as @FBIWFO ADIC… because this is ‘not what we voted for.’”

The FBI declined to comment for this story.

But many Trump supporters, swayed by conspiracy sites with a vested interest in discrediting the mainstream media, have dismissed the appointment as “fake news.” The right-wing site Gateway Pundit initially published a story headlined, “NY Times Caught Again Spreading Fake News: TGP Confirms Jan. 6 Activist Agent Was NOT Appointed Washington Field Office Assistant Director…Questions Remain,” before confirming that Jensen was, in fact, appointed to the position.

The popular X account Catturd posted on April 5: “Yesterday over half the conservatives on X were fooled by a fake news article by the NYT that I told you was fake — and they spent all day doomsday gaslighting a fake story.”

Two people who have not commented on the appointment are Rep. Jordan, the former chair of the now-defunct House Weaponization Committee, and former Congressman Matt Gaetz, who were present when Hill leveled criticism at Jensen during his committee interview.

House Republicans’ silence on Jensen’s appointment prompted Baker and Seraphin to accuse the Weaponization Committee of exploiting Jan. 6 defendants for political gain.

“@Weaponization committee hearings with @FBI whistleblowers ultimately led to nothing other than typical strongly worded letters — which were ignored by the DOJ and FBI and resulted in no follow-up action,” Baker complained.

Seraphin, in turn, predicted: “The FBI’s new management will distance themselves from whistleblower testimony proven true after congressional investigations to continue the status quo. Congress will suggest perhaps all of their fundraising and Fox News hits exaggerated the problems at the FBI.”

White nationalists have uniformly cheered the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan asylum seekers through the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.

But among influencers who steer opinion in the white nationalist wing of the MAGA coalition, there are cracks in the consensus when it comes to the other major front in the administration’s deportation dragnet — removing students protesting Israel on U.S. college campuses.

The restless mood among white nationalists does not bode well for Jews at a time when actual antisemitism — apart from criticism of Israel — is on the rise.

While the administration threatens to withhold federal funding from universities and targets campus protesters for deportation, some Jewish leaders and scholars of fascism argue that the crackdown makes Jews less, not more, safe.

“History has made clear that our safety as Jews is inextricably linked with inclusive, pluralistic democracy and with the rights and safety of all people,” Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, told Raw Story. “Antisemitism is often used as a tool to sow distrust in democracy, threatening Jews and all communities — and so too, when the rule of law and democratic norms are threatened, antisemitism invariably increases and Jews — and all communities — are made less safe.”

Spitalnick led the successful effort to obtain a civil judgement against the organizers of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally, when white supremacist groups converged in Charlottesville, Va., where they assaulted students during a torch march and clashed in the streets with antifascist counter-protesters, culminating in a car attack that resulted in the murder of an antiracist activist.

Among white nationalists whose ideology is anchored in antisemitic conspiracy theories, there are two schools of thought on the administration’s efforts to target pro-Palestine activists.

One school of thought, exemplified by Jason Kessler — the lead organizer of the Unite the Right rally — holds that white nationalists should set aside who ostensibly benefits from the campaign and get behind the effort because its targets are “foreigners.” The other view, represented by Nicholas Fuentes, who attended Unite the Right as an 18-year-old, holds that Israel is somehow orchestrating the deportations, and the same tools of repression will eventually be turned against white nationalists.

“I don’t think Mahmoud Khalil should be in the United States and I don’t think foreigners should have Constitutional rights,” Kessler posted on the social media platform Telegram following the Columbia University and pro-Palestine activist’s arrest. Speaking on his podcast on Wednesday night, Kessler argued that aligning with right-wing Jews "might mean support for Israel, but it also means being an immigration restrictionist and being against DEI stuff. And that is the most important to me."

Fuentes, who once distinguished himself in the white nationalist movement for his slavish devotion to Trump, in contrast, called the campaign against pro-Palestine activism a “nightmare” in a recent podcast. He lamented that almost 10 years after descending the elevator at Trump Tower and inaugurating what appeared to be “a 1,000-year Trumpian reich,” the president is now deporting critics of Israel.

“We’re going to set the precedent that if you criticize Israel, it’s effectively illegal,” Fuentes complained. “We’re going to break the backs of the university over Israel — nothing else. You don’t think that’s a problem? Of course it’s a problem! It’s obviously a problem. It’s obviously Jewish tyranny.”

Jason Stanley, a scholar on fascism who recently announced his decision to resign from the faculty at Yale University for a position at the University of Toronto due to what he considers the United States’ rapid transition into authoritarianism, argues that the Trump administration’s fusillade against universities is setting up Jews as a scapegoat.

“They’re targeting intellectuals in the name of — supposedly in the name of Jewish people,” Stanley told NPR’s A Martinez on Tuesday. Similar to the repression Jews experienced in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, Stanley argued that the Trump administration’s effort is “setting up large groups of people for popular rage.”

Stanley, who is Jewish, added: “And Jewish people who are complicit or actively participating in this are setting American Jews up. We’ve never been at the center of U.S. politics like this, and this is never good for the Jews.”

The Trump administration’s efforts to strip funding from universities and deport pro-Palestine activists come at a time when antisemitic conspiracy theories are flourishing on the right, fueled in part by the president’s orders to release once-classified files.

“At least what we’re told are the JFK files have been released,” said Frankie Stockes, a fill-in host on “The Stew Peters Show,” last month. “And very, very quickly, people have started to zero in on some main culprits, you could say, including, of course, Israel.” (There is simply no evidence that Israel was involved in Kennedy’s assassination.)

Meanwhile, Ian Carroll, a former Uber Eats driver and podcaster flagged for frequently spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories, claimed during an appearance on Joe Rogan’s massively popular podcast last month that sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein “very clearly was a Jewish organization of Jewish people working on behalf of Israel and other groups. And so that’s a dark stain on Israel and on the Jewish people, if you own it.”

One commonly accepted example of antisemitism is accusing Jewish people as a whole of being responsible for the wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person.

While the most prominent white nationalist podcasters, writers, and social-media influencers have expressed support or at least remained silent on the Trump administration’s deportation of pro-Palestine activists, some have complained that Trump is acting on behalf of Jews instead of non-Jewish white people.

Lauren Witzke, a former U.S. Senate candidate who has retweeted the white nationalist publication VDARE, complained on X following the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil: “So we can deport any foreigners any time we want… // But, of course, that power is reserved for critics of the Jewish state. // Not anti-white/Christian campus activists, rapists, murderers, gang bangers, and foreigners eating pets.”

Greyson Arnold, a Nazi sympathizer who was investigated for threatening the Washington state governor, wrote on Telegram: “The president would never do this for white people.”

The following day, he railed: “The Trump administration is currently investigating over 60 universities for antisemitism while ignoring the decades of anti-white racism on college campuses, systemic anti-white discrimination in our laws, and anti-white discrimination in the private sector. America is a Zionist Occupied Government.”

Those grievances have been echoed by Charlie Kirk, a close ally of Trump who has spent years visiting college campuses to challenge leftist thinking. Targeted by followers of Nicholas Fuentes in 2019 for being too moderate, Kirk’s positions have gradually migrated towards white nationalism, and he now frequently invokes a so-called “war on white people.”

Only one day after Arnold and Witzke complained about a supposed “anti-white” bias, Kirk extracted support from Department of Justice lawyer Leo Terrell, who leads Trump’s antisemitism task force, for the idea of setting up “a similar task force to go after the anti-white bias that we’re seeing on our college campuses across the country.”

“Oh, yes,” Terrell responded. “Let me be clear: Anti-white bias, this whole DEI nonsense, the attack on Christians. Charlie, let me tell you right now, all the president wants to do is make sure everyone is treated fairly.”

Terrell invited Kirk to accompany him on a “campus tour” of the “10 worst schools.”

Kirk has said that Christians “have an obligation to the Jews.”

But he has also made it clear that he believes that the United States should be a Christian nation, and that religious pluralism is incompatible with democracy.

“The body politic of America was so Christian and was so Protestant that our form and structure of government was built for the people that believed in Christ our Lord,” Kirk said. “One of the reasons we’re living through a constitutional crisis is that we no longer have a Christian nation, but we have a Christian form of government, and they’re incompatible. You cannot have liberty if you do not have a Christian population.”

Hardline Zionists who take a nationalist approach to combating antisemitism have consciously aligned with MAGA and the Christian right in the effort to root out left-wing activism that is critical of Israel from college campuses.

Among them is Betar, a group that claims to be funneling the identities of pro-Palestine activists to the Trump administration so they can be deported.

In February, the group posted a video of Steve Bannon, a political strategist who is a close ally to Trump, responding to a question about support for Israel.

“MAGA and the evangelical Christians and the traditional Catholics in this country have Israel’s back; they have the Jews’ back,” said Bannon, who came under fire in February for giving a Nazi salute at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “The biggest enemy of the Jewish people are not the Islamic supremacists. The biggest enemy you have is inside the wire: progressive Jewish billionaires that are funding all this stuff.”

Meanwhile, if Trump’s supporters in the United States tire of the war in the Middle East — especially if it expands — Fuentes is seeding a grievance narrative primed to fuel a white nationalist backlash.

“The Trump movement is being used to fight Israel’s wars,” Fuentes said, deflecting responsibility from the president for using antisemitism to consolidate his own power. “You suckers were used to install Trump so that Trump would bomb Iran, so that Trump would go to war against Israel’s critics in America.”

Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, told Raw Story that the Trump administration is “exploiting legitimate concerns about antisemitism to undermine civil liberties, the rule of law and due process, education institutions, and our democracy itself.

“We will continue to stand up against antisemitism, hate and extremism, and attacks on our democracy,” she said, “because we know where this leads, and because our safety and our values demand no less.”

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A self-identified Three Percenter who received a pardon from President Donald Trump for his role in the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol showed up over the past weekend to oppose a protest against a Tesla dealership in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

A TikTok video posted by William F. Beals II shows him wearing a jacket with a Three Percenter patch while standing near the dealership on March 22, the same day that progressive activist group Indivisible Tennessee led protests at four locations across the state.

