For now, there are many questions about who was conspiring to do what, and how.
For now, there are many questions about who was conspiring to do what, and how.
T he alleged plot to, well, to do something violent during President Trump’s 80th birthday ’rasslin extravaganza — the Ultimate Fighting Championship on the White House lawn last Sunday night — is shaping up to be one of the stranger cases you’ll see.
As this is written, an investigation is still underway — more like multiple investigations, which is part of the oddity. Five men have been charged, but rather than one big conspiracy case, complaints were filed in at least four different federal district courts. It appears that prosecutors have varying theories of what was afoot and how serious it was. That, along with the difference between the paltry number of arrests compared to the 23 (give or take) suspects said to be under investigation, suggests that some investigators may have jumped the gun by making public announcements before the time was ripe — in particular, the FBI led by Director Kash Patel, a recidivist offender on that score.
In sum, the feds say they broke up a plot to conduct an attack on the United States, which at least some plotters hoped would spark a revolution to overthrow the government. The idea (though even this is not clear from the four criminal complaints) is that conspirators would stage a demonstration to protest the UFC event on the north side of the White House. Some of them, set up at pre-assigned locations, would use the demonstration as a distraction, during which they’d deploy explosive-laden drones over the makeshift UFC arena. This, too, would be something of a head-fake, as the aim would be to cause panic, not to kill — at least initially. In the anticipated chain of events, the chaotic anxiety would induce VIPs — members of Congress and other high-profile figures — to flee the event, giving armed conspirators the opportunity to pick them off in sniper-style assassinations.
The plan might sound a bit far-fetched. On the other hand, we’ve experienced enough spectacular attacks in recent years that a far-fetched plot can’t be dismissed out of hand. The problem for proving the case is the lack of clarity, at least so far, that anyone actually went to Washington — or was at least poised to be in the vicinity and to take up battle stations — last Sunday night.
To be sure, there was a good deal of alarming text chatter, and interlocutors made a deliberate decision to switch communications over to secure apps, such as Signal, to avoid detection. Still, what’s known to this point is that one alleged conspirator, 19-year-old Tycen Proper, talked about planning to drive to the UFC event from the Columbus, Ohio, area, but never left because his parents got spooked by his aberrant behavior. They called the local police, resulting in Proper’s hospitalization for a mental condition (“homicidal ideations,” according to the complaint).
Another defendant, 24-year-old Bryan Omar Roa, was still home in California in the days before the White House event, though he told agents that he had “attempted” to drive to Washington — whatever that means.
Let’s back up. For all the Washington chest-beating, this was not initially a federal investigation. Moreover, even being maximally charitable, it is dubious to claim that “allegedly planned attacks were stopped cold” due to an FBI-led “multi-state operation,” as Director Patel chirped Tuesday — in a social media post, which is how federal law enforcement rolls these days.
Rather, Proper’s strange activities over the past few weeks made his parents distraught. They’d thought he was trending toward a career in the military or a police department, but he’d become withdrawn this spring and had spent increasingly concerning amounts of time inhabiting online groups. His mother told police in Columbus that he’d gotten taken in by people who “claimed to be ex-military and Christian-based.” She thought they’d used religious rhetoric to entrance her son, and recalled that they had what seem to be left-wing grievances — e.g., the daft notion that data centers are consuming all the water in local communities (see Charles C. W. Cooke for a rejoinder), fury at the scent of government corruption related to disclosure of the Epstein files, and so on. As night follows day with this sort of stuff, there was antisemitism, too.
Of most concern, though, was Proper’s apparent interest in militaristic activity. Proper’s father told the police that his son used “graduation money” to acquire “camping gear, food, ballistic plates, a new shotgun, a rifle, ‘lots’ of ammunition, extra magazines, and plate carriers.” He’d also appeared to be stepping up physical exercise, had quit his job, and was planning a weekend meet-up with his online acquaintances — the weekend of the UFC event — to conduct “missions” and “recons.”
When confronted by his mother about appearing to study online maps of locations just outside of northwest Washington, D.C., Proper replied that he couldn’t tell her exactly what he was doing; eventually, though, he blurted out that he and his online associates were conducting “recon” and planning “hit and run missions.” His mother took the latter to mean “conducting shootings and then leaving.”
Frightened, Proper’s mother called the local police on Wednesday night, June 10 — four days before the UFC event. After hearing from the parents, speaking to Proper, and observing the equipment he’d purchased, Knox County Sheriff’s deputies took him to a local hospital, where he was admitted for evaluation. The sheriff’s office contacted the FBI the following day. The bureau appears to have taken over the case at that point, obtained a search warrant for Proper’s home (even though the parents had been cooperative), and interviewed Proper at the hospital.
Proper’s statement, as described in the complaint, was damning but confusing. The FBI says he “admitted to planning with others a coordinated attack against the United States” at the UFC event. Yet he also said he personally was not planning to shoot anyone, though he believed others in the group were “intent on violence” (as the complaint puts it).
