WASHINGTON — Law enforcement officials disrupted a planned attack targeting the UFC cage-fighting show staged at the White House this past weekend, according to court papers unsealed Tuesday that say plotters disgruntled with the direction of the country spoke of flying explosives-laden drones and shooting panicked crowd members as they fled.
The FBI obtained encrypted text messages between roughly 20 participants who shared detailed maps of the area and discussed the need for a “safe house” and escape routes after the attack, the documents show. It was unclear from the court records how close the would-be attackers could have come to being able to carry out their plan had it not been thwarted last week.
FBI agents learned about the possible threat on June 10, four days before the mixed martial arts extravaganza on the White House’s South Lawn, “and thanks to the rapid action of the FBI, our partners, and the Department of Justice in a multi-state operation, multiple individuals are now in custody and allegedly planned attacks were stopped cold,” Director Kash Patel said in a post on X on Tuesday.
Five people were arrested from states including Ohio, Missouri and California, said a law enforcement official familiar with the matter. The official spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that was not yet public.
Asked about the arrests Tuesday, Vance said there was “more violent rhetoric coming from the left than the right these days.” But the charging documents paint a more muddled view of their views, depicting them as espousing a tangled web of anti-government sentiment, antisemitic grievances, fury over the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and conspiracy theories about a powerful elite that sacrifices and consumes children.
Both Trump and Vance said they had not been briefed in advance of the plot. A top Secret Service official suggested Tuesday the investigation was continuing and an announcement might have been premature.
“Anyone that believes that case was worked in a bubble is naive,” Deputy Secret Service Director Matthew Quinn told reporters at an unrelated news conference. “I’ll tell you the Secret Service led that investigation from the beginning. I’ll tell you that it’s ongoing. In order to maintain the integrity of the investigation and the security plan, we chose not to leak it.”
Communications took place on TikTok and Signal
Among those arrested was Tycen Proper, a 19-year-old Ohio man whose mother contacted law enforcement last week with concerns about his firearms purchases and online communications, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.
Proper told officials he participated in the planning of an attack, according to the affidavit, which says some members of the group began communicating with each other last March through a TikTok group called “Vanguard of the Old.”
“The members of the group stated that they wanted to protect the United States, which they believed was headed in the wrong direction,” the affidavit says. “Members of the group believed that the United States needed to be torn down so that it could be rebuilt. Some expressed a desire that people who were involved with Jeffrey Epstein should not govern the country.”
Trump, who celebrated his 80th birthday at the UFC event on Sunday, was friends with Epstein many years ago but has said he ended their relationship before the disgraced financier’s crimes became known. Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.
A lawyer for Proper, who is charged with firearms offenses and crimes including attempted murder of an officer or employee of the United States, did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
The logistics were discussed via Signal, an app that uses end-to-end encryption for its messaging and calling services, through a primary chat of “approximately 19 individuals” and smaller side chats, authorities said. Messages obtained from Proper’s phone show he identified by name several Republican lawmakers he said should be targeted because they apparently received donations from causes supportive of Israel, the affidavit said.
Proper told law enforcement officials that he had been planning to drive with weapons and body armor to a meet-up spot in Fredericksburg, Virginia, court papers say. He said though he did not intend to shoot people at the White House, others in the group did, the affidavit said.
The plan called for the use of drones that would be detonated over the north side of the White House, prompting an evacuation into the line of fire of waiting snipers in an attack Proper said was designed to “jumpstart” a revolution, authorities said.
Investigators who examined Proper’s phone and TikTok account identified additional suspects.
Michael Alan Thomas, 32, of Pinon Hills, California, told officials he viewed himself as “the planner and advisor for the group, and while he was not willing to take action himself, wanted to guide and instruct others on how to carry out attacks” designed to overthrow the government, an FBI agent said in an affidavit.
The agent said Thomas believed the U.S. government was “run by an elite group of individuals who sacrifice and consume infants who also were deeply involved” with Epstein and are now protected by Trump.
Another suspect, Bryan Omar Roa, also of California, told the FBI he had planned to attend the event as a “protester” but he had to return home because his car was broken, an agent said.
It was not immediately clear who their lawyers were.
Two other suspects were identified as Daniel K. Eskridge, 32, of Kidder, Missouri, who officials say said in a group chat that a target of the attack should be “big and someone a majority of the country knows,” and Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, an Omaha, Nebraska, man who the FBI said posted detailed plans with the co-conspirators.
A lawyer for Alvarez declined to comment and a lawyer for Eskridge did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
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Eric Tucker, The Associated Press
Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in Evian-les-Bains, France, contributed to this report.