“So, we’re officially outside the Tesla plant here in Chattanooga, Tennessee,” the 53-year-old Beals says. “And as you can tell, we took the cul-de-sac right here in Chattanooga. They have to drive by us to get in here. So, all Three Percenters across the United States, be very aware of what’s going on with your Tesla dealerships.”

The Three Percenters are a far-right vanguard extremist movement whose adherents posture as the spiritual heirs of the American revolutionaries ready to use force to oppose so-called government tyranny. Since 2016, Three Percenters have aligned with Donald Trump, while embracing his attacks on the so-called “Deep State.”

Beals has a history of seeking confrontation with left-wing activists at protests, while aligning with neo-Nazis. In addition to claiming membership in the Three Percenter movement, Beals has described himself as a “white nationalist.” Posting in a neo-Nazi channel on the social media platform Telegram, Beals once commented that Jews “started Antifa until they got gassed and sent to the concentration camps haha.”

"It was seemingly inevitable for pardoned Jan 6 defendants to once again answer the call to arms, and the chance to become the Kyle Rittenhouse is seemingly too tempting to pass up," Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Raw Story. "The right wing fascination with performative vigilantism aside, the most likely outcome is that this conspiracy-pilled extremist injuries himself or others while hunting imaginary Antifa members outside a Tesla dealership."

Beals pleaded guilty in September 2024 to two misdemeanors for his activity at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, including disorderly conduct in a restricted building or grounds.

After leaving the Capitol on Jan. 6, the government alleges that Beals recorded a TikTok video in the building’s eastern courtyard, and posed for photos sitting astride a U.S. Capitol Police motorcycle.

“So, we officially took the White House,” Beals said, confusing the executive building with its legislative counterpart, in the TikTok video.

Federal prosecutors asked the judge to give Beals’ a more severe sentence than the guidelines typically warrant for his offense level, based on what they described as “his pervasive, unrepentant actions post-January 6 in light of his significant criminal history and self-proclaimed role as a member of the Three Percenters.”

The government’s sentencing memorandum warned that Beals’ Three Percenter activity continuing beyond Jan. 6 “while behaving in dangerous and provocative ways creates a pattern that could be repeated in the future.”

Prosecutors cited a June 2023 Raw Story report that quoted from Beals’ discussions with neo-Nazis about potentially confronting left-wing activists during Pride celebrations that summer.

A comment by William Beals in the White Lives Tennessee Telegram chat in May 2023.Telegram screengrab

“Most groups won’t walk across the street to confront antifa,” Beals commented. “I do, and I do my best to get those r----ds going to cross the street on me because it’s entertainment to me to knock a libtard out.”

Judge Jia M. Cobb ultimately turned down the government’s request for eight months of prison time, instead sentencing Beals to three years of probation. Four months later, as one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump issued a pardon to Beals, relieving him of probation. Beals advertises his status by driving a car with a large decal on the back window declaring: “JSIX presidential pardon.”

Text messages uncovered by the government during Beals’ prosecution reveal Beals’ conspiratorial thinking.

Five days after the attack on the Capitol, according to the government, Beals expressed the belief in a text to fellow Three Percenters and that Jacob Chansley, the so-called “QAnon Shaman,” had infiltrated “antifa” and the “Deep State” to obtain then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop.

“The president [Trump] has what he needs to take down the deep state thank you god,” Beals said.

In another message to the same text group on Jan. 11, 2021, Beals reportedly said, “We need to understand that our country works for its patriots and not against its patriots. We are the front line…. We the people will not stand and watch our country be divided based on our race or whatever agenda the deep state and the left incorporate. We are the last free nation. It is our civic duty to keep it that way.”

Addressing his followers on TikTok at the Tesla protest in Chattanooga on March 22, Beals expressed concern about the rights of car buyers.

“Every human being has the right to buy whatever they want to buy,” he said. “So, therefore when any human being, because of their political stance, wants to come at people and wants to destroy our people — you know, Elon Musk has no — they buy from Elon Musk. Therefore, they’re going after individuals, not Elon Musk.”

Reached by phone on Tuesday, Beals declined to comment on his presence at the protest other than to say that he plans to be back at the Tesla dealership again this weekend.

“If you write the story, I will sue you and take everything you have,” he said.

Tensions have run high at some of the protests outside Tesla dealerships, where protesters are targeting billionaire owner Musk’s efforts to slash the federal government through his so-called Department Of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. A man reportedly attempted to drive his SUV into a group of protesters at a Tesla dealership near West Palm Beach, Fla. on the same day as the Chattanooga protest. The driver in Florida was charged with aggravated assault with a weapon.

Raw Story obtained video of two counter-protesters engaging with Tesla demonstrators, including one who can be seen walking along the line, but Beals is not among them.

The owner of the Facebook page for Indivisible Tennessee, which organized the protests in Chattanooga and other cities across the state on March 22, publicly acknowledged that “reports and videos have surfaced showing protesters yelling at drivers and using offensive language.”

In addition to Chattanooga, Indivisible Tennessee led protests in Knoxville, Franklin and Memphis on March. The post did not specify where protesters were yelling at drivers, but warned that those who engage in aggressive behavior at future protests will be asked to leave.

A video of one of the men who confronted the Chattanooga protesters shows him saying, “They’re firebombing Tesla dealerships and destroying property…. It’s terrorism. If you support what they’re doing, you’re supporting terrorism.”

The Indivisible Tennessee Facebook post emphasizes that the group holds a “strict policy against vandalism or violence of any kind.”

Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced charges against three individuals who allegedly attacked Tesla dealerships and a charging station with Molotov cocktails in Oregon, Colorado and South Carolina.

“The days of committing crimes without consequences have ended,” Bondi said.

The following day, Trump posted on Truth Social that he looks “forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they’re doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” while suggesting they could be deported to El Salvador to serve sentences in prisons that have been criticized for rampant human rights abuses.

The United States does not have a domestic terrorism statute on the books, but the FBI has long defined politically motivated vandalism as a terrorism. In the early 2000s, the FBI boasted of a string of convictions for arson conspiracy by members of the group Earth Liberation Front who targeted new home construction sites and SUV dealerships. On Monday, FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the creation of an task force devoted to investigating the attacks against Tesla vehicles.

With his appearance at the protest in Chattanooga over the weekend, Beals positioned himself as a protector of Americans who wish to exercise their choice to buy vehicles that have become unpopular with a segment of the American population opposed to Trump.

But he hasn’t always been on the right side of the law.

In a sentencing memorandum filed in federal court in September, federal prosecutors cited Beals’ “horrendous criminal history,” which includes a five-year prison stint in Oklahoma in the 1990s for stealing auto and aircraft parts; a burglary conviction; and a two-year prison sentence for felony assault.

The government also cited a Chattanooga Police Department record indicating that Beals allegedly threatened someone with a ball-peen hammer during a drag performance in November 2022, although Beals was not charged in that incident.

Despite Beals being a convicted felon, when the FBI raided his home in Georgia in August 2023 to arrest him for Jan. 6 offenses, they found firearms and ammunition.

As of September 2024, prosecutors reported, Beals had yet to be charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia declined to comment on whether Beals will be charged in relation to the firearms.

But in other cases in which Jan. 6 defendants have been charged with separate offenses stemming from the discovery of unlawful firearms, federal prosecutors have agreed to dismiss charges.

Jeremy Brown, a US. Army veteran, was charged with possession of unregistered firearms when federal agents found a sawed-off shotgun and hand grenades in an RV parked outside his home in Florida. The case was charged separately from his prosecution for unlawfully entering restricted buildings or grounds at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In another case, federal agents arrested Daniel Ball for multiple felonies, including assaulting law enforcement and using fire or explosives to commit a felony, on Jan. 6. At the time of his arrest, according to the government, Ball had been convicted of domestic violence battery by strangulation and battery on a law enforcement officer. While executing a search warrant at Ball’s home in Florida to gather evidence to support his Jan. 6 charges, agents discovered a firearm and ammunition in his house.

Ball was indicted two days after Trump took office for unlawful transport of firearms and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

In both Brown and Ball’s cases, Sara Sweeney, the acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida, filed notices indicating that “based on consultation with Department of Justice leadership,” the government’s position is that the separate firearms charges “are intended to be covered” by the pardons issued by President Trump.

The campaign to punish pro-Palestinian activists, highlighted most dramatically by the Trump administration’s deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, is unfolding alongside an effort by pro-Israel groups to dox a wide array of individuals sympathetic to the Palestinian plight, going so far as to single people out for merely wearing keffiyehs.

Stop Antisemitism, a group that has vocally supported the administration’s efforts to deport pro-Palestine activists, has posted photos on the social media platform X that show retail and hotel workers wearing the keffiyeh, a black and white scarf linked to the Palestinian struggle. The pro-Israel group claimed that the garment is associated with “violence against Jews.”

Previously, the group posted a photo of a VA doctor in New Orleans wearing a keffiyeh while standing at a hospital bedside. The group later posted an update claiming that the doctor had been disciplined, and that the government agency clarified its policy to prohibit keffiyehs in the hospital.

In another incident, a woman wearing a keffiyeh was photographed working in a grocery store. The photos were published on X with a caption describing her as a “Hamas sympathizer.”

The social media posts are an example of anti-Palestinian racism, Muhannad Ayyash, a sociology professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, told Raw Story.

“It turns Palestinians, even just for wearing symbolic cultural items that symbolize resistance so Palestinians can remain on their land — not killing Jews or anything like that — it turns it all into violence and hatred, and something that should be erased from the public sphere,” Ayyash said.

The keffiyeh was originally worn by Bedouins and fellahin—agricultural laborers—for protection against dust, but Ayyash said it became associated with Palestinian struggle beginning with the 1936 Arab revolt against the British empire and Zionist settlements.

The fellahin and Bedouins “were the first to experience Zionist settler colonialism and the first to resist it through both armed and unarmed struggle,” Ayyash said. At the time, the favored headwear for urban Palestinian men was the tarbush, a round flat-topped hat. Still, Ayyash said the fellahin convinced their urban counterparts to start wearing the keffiyeh so that militants would be more difficult to pick out by the British authorities.