Proper said that all the group members were planning to leave their homes on Friday or Saturday (a day or two before the UFC event) and rendezvous in Fredericksburg, Virginia. But how they were going to get there wasn’t clear. Proper was planning to drive and bring his equipment — including guns, notwithstanding his denial of intending to shoot anyone. He hoped to pick up a group member who was attempting to obtain a firearm from a friend or employer. Though he is by far the youngest person charged so far, Proper described himself as a leader of the group, called “Vanguard of the Old,” which “believed the United States needed to be torn down so that it could be rebuilt.” The group, he recounted, had built up mutual trust on TikTok by exchanging personal information and “videos of their abilities and workouts.”
Proper also laid out the plan of attack, which involved the afore-described drones and sniper perches. It’s not clear from the complaint whether Proper was given Miranda warnings before being questioned. That omission pinged my old prosecutor antennae. Although agents interviewed Proper in a hospital setting, the complaint takes pains to say the interview was “consensual,” and that the room they were in was “unlocked,” with a medical “case worker” present. Those are the kinds of details prosecutors include in complaints when they are worried that the voluntariness of a confession — and thus its admissibility — could be questioned.
The complaint is odd in a couple of ways.
First, after Proper’s description of the person he intended to pick up en route to Washington, the complaint adds that “[i]nvestigators have identified that individual and believe he lives in West Virginia.” This is the kind of detail complaints typically avoid including, since it adds nothing to the demonstration of probable cause against Proper (the purpose of a sworn complaint) and because a complaint becomes public once a defendant is arrested. There is no indication that the suspect described by Proper was in custody, so the gratuitous inclusion of that detail would encourage him to abscond (and there is no report of this person having been arrested in the ensuing days).
Second, the complaint explicitly names five members of Congress (three senators and two representatives) that the conspirators allegedly discussed shooting. For obvious reasons, the Justice Department avoids naming in charging documents people who are not charged, and especially potential crime victims. (As an aside: It has been strange to read press coverage that avoided naming names even though the Trump DOJ’s complaint included the names; usually, one expects the opposite.)
At some point, the Secret Service was alerted about the investigation. This is no doubt because the alleged plot was aimed at the White House event, even though President Trump was not included among the politicians identified as potential assassination targets in the Proper complaint. In fact, asked two days after the UFC event about arrests that had been made, the president told reporters that he had not heard about the plot; we can therefore infer that investigators did not believe he was in any real danger.
Intriguingly, the Secret Service has barely concealed its anger over Patel’s public announcement. Deputy Director Matthew C. Quinn told the press this week that the Secret Service had led the investigation from the start (which is at odds with indications that local police in Ohio were contacted by the Proper family and then reached out to the FBI). Quinn was concerned by the number of apparent suspects and level of planning involved. But he ruefully observed that some suspects were still at large, and that while Patel rushed to post on social media, the Secret Service “chose not to leak” in order “to maintain the integrity of the investigation and the security plan” (i.e., the plan for safely coordinating arrests).
Quinn further acknowledged that the president “was never at any risk.” That is indubitably true, but I imagine prosecutors winced at the remark. Proper is charged with attempted murder (of whom, the complaint does not say). To prove attempt, prosecutors must establish not just preparation, but a concrete substantial step toward completing the crime. To be sure, Proper purchased a great deal of equipment, but the complaint does not allege it was illegally purchased. Plus, he never went to Washington (due, in large part, to his parents’ decision to contact the police), and he told the agents that he did not intend to shoot anyone.
That’s a tough attempt case, especially when a top Secret Service official says that the president was not in peril — though, again, he was the center of attention at the event that was allegedly to be attacked.
The other suspects appear to have been charged based on their online conversations with Proper. There’s quite a bit of crazy material to be found there: 32-year-old Michael Alan Thomas of California, for example, opined that when the rich and well-connected associates of the late, disgraced sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, are not running the government, they are killing and eating infants.
Even when criminal conduct spans many federal districts, the Justice Department knows from experience that the highest likelihood of prosecutorial success lies in assigning a conspiracy case to one district, pursuing one coherent, evidence-rooted theory of the case. Here, so far, there are four cases.
As often happens, this has already led to contradictory charging. Besides the dubious attempt allegation, Proper is accused of conspiracy — but to do what, the government doesn’t say . . . it’s just charged as conspiracy to commit some unspecified offense against the United States. Ditto with respect to 31-year-old Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, who was charged in Nebraska. He is said to have confessed to agents that he sought to guide others in carrying out attacks to overthrow the government; but at least so far he is not charged with such an agreement (which could have been charged as seditious conspiracy if the evidence were strong enough).
By contrast, three defendants — Roa and Thomas in California and 32-year-old Daniel K. Eskridge in Missouri — are charged specifically with conspiracy to commit murder. But, in contrast to Proper, there is no allegation that they attempted to commit murder — which may be an implicit concession that there was no realistic possibility they could get to Washington in time to carry out the dastardly plan.
It is early in the process — some might say prematurely early if the government started arresting and charging people without having (a) all suspects in pocket and (b) a single narrative about what crimes were committed and how. Perhaps there will be more arrests, additional evidence, and a coherent prosecution story when it comes time to file an indictment, or indictments.
If this was a serious plot to carry out a mass-murder attack, we should cheer Proper’s parents and the energetic follow-up by law enforcement, and we would probably ignore any infighting between agencies as normal turf-fighting and credit-hogging. For now, though, there are many questions about who was conspiring to do what, and how.