Jawahir Kamil Sharwany, a Palestinian-American woman who grew up in the Old City of Jerusalem, told Raw Story she recalls seeing her father, her uncle and other elderly men waving keffiyehs at funerals and weddings when she was growing up.

During the first intifada — the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in the late 1980s and early 1990s —Sharwany said Israeli military authorities would confiscate keffiyehs from Palestinian men while they were going to the mosque.

“When they take our keffiyeh and throw it on the ground, we’re going to fight back,” said Sharwani, who emigrated to the United States in the late 1990s and now lives in Atlanta. “Just like if you’re Jewish and someone throws your kippah on the ground, you’re going to fight back. For us, it’s a big thing. You’re hurting us in what we value the most.”

As a marker of the pride that Palestinians place in it, Sharwany said that when a dispute arises between two families and they want to resolve it without going to court, the keffiyeh traditionally plays a role in establishing trust. She said the father of the offending party might take off his keffiyeh and place it on a table as a gesture of humility.

“Could you forgive me?” he would say, according to Sharwany. “I’m putting my pride down.”

In February, Stop Antisemitism posted a photo of an unidentified man who appears to be a hotel valet wearing a keffiyeh knotted around his neck. The post includes a caption claiming that since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack against Israel, “the keffiyeh has become emblematic of violence against Jews.”

The post concludes, “This is unacceptable,” while tagging the X account of Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center in Aurora, Colo.

Hamas indiscriminately fired rockets into Israel and carried out deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Amnesty International, which counts the deaths at about 1,200 people, including more than 800 civilians, along with the abduction of 223 civilians and capture of 27 soldiers. Since then, the Israeli invasion of Gaza has reportedly resulted in more than 48,000 Palestinian deaths. A United Nations report found that “Israel’s warfare in Gaza is consistent with the characteristics of genocide” — a characterization that Israel rejects.

Gaylord Rockies Resort did not respond to several requests for comment despite Raw Story speaking to representatives in the hotel’s marketing and security departments. An email to Marriott International, the hotel’s owner, likewise went unreturned.

Similar to the post featuring the unnamed Gaylord Rockies employee, two posts by Stop Antisemitism in the past two months target employees wearing keffiyehs who are not otherwise linked to activism.

A post on Feb. 2 shows a young woman with brown hair working behind a counter in a department store.

“Shoppers were outraged to see a Nordstrom employee wearing a keffiyeh,” the post says while indicating that the photo was taken at the store in Skokie, Ill.

Then, on March 3, the account posted a photo of a woman with blond hair with the caption: “Yet again, a Nordstrom employee is spotted wearing the keffiyeh, an appropriated symbol of violence, while interacting with Jewish customers.”

Nordstrom did not respond to emails from Raw Story seeking comment about how the company is handling the complaints.

Last November, Stop Antisemitism posted a photo of a 33-year-old doctor wearing a keffiyeh while standing next to a hospital bed in a VA hospital in New Orleans, along with an image of her photo ID that shows her name. The post claims that Stop Antisemitism “received multiple complaints” about the doctor “treating veterans while wearing a symbol now tied to violence against Jews and hatred of Americans.”

The post tagged the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs while asking, “How is this acceptable?”

Last month, Stop Antisemitism published an update to the post stating that the doctor had been “disciplined” and that Fernando Rivera, the medical director for VA Louisiana Southeast Health Care, “has stated keffiyehs are not permitted per hospital policy.”

Phillip Butterfield, a spokesperson, told Raw Story that the healthcare network was working on a statement. On Wednesday evening, he left a voicemail indicating he would not be able to meet the deadline. He did not return a voicemail on Thursday.

Raw Story called a phone number associated with the doctor. The person who answered the phone hung up after using Google Assistant to screen the call. Raw Story is not naming the doctor to protect her privacy.

Emails to Stop Antisemitism seeking comment for this story went unreturned.

Stop Antisemitism is not the only pro-Israel entity that has used X to target workers solely for wearing the keffiyeh.

Last October, Sloan Rachmuth, a conservative activist in North Carolina, posted a photo on X of a woman wearing a keffiyeh while working in the bakery of a Harris Teeter grocery store in Holly Springs, a Raleigh suburb. The post describes the unnamed store employee as a “Hamas supporter.”

“When I asked her why she was wearing a keffiyeh, the store manager asked me to leave!” Rachmuth wrote on X.

Rachmuth emerged as a vocal critic of so-called “critical race theory” and transgender-inclusive policies in public schools in North Carolina in 2021. Last year, she served as campaign manager for Michele Morrow, the Republican candidate for state Superintendent who called for the execution of prominent Democrats, including President Barack Obama.

Rachmuth was arrested and charged with cyberstalking for the keffiyeh post, but Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman ultimately dismissed the charge.

Since then, Rachmuth’s social media posts and public advocacy have shifted almost entirely to support for Israel and seeking sanctions against pro-Palestine activists.

“When [people] are engaging in corporate political speech in a public space and handling food, they have no right to privacy, full stop,” Rachmuth told Raw Story. “Also, if someone were wearing a Confederate flag or a swastika, they would also expect to be sanctioned publicly for corporate speech that offends people, which is why most corporations have policies against that composure.”

Harris Teeter did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Raw Story.

Rachmuth also reshared Stop Antisemitism’s X post about the VA doctor in New Orleans. In her re-post, Rachmuth wrote: “Keffiyehs symbolize the death and destruction of Jews. They should never be allowed to be worn in America.”

When asked by Raw Story why she believes that, Rachmuth said, “I’m not going to answer that. That’s a stupid f---ing question.”

Then, she abruptly ended the call.

Rachmuth has made posts on X that appear to deny that Palestinians hold any legitimate claim to their land and that appear to deny that Islam is a valid religion.

“Attention pro-Israel people: Stop referring to Judea and Samaria as the ‘West Bank’ please,” she posted on X last month.

In another post, also last month, Rachmuth wrote: “Anyone, and I mean anyone, claiming that ‘Islamophobia’ is real is enabling Islamic terrorism. // Whether in K-12 schools, in City Halls, or in police departments, proffering this fakery will kill Americans.”

Other recent posts by Rachmuth express support for Meir Kahane, an American-born rabbi who emigrated to Israel and was elected to the Knesset prior to his death by an assassin’s bullet in 1990. The Anti-Defamation League has described Kahane as preaching “a form of Jewish nationalism which reflected racism, violence and political extremism.”

Kach, the political party founded in Israel by Kahane, and Kahane Chai, an offshoot founded by his son, were added to the U.S. State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations in 1997, but de-listed in 2002. According to a 2007 U.S. State Department report, Kach and Kahane Chai were declared terrorist organizations by the Israeli cabinet in 1994. Kahane Chai remains on Canada’s list of prohibited terrorist entities, which was last reviewed in June 2024.

Under Meir Kahane’s leadership, according to the U.S. State Department, Kach’s stated goal was “to restore the biblical state of Israel,” which by definition would subjugate or expel the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.

Kahane also founded the Jewish Defense League, which, according to a chronology compiled by the Anti-Defamation League, was linked to at least 30 bombings, attempted bombings or bomb plots on U.S. soil between 1970 and 1994.

“It’s time every Jew studied Jabotinski and Kahane,” Rachmuth wrote in an X post last month, also referring the late Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinski. “Time to apply it is long overdue.”

Rachmuth also re-posted another suer, who posted a photo of Kahane, writing, “He was right about everything.”

“100%,” Rachmuth wrote in an appended comment.

In at least one case in the United States, apparent antagonism towards the keffiyeh, as a symbol of Palestinian resistance, has led to violence. In November 2023, a month after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, a white man shot three Palestinian-American students in Burlington, Vt.

The victims were speaking a mix of Arabic and English, and two were wearing keffiyehs. The assailant reportedly didn’t say anything to them before he opened fire.

He faces trial for attempted murder, but state prosecutors ultimately decided against adding hate crimes charges.

Sharwany, the Palestinian-American activist in Atlanta, said she typically wears her keffiyeh everywhere she goes. She frequently attends pro-Palestine protests, where she speaks, chants and emcees. During the protests, she’ll typically keep keffiyehs and Palestinian flags in her car. A couple times, she said, she returned to find egg splattered over the windshield, and once her tire was punctured.

But in daily life, sometimes Sharwany makes the calculation that it’s better to put her keffiyeh away. She made that decision while attending an Atlanta United FC match at a local stadium and when she took her daughter’s dog to a veterinary hospital following a previous visit to another hospital where she believes the staff decided to euthanize her dog because they didn’t like her keffiyeh

“In some places, I put my keffiyeh in my bag,” Sharwany said. “I’m scared for my life.”

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Leo Terrell, the Department of Justice lawyer who heads the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, has made multiple appearances on the network and other conservative outlets to unapologetically press the Trump administration’s case for deporting Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil and for yanking federal funding from the university.

A media-savvy former Fox News contributor, Terrell also uses his X account, which has 2.5 million followers, to help promote Trump’s agenda. But while showcasing his media appearances and sharing other pro-Trump viewpoints on X, Terrell also re-posted two accounts with a history of promoting antisemitism earlier this week.

First, on Wednesday, Terrell re-posted a comment by Patrick Casey, the former leader of the now-defunct white nationalist group Identity Evropa, whose members chanted, “Jews will not replace us,” during the violent 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.

Casey’s post nested a video of President Trump calling Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “a Palestinian.” Trump’s comment has drawn condemnation from both Muslim and Jewish groups for using the word “Palestinian” as a racial slur.

“Trump has the ability to revoke someone’s Jew card,” Casey added in the post shared by Terrell.

Screengrab of Patrick Casey X post that was shared by Leo Terrell

Whether or not he is familiar with Casey’s background, in a January 2020 appearance on Fox News, Terrell mentioned “white nationalists” in Charlottesville “chant[ing] hateful [anti-] Jewish comments.”

Terrell directly followed the Casey re-post on Wednesday by sharing a post by the Hodgetwins podcast. Keith and Kevin Hodges, the podcast hosts, have been called out by the group Stop Antisemitism for being “purveyors of blatant antisemitism, regularly platforming and promoting hateful rhetoric.”

Inquiries to the Department of Justice by Raw Story seeking comment from Terrell for this story went unreturned.

Despite Terrell amplifying a podcast that Stop Antisemitism finds objectionable, the DOJ lawyer and the pro-Israel group are otherwise closely aligned.

Last month, Terrell posted a link on X to a news article that quoted a letter from Stop Antisemitism Executive Director Liora Rez. The letter addressed Terrell while requesting that the Trump administration revoke the visas of pro-Palestinian protesters and deport them. That’s precisely what the State Department and Immigration & Customs Enforcement did two weeks later in Khalil’s case.

Stop Antisemitism re-shared Terrell’s Feb. 28 post, adding that the group “stands ready to support the Justice Department’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.” They added, “American Jews appreciate the ongoing efforts to crush this violent hate at its root,” tagging Terrell at the end of the post.

Terrell regularly reshares posts by Stop Antisemitism, including doxes of pro-Palestinian activists that target students who are potentially subject to visa revocations, as well as professionals whom they seek to get fired from their jobs.

But Stop Antisemitism has remained silent on Terrell’s amplification of the Hodgetwins and Casey on X. The group could not be reached for comment for this story.

Screengrab of Hodgetwins X post shared by Leo Terrell

From MAGA critic to Trump loyalist

A former Democrat, Terrell came to prominence in Los Angeles in the 1990s as an O.J. Simpson supporter and talk-radio host. In 2020, Terrell switched support to Trump and later secured a spot as a Fox News contributor.

During a January 2020 debate with commentator Candace Owens, before his conservative rebranding as “Leo 2.0,” Terrell savaged his future boss.

“White supremacists are comfortable with Trump,” he said. “That’s why they endorsed him. That’s why they like him. He provides them cover.” (Since the time of the debate with Terrell, Owens has taken a hard turn towards antisemitism.)

In January, Trump announced Terrell as senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice. The Civil Rights Division is responsible for enforcing statutes prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status, military status and national origin.

In addition to amplifying Casey and the Hodgetwins on his X account on Wednesday, Terrell has also re-shared X posts by Brigitte Gabriel — whose group Act for America is designated an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC — at least twice in the past week.

As a basis for the designation, the watchdog group says that Act for America “pushes wild anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, denigrates American Muslims, and sows fear about Islam in the United States.”

Gabriel wrote in her 2008 book, They Must Be Stopped, that “the portent behind the terrorist attacks is the purest form of what the Prophet Mohammed created,” adding that the ideology behind Islamic extremism is “not radical Islam; it’s what Islam is at its core.”

Around the same time, according to the SPLC, Gabriel said during a presentation at the Department of Defense’s Joint Forces Staff College that a “practicing Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be the word of Allah… who goes to mosque and prays every Friday, who prays five times a day — this practicing Muslim, who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen of the United States.”

Meanwhile, the Hodgetwins have hosted several white supremacist guests, including former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Nick Fuentes and Stew Peters.

One of their guests, businessman and social media influencer Dan Blizerian, told the brothers in an interview that it is currently one of the “trending episodes” on their website: “I didn’t just wake up and hate Jews one day.”

One of the brothers recounted watching a YouTube video of one of Adolf Hitler’s speeches, adding, “Holy s---, he didn’t sound like a racist to me.”

“Well, it’s not just that,” Blizerian added, “but you listen to what he’s talking about, and, it’s like, f---, this sounds like the problems we’re having today.” Blizerian went on to rattle off a series of antisemitic tropes about Jews’ supposed control of “the cinema” and “the banking system, and “perverting” children.

While amplifying the Hodgetwins, and by extension the overt antisemitism on their podcast, Terrell has had little to say about why he believes the conduct by the pro-Palestinian protesters subject to deportation is specifically antisemitic.

“We have to get these agitators, these professional agitators off the campus,” Terrell said on Thursday during an appearance on “The Cat & Cosby Show” on 77 WABC in New York City.

Terrell went on to disparage Khalil, who was arrested by U.S. Immigration Customs & Enforcement while his green card was revoked based on a State Department finding that his activities in the country “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

“If this guy, when he was applying for a green card or visa […] said, ‘I support Hamas, I want to disrupt Columbia University, and I’m going to make it impossible for Jewish Americans to get an education at Columbia, this guy would have never gotten a green card or student visa,” Terrell said. “He’s an undesirable.”

The Trump administration has accused Khalil of supporting Hamas, which the State Department designates as a terror group. Still, his lawyers have reportedly responded that there is no evidence he provided support to any terror group.

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A recent X post by Ivan Raiklin, a retired Army lieutenant general who bills calls the “secretary of retribution,” prompted a flurry of comments endorsing violence and vigilantism directed at four mayors who testified before Congress on Wednesday.

Raiklin, who last year circulated a so-called “Deep State Target List” against President Trump’s enemies while calling for “livestreamed swatting raids,” re-posted a video of Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, delivering a fiery lecture to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, all Democrats.

“One of you said you’re willing to go to jail; we might give you that opportunity, good mayor,” Higgins said, likely referring to Johnston, the Denver mayor.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) declared that she intended to refer the four mayors to the Department of Justice for prosecution, while holding up papers that she said would be delivered to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Raiklin wrote in his post re-sharing the video of Higgins’ remarks: “If these mayors are not arrested, WeThe People [sic] will be compelled to reconsider our relationship with government.”

The two men appear to be acquainted: Last July, Raiklin posted a photo on X that showed him clasping hands with Higgins outside Fiserv Forum during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Higgins did not respond to an email from Raw Story for this story.

As of Friday evening, Raiklin’s post had been viewed more than 50,000 times, and had been reshared almost 900 times while garnering 168 comments. Raiklin’s follower count on X has grown to almost 235,000.

The comments from X users responding to Raiklin’s post include calls for vigilante justice and violence mixed with irritation directed at Bondi for not taking enough action in their view. The Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against Johnson, the Chicago mayor, and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzer and against New York Gov. Kathy Hochul over laws that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Pritzger and Hochul, both Democrats, have scorned the lawsuits, with Pritzger calling it “garbage” and Hochul deriding it as “worthless.”

Among the responses to Raiklin’s post, some X users called for outright violence, while others proposed some form of extrajudicial process along the lines of sovereign citizen activity.

“I suggest we organize and go to war against our government like our forefathers did,” one user wrote.

Another user posted a meme of George Washington, accompanied by an imagined quote by the first American president reading: “Me and my homies woulda been stacking bodies by now.”

“A real insurrection is still possible,” yet another wrote.

One user asserted incorrectly that “citizens can form their own grand juries.”

“Why wait?” he wrote. “Start now.”

Another asserted: “We the people have the right to form and exercise trained militias. Now is the time for these militias to be on standby awaiting deployment.”

Much of Raiklin’s influence among Trump’s more extreme followers rests on his experience as a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former civilian employee of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, not to mention his seemingly unflagging zeal, prolific social media presence and hypermasculine presentation.

“I am ready, Ivan!” one X user wrote. “You make the call and millions will follow. Our patience are running increasingly thin [sic]. For me, I’ll give it 6 months max.”

Another user wrote: “I didn’t suffer for four years to hear empty promises. The first [arrest] might be the hardest, but they get easier as you go. Let’s get going. Be like a serial killer and become a serial arrester.”

Another simply wrote: “I miss lynch mobs.”

While declining to specifically address the comments under Raiklin’s post, the FBI said in a statement provided to Raw Story that the agency “takes all potential threats seriously and works with our law enforcement partners to determine their credibility, share information, and take appropriate investigative action.

“As always, we encourage members of the public to remain vigilant and immediately report anything they consider suspicious to law enforcement,” the statement continued.

Raw Story reached out by email to Raiklin for comment. He said a transcript of 42-minute video depicting him walking around Washington, D.C. and talking about a supposed Jan. 6 coverup by Republican House members would constitute his response to this story.

The comments about Bondi, who Trump appointed to lead the Department of Justice — roughly a dozen in all — were uniformly disparaging.

“Arrest them what the f--- dumb blondie @AGPamBondi,” one user with the screen name “ClownPuncher” wrote in response to Raiklin’s post. Another baselessly accused the attorney general of “actively protecting Democrats.”

An inquiry submitted to the Department of Justice by Raw Story seeking comment from Bondi for this story went unreturned.

Comments about other Trump administration officials were similarly negative, with one calling FBI Director Kash Patel a “disappointment” and another belittling Border Czar Tom Homan by writing, “If Tommy Boy doesn’t have it in him, Trump needs to get someone who can do it.”

Other X users variously suggested that even Trump and Raiklin himself are not truly committed to arresting the president’s political enemies.

“They’re not going to be, Ivan,” wrote a user with the screen name “Truth Seeking Vet.” “I’m afraid POTUS ‘made a deal’ with the demonrats to get back into Office. I hope and pray I’m wrong, but time will tell.”

One deeply paranoid user suggested Raiklin is an infiltrator who is in league with Democrats and federal law enforcement.

Another called Raiklin out for claiming last year that all he needed to carry out a plan to arrest Trump’s enemies was sympathetic prosecutors and sheriffs, and volunteers.

“I thought you were doing it, deputizing sheriffs, didn’t even need Trump to win,” the user wrote. “What/who is stopping you?”

Raiklin serves on the board of directors of America’s Future, a nonprofit led by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who formerly led the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama and briefly served as national security advisor during Trump’s first term.

Raiklin and Flynn jointly shared master of ceremonies duties at an awards ceremony held by America’s Future at Mar-a-Lago on Feb. 18.

On Friday, Raiklin published a video of the awards ceremony in an X post where he tagged President Trump to publicly thank him for “opening up Mar-a-Lago” to Flynn’s organization.

Trump did not respond.

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A U.S. leader of the neo-Nazi accelerationist network known as the Terrorgram Collective directly communicated with a 16-year-old who killed four people in a school shooting spree that took place in Brazil in 2022.

The link was disclosed for the first time in a filing last month by federal prosecutors opposing bail review for Matthew Robert Allison, one of two Terrorgram leaders who are charged with soliciting the murder of federal officials and conspiracy to provide material support for terrorists, among other alleged offenses.

Allison’s co-defendant, 34-year-old Dallas Erin Humber, of Elk Grove, Calif., told him that “she had direct messages with a Terrorgram user who was planning to commit a racially motivated school shooting,” according to the government filing. The reference to the school shooting plot surfaced in “secret chat” between Humber and Allison on Oct. 23, 2022. A month later, the government said, the Terrorgram user carried out the shooting, resulting in the deaths of four people.

The details provided by the government match a school shooting spree carried out by a 16-year-old at a public elementary and middle school and at a private school in the small town of Aracruz, in the southeastern Brazilian state of Espirito Santo in November 2022. Gabriel Castiglioni, the alleged shooter, entered the schools wearing military-style clothing, a bulletproof vest and a swastika patch, according to multiple news reports. He reportedly carried out the shootings with a semiautomatic weapon that belonged to the military police and a revolver that was registered to his father, a military police officer.

The disclosure about Humber’s communication with Castiglioni adds to the roster of Terrorgram users that the U.S. government claims were “incited to action” by Terrorgram online posts, publications, videos and instruction manuals, and who were inspired by the group’s culture, which elevates white supremacist killers to “saint” status.

The indictment against Humber and Allison, released at the time of their arrests in September 2024, cites three other attackers, all but one of whom are located outside the United States.

Among those was Juraj Krajcik, a 19-year-old who carried out a mass shooting at an LGBTQ bar in Bratislava, Slovakia in October 2022, killing two people and injuring a third. As previously disclosed in the indictment, Krajcik sent his manifesto to Allison, a 37-year-old Boise, Idaho resident. The indictment also alleges that Humber and Allison had directly communicated with Krajcik.

The government’s filing last month reveals new details about Allison’s ties to Krajcik. Immediately after the attack in Bratislava, according to the government, Krajcik texted Allison: “Not sure how much time I have, but it’s happening.” And then: “Just delete all messages about this convo.”

Krajcik, who was reportedly the son of a far-right politician in Slovakia, killed himself after sending his manifesto to Allison.

In another case inspired by Terrorgram, in August 2024, an 18-year-old named Arda Küçükyetim stabbed five people at an open-air café near a mosque in Eskisehir, Turkey. In the only case cited in the indictment involving an American perpetrator, 18-year-old Andrew Takhistov allegedly solicited a man who turned out to be an FBI undercover special agent to sabotage an electrical substation in New Brunswick, N.J.

As a conspiracy case linked to at least three attacks around the world with charges carrying up to 220 years in prison for each defendant, the Terrorgram prosecution is the United States’ most high stakes white supremacist terrorism case.

The U.S. State Department designated Terrorgram as a global terrorist group, joining the United Kingdom and Australia, just a week before President Joe Biden left office. So far, the Trump Department of Justice has given no indication that it intends to change course on the Terrorgram case. Two attorneys from the National Security Division and two others from the Civil Rights Division assigned while Biden was still in office remain on the case.

Meanwhile, the newly disclosed link between Humber, described as a Terrorgram “leader” in the indictment, and Castiglioni highlights the growing presence of the group in Brazil, alongside an explosion of U.S.-style school shootings in recent years. While designating Terrorgram as a global terrorist entity, the U.S. State Department named a Brazilian, Ciro Daniel Amorim Ferreira, as a sanctioned leader of the group, along with two other men from in Serbia and South Africa, respectively.

Terrorgram has been operating in Brazil since 2021 or 2022, said Michele Prado, who is the founder of Stop Hate Brazil.

“There have been many connections to various violent attacks in schools (more than 40 in just three years),” Prado told Raw Story in a text message.

The U.S. government alleges that Allison and Humber assumed leadership of Terrorgram in the summer of 2022, after one previous leader was arrested and charged with terrorism offenses, and another became aware that he was under investigation.

In 2023, Prado said, she submitted a report about Terrorgram to the Brazilian Intelligence Agency and the Ministry of Justice and Public Security that identified Telegram channels linked to Ciro and another Terrorgram member whose identity remains unknown but uses the pseudonym “Wolf Boy Winter.”

Prado said “Wolf Boy Winter” contributed “several pages” to “The Hard Reset,” one of the signature digital publications created as part of Terrorgram’s propaganda campaign. The indictment alleges that Humber, Allison and others created “The Hard Reset” as part of a conspiracy “to recruit, radicalize, equip, advise, inspire and solicit others to commit attacks in furtherance of Terrorgram’s mission.”

As described by the government, “The Hard Reset” provides “detailed advice for carrying out bias-motivated violence and committing terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure,” with “instructions for making bombs and explosives, including napalm, thermite, chlorine gas, pipe bombs,” and instruction on identifying targets and effectively running a terror cell. According to the government, Krajcik, the Slovakian shooter, praised “The Hard Reset” as “excellent” in a group chat with Humber.

Beginning in 2022, Prado said, Brazil experienced “an escalation in the online radicalization of children and adolescents and the beginning of many school shootings.” At that time, “Wolf Boy Winter” was already interacting with “a lot of these adolescents from harmful online subcultures,” Prado said.

The new deputy director of foreign aid at the U.S. State Department who is effectively overseeing what’s left of the USAID is a staunch supporter of restrictionist immigration policy who also takes a dim view of foreign aid.

The appointment of John A. Zadrozny to lead the State Department office responsible for supervising and setting the strategic direction of foreign assistance program has attracted little notice, with no formal announcement or White House press release heralding his arrival.

The new role was revealed in an FAQ document approved by Pete Marocco, the deputy director of USAID stating that effective Feb. 24, Zadrozny was on the job. The FAQ stated that all requests for exceptions to the pause in foreign aid spending should be addressed to Zadrozny. The document was filed in federal court by the government on Feb. 26 in response to a request for a temporary restraining order filed by humanitarian groups that had relied on funds from USAID to carry out their missions.

Zadrozny is a longtime ally of Stephen Miller, who was the architect of President Trump’s hardline immigration policies in his first term and now serves as White House deputy chief of staff. Zadrozny previously served on the White House Domestic Policy Council, where he reported to Miller.

Zadrozny declined a request for an interview for this story through a State Department spokesperson.

Following his stint at the Domestic Policy Council in 2017, Zadrozny moved on to the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, where he worked closely with Miller to implement Trump’s restrictionist immigration policy. During the first Trump administration, Zadrozny pushed for policy changes to severely curtail the number of refugees accepted by the United States at the State Department and later U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Following Trump’s electoral loss to Joe Biden in 2020, Zadrozny served as director of the Center for Homeland Security and Immigration at the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit founded by Miller. Zadrozny was a contributor to the State Department chapter of Project 2025, and served on the Department of Homeland Security landing team for Trump’s second term.

During his time at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the first Trump administration, Zadrozny’s argued for keeping the number of refugees low because of security concerns, according to a 2019 report by Politico. The push by Zadrozny and others in the Miller camp ran into resistance from others in the administration such as former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who argued in a memo to Trump that “a failure to honor our commitments to those who have supported the U.S. in combat would undermine our diplomatic and military efforts to protect the Homeland and support key aspects of the president’s national security strategy by making it more difficult to sustain the support of partners elsewhere.”

Mattis also argued that “the U.S. military also reaps a higher enlistment level from immigrant families than native-born,” adding that “there is also a positive second-order effect” of allowing up to 45,000 refugees per year to settle in the United States.

Zadrozny expressed opposition to the Biden administration’s resettlement of Afghan refugees following the U.S. military withdrawal from the country in September 2021.

“The reality is a lot of dangerous people are fleeing the Taliban,” he told the far-right news network Newsmax at the time. “And this administration is putting them all on planes and sending them to a community near you.”

At the same time that he favored a restrictionist immigration policy, Zadrozny’s public comments in 2021 suggested he was also not a fan of foreign assistance, which has been traditionally seen as a force for stabilization that helps reduce migration pressures.

In June 2021, as migration from the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador was surging, Zadrozny told another far-right network, One American News: “There’s probably a way to help them that doesn’t involve slathering foreign aid on them.”

Without providing specifics, Zadrozny said he would recommend helping the countries “develop 21^st century economies on their own.” But the Biden administration, he charged, just wanted to “drop millions and millions of Americans’ hard-earned dollars on these three countries, and it won’t have any result.”

Even as the FAQ directed USAID and State Department employees to address requests for exceptions to Zadrozny, Marocco said in a declaration filed in court on Wednesday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had already completed a review of USAID financial awards and had determined which to terminate and which to retain. Marocco said termination letters would be processed in the next 24 to 48 hours, with final notifications sent out by the end of the week. The administration wound up terminating almost 5,800 awards, Marocco said, keeping only about 500.

“In ordinary times, the government recognizes the importance of foreign-assistance funding to our national interests,” the humanitarian groups wrote in a filing in federal court on Feb. 27. “In ordinary times, the government would not gleefully try to dismantle a government agency overnight, fire American workers without cause or notice, or jeopardize the very existence of businesses and nonprofits that have for decades provided programming aimed at preventing starvation, disease and death, and employ thousands of Americans.”

Early on the morning of Feb. 27, according to the filing, the skeleton staff that remained at USAID received an email from the acting senior procurement executive.

“As you are aware, today USAID issued termination notices for a large number of awards,” the email read. “These awards were identified by the Front Office after a full review of USAID obligations and programs that were personally reviewed and approved for termination by Secretary Rubio and PTDO Deputy Administrator Marocco. We will be sharing a full list of awards terminated with additional details soon.

“We understand that some of these awards may have been for essential services, which the Front Office would like to turn back on,” the email continued. “We need your immediate input on any awards that may have been terminated that contain essential services related to the safety, security and operations of USAID staff.”

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Dan Bongino, the right-wing podcast host tapped by FBI Director Kash Patel to serve as deputy director of the agency, has a history of downplaying white supremacist extremism, the violence committed by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and threats against school board members.

Bongino suggested during a podcast recorded in September 2022 that the FBI under former Director Christopher Wray pursued investigations of “white supremacists who are terrorists” because of political pressure from President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland. He did not mention the deadly Buffalo mass shooting carried out four months earlier that year or dozens of neo-Nazi accelerationist terror plots foiled by the FBI that would warrant such a focus.

“Biden and Garland say, ‘We need white supremacist, domestic violent extremists’ — you know, we learned in the Salem witch trials: If you’re looking for a witch, you’re going to find one, even if there isn’t one,” Bongino said.

The statement was made during an interview with Kyle Seraphin, an FBI agent who was suspended after raising questions about an email from FBI leadership flagging threats against school board members and later separated from the agency after refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccination.

“The idea that you could have this file on you about what you’re surfing online — not criminal, maybe untoward, maybe nasty — but the fact that this happened because you showed up at a meeting and said something is really horrifying,” Bongino said.

In a second interview with Seraphin that was published the following day, Bongino ridiculed the agency for tasking agents with following up on leads that flooded the FBI from members of the public days after thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and disrupted Congress’ certification of the electoral vote in the 2020 presidential election.

“You know, I get it — I would have not preferred January 6^th turned out differently as well,” Bongino said. “I think any sane person would have. But to take six-figure FBI earners with a set of skills and let them run out all across America taking tips about a guy you met potentially in eighth grade showing up on January 6^th sounds a little Orwellian.”

President Trump issued blanket pardons to the nearly 1,600 people charged with crimes related to that Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol, but threats from white supremacist terrorists seeking to cause a collapse of society remain an ongoing concern for law enforcement. Last month, the U.S. State Department named the white supremacist group Terrorgram, whose leaders face charges for soliciting the murder of federal officials among other offenses, a specially designated global terrorist entity.

The mass murder of 10 African Americans in a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2022 underscored the threat posed by white supremacist terrorism, while a car-ramming attack by an ISIS sympathizer that killed 14 people celebrating New Year’s Eve in New Orleans provided a reminder that Islamic extremism also remains a threat. Meanwhile, school shootings in recent months have revealed a bewildering array of motivations that include white supremacy, inceldom and nihilism.

“At a time when the violent extremist threat is as diverse and unpredictable as any time in recent years, unqualified conspiracy peddlers and election deniers are running the FBI,” Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, said in an email to Raw Story. “It is a boon to far-right extremists in particular, who will undoubtedly feel emboldened counting senior officials like Patel and Bongino among their compatriots.”

Bongino did not respond to an interview request submitted to the press office at FBI headquarters.

Similar to Jan. 6, when Trump supporters angered by false claims that the 2020 election was stolen wound up turning on the U.S. Capitol police, violent white supremacists often target law enforcement, along with Jews, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people.

In one such case, the FBI filed charges against Kyle Christopher Benton, a Washington state man, for unlawful possession of a machine gun, after he posted on social media that he was joining multiple internet chats to encourage other users to commit mass shootings.

In a filing arguing for continued pre-trial detention, the government said that an investigation for domestic violence conducted by the Army Criminal Investigation Division in 2019 revealed that Benton operated social media accounts that promoted white supremacist and antisemitic propaganda. Benton’s partner allegedly told investigators that he wanted to shoot up the “alphabet boys” — a common reference to federal law enforcement — or a local police station.

“At a time when FBI agents are facing calls of retribution following the January 6 pardons, the nomination of a podcast host who has repeatedly promoted harmful conspiracies aimed at delegitimizing the FBI sends a dangerous message,” Lewis said.

During his interview with Seraphin in 2022, Bongino charged that the agency “bought into the hype” that the Jan. 6 attack was an event of the same magnitude as Pearl Harbor or 9/11. He went on to accuse agents of “locking up people for a January 6^th insurrection — or whatever, grandma, who trespassed — because you don’t like their politics.”

Bongino and Seraphin’s discussion of Jan. 6 focused on trespassing and other misdemeanor offenses. Still, about 608 out of the nearly 1,600 defendants were charged with assaulting law enforcement or obstructing officers during a civil disorder, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Of those, 174 were charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious injury to an officer.

Emblematic of the administration’s efforts to whitewash the violent attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the webpage detailing the crimes committed on Jan. 6 was taken down shortly after Trump returned to office. But an archived page itemizes the array of weapons rioters used or carried at the Capitol: firearms; OC spray; tasers; edged weapons, including axes, hatchets, knives and a sword; makeshift weapons, including destroyed office furniture, fencing, bike racks and stolen riot shields; baseball bats, hockey sticks, flagpoles, PVC piping and reinforced knuckle gloves.

During his appearance on Bongino’s podcast in September 2022, Seraphin outed himself as the source of an email obtained by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). The email from FBI leadership mandates the use of specific threat tags to track “threats specifically directed against school board administrators, board members, teachers and staff.” Jordan, as the then-ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, seized on the email as proof that the FBI was “using counterterrorism tools to investigate parents,” even though the email doesn’t specifically mention parents.

“Essentially, they’re asking to tag these inbound threats,” Seraphin told Bongino. “And we don’t have time for those kinds of threats. We really don’t. In the real FBI, there’s not time for threats from some guy who’s yelling at the school board…. But it’s very difficult to convince me you would say that this is a real threat that exists all over the country….”

“Right,” Bongino agreed. “Worthy of FBI resources.”

The threats were, in fact, real.

In November 2021, the mayor of a small city in Ohio accused school board members in Summit County of “distributing essentially what is child pornography.” The accusation reportedly resulted in dozens of threats from around the country. Although the county prosecutor declined to file charges against the mayor, she issued a statement that “these allegations were false and caused numerous public servants to be victimized.”

In another incident, a woman protesting a masking requirement told the Page County Public School Board in Virginia in January 2022, “My children will not come to school on Monday with a mask on. All right. That’s not happening. And I will bring every single gun loaded and ready to — I will.”

As an indication of the turmoil surrounding COVID-19 restrictions and books addressing sensitive topics surrounding race and sexuality during that period, ProPublica reported that 59 people were arrested at school board meetings across the country from May 2021 through November 2022, most of them charged with trespassing, resisting an officer, or disrupting a public meeting.

In 2023, Garland reportedly told a House panel that the FBI received 22 reports of threats against school officials, and the agency referred six cases to state and local authorities to investigate.

“So, if I have a file on the CT side — the counterterrorism side — for showing up at a school board meeting and saying something — it may not have been appropriate thing to say, but it certainly isn’t a terroristic threat, you could have this big body of information available for you to make a criminal prosecution easier is where I’m going with that,” Bongino said during his interview with Seraphin. “The building blocks are already there.”

In at least one instance, a counterterrorism investigation did bring FBI agents to a parking lot outside a school board, if not into the meeting room.

Steve Friend, a former FBI agent, testified before a congressional panel that he had been tasked with surveilling an individual at a school board meeting as part of an open counterterrorism investigation. Based on the date of the subject’s arrest — Aug. 24, 2022 — House Democrats surmised that the subject under surveillance was one of four members of a Three Percenter militia called Guardians of Freedom who were charged with offenses related to the Jan. 6 attack. (A fifth would be arrested separately at a later date.)

“So, essentially we just documented the license plates of the people that were parking at the school board meeting who were January 6^th subjects, or people that were in the parking lot with them interacting that we thought could be in their sphere of influence, and then we left,” Friend testified.

One member of the militia had boasted on social media on July 2021 that he was “continuing to build my 3% army so I can overthrow the federal government,” according to the charging document, and he said that 80 percent of the local sheriff’s office was “on our side,” but he didn’t plan on “ever seeing the inside of a cell.”

Ultimately, the five members of Guardians of Freedom were convicted of various charges related to their conduct at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and received sentences ranging from two years of probation to five months in prison, only to be pardoned last month by President Trump.

Bongino, who worked as a New York City police officer and later for the Secret Service before becoming a podcaster, has never worked at the FBI.

But he expressed disdain for FBI upper management when Seraphin told him a colleague reported to Peter Strzok, the former deputy director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division. Strzok, in turn, reported to Andrew McCabe, who served in the role that Bongino now holds—deputy director.

“The trajectory for someone like that is they show up at a field office; they’re there for two and a half years,” Seraphin told Bongino during the September 2022 interview.

“What the hell do you learn in two to three years to be managing cases like yours out in the field?” Bongino scoffed.

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When Vice President J.D. Vance lectured European leaders at the Munich Security Conference last week on the “threat from within” posed by efforts to combat disinformation and contain far-right extremism, one far-right activist in particular was elated.

Martin Sellner, an Austrian leader of the far-right identitarian movement who is linked to the Christchurch shooter who slaughtered 51 Muslim worshipers in New Zealand in 2019, complained on X that the government in his country had subjected him to raids, a criminal investigation, and “hate speech” sanctions.

He lamented that he has been banned from entering multiple countries, including the United States, that his public appearances are shut down by riot police, and that he is treated as “a social pariah.”

“@JDVance was right,” he concluded. “The real enemy is within.”

In another post, Sellner approvingly quoted Vance’s declaration, “There’s no room for firewalls,” while forwarding a memetic video set to a techno beat that showed the vice president with fire shooting out of his eyes as European leaders appear to reel in response.

Sellner had reason to cheer.

He’s one of the most prominent advocates for “remigration” — a concept for mass expulsion of immigrants, with strong racist overtones — that has become a rallying cry for the European far right. And with Vance meeting the leader of the German far-right party Alternative for Deutschland, or AfD, he gave a boost to the group best positioned to put plans for “remigration” in motion.

The so-called “firewall” that Vance lambasted is a tacit agreement among political leaders in Germany and other European countries since World War II to maintain a center-right bulwark against far-right extremists for the purpose of preventing a repeat of the Holocaust, in which an estimated 6 million Jews were killed, and to prevent the resurgence of national socialism.

Vance’s broadside against mainstream European political leaders and meeting with AfD leader Alice Weidel on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference came just over a week before German nationwide elections scheduled for Feb. 23, in which AfD is expected to take second place.

Vance’s effort to pressure German leaders to share governing power with AfD — whose leaders have downplayed the Holocaust and uttered Nazi slogans, and which remains under investigation for extremism by the state security apparatus — presented a jarring contrast to his visit one day earlier to the Dachau concentration camp.

During the visit, Vance reportedly described what took place at the camp during the Third Reich as an “unspeakable evil” and said those who are alive today “should commit ourselves to do everything to prevent it from happening again.”

That didn’t escape the notice of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who excoriated Vance on the second day of the Munich Security Conference.

“A commitment to ‘never again’ is not reconcilable with support for the AfD,” Scholz said. “This ‘never again’ is the historical mission that Germany as a free democracy must and wants to continue to live up to every day. Never again fascism, never again racism, never again war of aggression.”

Vance and his representatives could not be reached for comment about his seemingly contradictory statements.

Vance’s call for German leaders to remove barriers to AfD’s march towards political power comes at a time when the party appears to be increasingly emboldened and vocal about its plans to expel immigrants, providing a transatlantic echo of President Trump’s promise for mass deportation in the United States.

Only a year ago, the AfD was reeling from a bombshell report that some of its members had participated in a secret meeting at a hotel outside Potsdam to discuss a “masterplan” for “remigration.”

The presenter was none other than Sellner, whom Correctiv describes as a “neo-Nazi.”

Among the attendees was Roland Hartwig, a personal aide to AfD leader Weidel.

The shared goal of the meeting participants, according to Correctiv, was “the forced deportations of people from Germany based on a set of racist criteria, regardless of whether or not they have German citizenship.” Correctiv reported that Sellner’s speech named three target groups that should be expelled. They were asylum seekers, non-Germans with residency rights, and, most controversially, “non-assimilated” German citizens.

Sellner has said that the report didn’t capture the full context of his remarks. He reportedly wrote in an email to the Reuters news agency: “I made very clear that no distinctions can be made between citizens — that there can be no second-class citizens — and that all remigration measures have to be legal. Unassimilated citizens like Islamists, gangsters, and welfare cheats should be pushed to adapt through a policy of standards and assimilation.” He reportedly added that the program could include incentives for voluntary return.

Weidel disavowed the meeting amidst the ensuing backlash, telling the Wall Street Journal: “No one wants that. That would be unconstitutional, as far as I’m concerned, a breach of human rights.”

But only a year later, during a party conference in the eastern German state of Saxony last month, Weidel reportedly said: “And I have to be honest with you: If it’s going to be called remigration, then that’s what it’s going to be — remigration.”

The AfD did not respond to an email from Raw Story seeking clarification on whether Weidel’s recent embrace of “remigration” includes the removal of German citizens, but the party issued a position paper on Jan. 29 stating that “all Germans are part of our nation, regardless of their origin, ancestry or religious affiliation,” and that the party rejects “the deportation of German citizens with a migration background.”

Despite the AfD’s assurances that the party would carry out “remigration” through only legal and constitutional means, the phrase comes out of an unmistakably violent history. The phrase gained widespread currency among European far-right activists following a 2012 gathering in Paris called “Assises de la Remigration,” or Annual Meeting on Remigration, according to a report by HuffPost. The conference featured a speech by writer Renaud Camus, who coined the phrase “great replacement,” which is a white supremacist hoax falsely claiming that white people face extinction. Conference attendees reportedly discussed “remigration” as a solution.

Génération Identitaire, the host organization for the Annual Meeting on Remigration, would later provide the model for Identity Evropa, a U.S. white nationalist organization that helped organize the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. in 2017. Members chanted “Jews will not replace us” before clashing with left-wing antifascists, and before a rally attendee rammed his car into a peaceful march and murdered an antifascist activist.

In 2018, Brenton Tarrant, who would go on to carry out a massacre against Muslim worshipers in Christchurch, New Zealand, reportedly made a donation equivalent to more than $1,500 in U.S. dollars to Sellner’s identitarian organization, Identitaire Bowegung Österreichs.

Sellner reportedly thanked Tarrant for the donation, and invited Tarrant to join him for a beer or coffee if he were to ever Austria.

When Tarrant murdered 51 Muslim worshipers during a livestreamed shooting at two mosques in Christchurch more than a year later, he left behind a manifesto. It’s title: “The Great Replacement.”

Sellner could not be reached for comment for this story.

Even before AfD’s Weidel embraced “remigration,” the phrase found its way into a Truth Social post by Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump’s post in September 2024 pledged that his administration would “return [opponent Kamala Harris’] illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration).

“I will save our cities and towns in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and all across America,” he added.

Around the same time, Vance spread baseless and false rumors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio eating pets, and claimed that they were “illegal aliens” despite being in the country under the Temporary Protected Status program, which was established by Congress in 1990.

Raw Story reached out to Vance for comment on his position on “remigration,” but did not receive a response.

Amy Spitalnick, a U.S. Jewish leader who led the successful lawsuit against the Unite the Right organizers for conspiracy to commit racial violence, criticized the Trump administration for normalizing the AfD.

“History has made clear that our safety as Jews is inextricably linked with inclusive, pluralistic democracy,” said Spitalnick, who is the CEO of the Jewish Council of Public Affairs. “The Trump administration’s embrace of extreme right policies at home and extreme right political movements abroad — including a German party that openly trivializes the Holocaust and rejects its lessons — is deeply dangerous for the global Jewish community.”

In his remarks at the Munich Security Conference, Vance made arguments that sounded virtually indistinguishable from AfD’s platform. He admonished the mainstream European leaders that they wouldn’t “win” a democratic mandate “by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be part of our shared society.

“And of all the pressing challenges that the nations here face, I believe that there is nothing more urgent than mass migration,” Vance continued.

He went on to bemoan the share of people living in Germany and the United States who had moved to the countries from abroad. During his speech, Vance cited a car-ramming attack by an Afghan asylum seeker in Munich that took the lives of a 2-year-old girl and her mother. But he did not mention a mass shooting earlier this month at an adult education center in Örebro, Sweden that took the lives of 10 people, most of whom were immigrants.

“It’s a terrible story, but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe, and unfortunately too many times in the United States as well,” Vance said. “An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-twenties, already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?”

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A 25-year-old Arkansas man has pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy for plotting to murder a teenage girl whom he met online and subjected to escalating demands for sexually explicit images, which progressed to threats of rape and cutting.

Jairo Jaime Tinajero admitted in his plea to membership in 764, an online extremist network that engages in the sexual exploitation of children as part of an occultist-driven effort to bring about the collapse of society through accelerationism. Tinajero’s plea on Tuesday to racketeering conspiracy and his agreement to a terrorism sentencing enhancement marks a new step in an increasingly robust effort by the U.S. Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden and now under President Donald Trump to counter the threat.

Under the terms of the plea deal, Tinajero faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, but the agreement indicates the government and the defendant agreed upon 25 years as an “appropriate disposition.” Tinajero also pleaded guilty to online enticement, three counts each of production and distribution of child sexual abuse material, five counts of interstate communications of threats, cyberstalking, and conspiracy to murder. Tinajero awaits sentencing, which is scheduled for Aug. 26, in a Kentucky jail outside of Louisville.

Tinajero’s case is the first 764 prosecution in which a defendant has been charged with racketeering, and he is the first 764 member to agree through a plea agreement that the terrorism enhancement applies to his crimes, Department of Justice spokesperson Shannon R. Shevlin told Raw Story.

Two trial attorneys from the Counterterrorism Section of the Department of Justice’s National Security Division are prosecuting the case.

“This is an aggressive move by the DOJ against what they refer to as the ‘764 enterprise,’ one which suggests similar prosecutions may not be far away,” Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Raw Story. “Strategically, pursuing these networks through racketeering and criminal enterprise statutes may offer prosecutors a way to fill the gap in our domestic terrorism statutes.”

Shevlin declined to comment on whether she anticipates additional arrests, but a Department of Justice press release indicates that the FBI continues to investigate the case.

“The Department of Justice is fully committed to stopping 764’s acts of terrorism and disrupting the 764 network,” Shevlin said.

A factual basis attached to Tinajero’s plea agreement names a dozen other individuals by their online usernames who are alleged to be “members of the 764 enterprise,” including a person nicknamed “Vitaly” who allegedly plotted with Tinajero to kill a teenage girl in Louisville identified in court documents as “Jane Doe 1.” The girl was 14 years old at the time Tinajero first contacted her, according to a court filing.

The factual basis alleges that Tinajero and “Vitaly,” (also known as “Lazzarus” and “Laz”) — who is named as a “co-conspirator” — “agreed that one of them would commit the murder of Jane Doe 1.” The document describes a series of messages exchanged between the two in September 2023 about Tinajero’s plans to obtain a firearm and drive to Louisville from Arkansas to murder the girl, and then to dispose of her body. The factual basis alleges that “Vitaly provided Tinajero with information on obtaining a barrel that could be used to dissolve Jane Doe’s body in acid.”

Tinajero allegedly attempted to buy an AR-15 from a gun dealer in Conway, Ark., and investigators were able to link a phone number he listed on his application to purchase the firearm to one that he used to text the victim.

Tinajero’s exploitation of the girl began with asking her to send pictures of her feet through a messaging app, according to the factual basis statement and he quickly persuaded her to send photos of her legs spread while wearing underwear and then with her genitals exposed. Two months later, after the girl stopped responding to his texts, the government alleges that Tinajero told her he knew all her family members’ “names and where they work.” Later, he allegedly texted her: “Imma f--- your life up if you don’t text me today” and “Imma find your ass and rape u.”

The factual basis statement describes Tinajero’s participation in discussions among 764 members about criminal activities that go beyond the specific charges in his case. The government alleges that Tinajero participated in an online chat in which “Vitaly” aka “Laz” and others described as “known and unknown co-conspirators,” instructed a girl “who Tinajero and others believed was as young as 12 years old to repeatedly cut herself with a knife.” The court document goes on to say that “it was Tinajero’s understanding that Laz and their co-conspirators intended to cause the 12-year-old female to kill herself through the self-mutilation.”

The factual basis statement indicates that Tinajero, Vitaly and other co-conspirators worked together to obtain child pornography from at least three other minor females in Kentucky who are identified as Jane Does.

Tinajero’s lawyer did not respond to an email from Raw Story inquiring as to whether Tinajero intends to cooperate with the government and help the FBI identify his alleged co-conspirators. A plea supplement was filed under seal in the case on Tuesday.

Other online discussions among 764 members, according to the government, involved “previous attacks made on people and places as well as future attacks on heavily populated areas such as malls or other large gatherings, LGBTQ+ events and gatherings, schools, public places, and police stations.”

President Trump’s allies, including Kash Patel — the nominee to lead the FBI — have politicized domestic terrorism investigations, particularly ones that involve white supremacy. Patel wrote in his 2023 book Government Gangsters in a chapter entitled “Made-Up Domestic Terrorism” that “to pump up public support for their attacks on conservative Americans, the FBI leadership has been reportedly pushing agents to artificially inflate data about domestic terrorism to make the problem seem much worse than it is.”

Patel’s criticism was framed around the FBI’s investigation during the Biden administration of more than 1,500 people who took part in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and subsequently received blanket pardons from President Trump.

Meanwhile, Steve Bannon, a chief strategist of the MAGA movement, complained in the aftermath of a deadly New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans by an ISIS supporter that former FBI Director Christopher Wray was too focused on “radicalized white nationalists, white separatists.”

A shift in language used to describe the 764 network suggests Department of Justice officials under Pam Bondi, the new attorney general, are sensitive to the criticism. The factual basis for Tinajero’s plea agreement filed on Tuesday described 764 members as “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.” But a “superseding information” document filed later on the same day that outlined the expanded charges to include racketeering conspiracy merely describes 764 as “violent extremists.”

In contrast, the Department of Justice appears to be leaning into the effort initiated under Bondi’s predecessor, Merrick Garland, to prosecute 764 as a terrorist group. Under Garland’s leadership, a federal prosecutor filed a sentencing memorandum in October 2024 for Richard Densmore, a 47-year-old 764 member who pleaded last year to sexually abusing a child, that stated the case would ordinarily have warranted a terrorism enhancement, but that the defendant had already reached his sentencing cap.

Densmore was sentenced to 30 years in prison, and in his sentencing memorandum the prosecutor predicted that in the future 764 cases the government would seek an upward departure under the terrorism enhancement. To support use of the terrorism enhancement, the prosecutor cited a paper by Marc-André Argentino, a senior researcher at the Accelerationism Research Consortium, that pointed to a “significant threat nexus between terrorist and violent extremism content… and child sexual exploitation and abuse material’ and 764’s ‘ultimate goal… to groom individuals for acts of terroristic violence.”

The charging document filed against Tinajero on Tuesday echoes the formulation in the earlier case by describing an enterprise that not only perpetrates vile abuse against children, but also poses a national security threat.

“Members of 764, both individually and as a group, methodically target vulnerable, underage populations across the United States and the globe,” the document reads. “Members of 764 use online social media communications platforms as mediums to support the possession, production, and sharing of extreme gore media and child sexual abuse material with vulnerable, juvenile populations.

“Members of 764 seek to desensitize young people to violence, breaking down societal norms regarding engaging in violence, and normalizing the possession, production, and sharing of explicit CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) and gore material to corrupt and groom people towards future violence.”

When 17-year-old Solomon Henderson fatally shot a fellow student and then took his own life at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee, last month, he left behind a diary full of provocative poses as a kind of press kit.

Henderson's associates in an online subculture organized around inceldom, neo-Nazi accelerationism, and edgy memes immediately set to work incorporating images of him spliced together with white supremacist symbols and set to music for tribute videos.

“Rest in Peace Black Incel King,” one of the users wrote in a caption for the video, posted less than 24 hours after Henderson’s attack.

Another hailed him as a “hero” while positioning his image alongside other school shooters and mass murderers that he had idolized.

The tribute videos follow a depressing script that the 17-year-old Henderson had outlined. Henderson had cited an 18-year-old named Arda Küçükyetim, who had stabbed five people near a mosque in Eskisehir, Turkey, as an inspiration. In his diary, Henderson reflected on a statement in Küçükyetim’s manifesto to the effect that the digital legacy of each perpetrator would “motivate” future attacks

A month before opening fire on the cafeteria at his high school, Henderson had expressed appreciation for the fact that Natalie Rupnow, a 15-year-old who killed another student, a teacher and herself at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, weeks earlier had followed two of his X accounts. In a comment under Rupnow’s X post indicating she was planning an attack, Henderson had urged her to “livestream it.”

Based on his online interactions with Rupnow, at least a half-dozen X users flagged Henderson’s account, while urging the FBI to investigate. The FBI has previously declined to comment to Raw Story on whether agents followed up on the tips.

As the cycle of online incitement continues, a new cohort of extremists are celebrating the murder-suicide that Henderson carried out — while signaling plans for future attacks.

The aftermath of Henderson’s attack comes at a time when the FBI, which prides itself on being “the lead investigative agency on terrorism matters,” is undergoing massive upheaval since President Trump took office, with the purge of its top leadership rung and review of thousands of agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases.

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Three of Henderson’s associates who followed his X account made posts on the platform hinting at plans to carry out attacks, commit suicide or a combination of the two on Jan. 20, two days before Henderson’s strike. Raw Story is not identifying the accounts to avoid amplifying their messages.

One of the associates, a Portuguese national, posted a document entitled “An Incel Manifesto” on Jan. 20, and in another post on the same day wrote, “I’m a first-person shooter.”

Raw Story has learned that the Portuguese national’s identity has been reported to Europol, a European Union agency that combats international and organized crime, cybercrime and terrorism.

Another associate, an 18-year-old college student who describes himself as a “Mexican living in California,” published a Google Docs link, but didn't make it shareable.

“Goodbye everyone,” he wrote in the post.

In the weeks leading up to the post, the associate had written, “We should kill every single person on the planet. He posted a link to a video about Elliott Rodger, considered the original incel mass murderer following a 2018 attack in Canada.

“It’s time,” he captioned the post.

Less is known about a third associate, but one of the few personal details he has shared is that his first name and surname are from the Indian subcontinent. Another X user has claimed that this associate is 14 years old.

The Portuguese national and the associate with the Indian name both posted photos that eerily imitated an image posted by Rupnow hours before she opened fire at Abundant Life Christian School.

It’s an A-OK hand sign positioned between the legs of the subject facing downward. Henderson had incorporated Rupnow’s photo in his diary while describing the hand gesture as a “white power symbol” associated with Brenton Tarrant, the white supremacist mass murderer who slaughtered 51 Muslim worshipers in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019.

Before carrying out his attack at Antioch High School on Jan. 22, Henderson posted his own version of the photo.

The associate with the Indian name added a chilling note to his Jan. 20 post.

“This one’s for Hugo Jackson and Arda Küçükyetim,” he wrote. “Goodbye everyone.”

Jackson, a 15-year-old student, went on stabbing rampage at his school in Eslöv, Sweden, seriously injuring a teacher, in 2021.

The FBI did not respond to an email from Raw Story inquiring into whether the agency has taken any steps to investigate or disrupt potential attacks by Henderson’s associates, or alerted their counterparts in foreign countries.

“I think they certainly are interested in trying to stop them,” Carla Hill, the director of investigative research at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told Raw Story. “We routinely share intel that we find alarming with them, and they express appreciation. If there’s not an arrest, they’re seizing guns through red flag laws.”

While the FBI failed to stop Henderson’s attack, the agency did intervene to disrupt an allegedly planned mass shooting by a 20-year-old man in California who is said to have communicated online with Rupnow.

An order issued by a judge in California on Dec. 17 reportedly stated that “during an FBI interview, [Alexander] Paffendorf admitted to the FBI agents that he told Rupnow that he would arm himself with explosives and a gun and that he would target a government building. FBI agents saw the messages from Paffendorf to Rupnow.”

The Carlsbad Police Department filed an emergency protective order for gun violence against Paffendorf in San Diego County Superior Court in December, and he has a hearing scheduled for April 4. A deputy city attorney reportedly told the court last month that there was a criminal investigation underway, but it was “not within” the Carlsbad Police Department. The FBI and U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment to NBC News 7 San Diego. There are currently no criminal charges against Paffendorf.

The Henderson associate who self-identified as a “Mexican living in California” resurfaced two days after his Jan. 20 farewell post, explaining: “Failed my attempt so I’m back now.” His return coincided with the attack by Henderson, whom he dismissed in another post as the “least interesting shooter ever.”

As an indication of how online extremists obtain clout from demonstrating a connection with shooters but also appear to feel threatened by competition from them, the Portuguese associate first praised Henderson as a “Black incel king,” and then later complained that Henderson had ruined “all the plans and months of work” by mentioning him in his manifesto and “interacting” with him.

As a result, the associate said, he had been “banned” on social media platforms, and his manifesto had been removed from one after being flagged as “hate speech.” The associate agreed with another X user who disparaged Henderson, while using a racial slur and charging that he “just framed the incel community for clout.”

Since the Antioch High School shooting, at least two of Henderson’s associates have expressed continued interest in harming others and themselves.

In late January, the California associate hosted an X space with 25 other users under the heading, “1stDARKMGTOW MEETING OF TFD.” “MGTOW” stands for “men going their own way,” while “TFD” is an acronym for “total foid death.” “Foid” is an incel slur against women, combining the words “female” and “humanoid.”

The Portuguese national has made posts referencing the white supremacist mass murder carried out by Payton Gendron in Buffalo, NY in 2022 and the late eco-terrorist Ted Kaczynski, along with gory anime clips depicting women blowing their heads off with shotguns.

In recent weeks, he has talked about trying to join the military in his country.

“I think it would be an easy way to have access to a gun,” he wrote. “Let’s see what happens.”

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This story is the final installment in a three-part series exploring how violent online subcultures provide the opportunity for teenagers attracted to accelerationism and inceldom to network and encourage one another to carry out terrorist attacks. Read the first two stories here and here.