White Supremacists Targeted Journalists and a Trump Official, F.B.I. Says
Mike Baker, Adam Goldman and Neil MacFarquhar
SEATTLE — Federal prosecutors have charged five people tied to a neo-Nazi group with engaging in a campaign to intimidate and harass journalists and others, including a member of President Trump’s cabinet, a university and a church.
© Grant Hindsley for The New York Times Brian Moran, the United States attorney for the Western District of Washington, speaking on Wednesday in Seattle about the arrest of members of Atomwoffen, a neo-Nazi group.
The charges, announced on Wednesday in Virginia and Washington State, are part of a broader recent crackdown by federal law enforcement on violent white supremacists in the United States. Authorities said the individuals were associated with the Atomwaffen Division, a small but violent paramilitary neo-Nazi group.
In the Virginia case, prosecutors accused John Cameron Denton, 26, whom they described as a former Atomwaffen leader, of harassment through a tactic known as “swatting” — calling the police and falsely describing an imminent threat at a specific location, causing the authorities to respond in force.
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In one instance, prosecutors said, Mr. Denton targeted an investigative journalist at ProPublica because he was angry that the news organization had named him in its reporting on Atomwaffen. In other cases in 2018 and 2019, Mr. Denton and others placed swatting calls that targeted Old Dominion University and Alfred Street Baptist Church, prosecutors said.
According to a person familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly, Kirstjen Nielsen, then the secretary of homeland security, was the cabinet official targeted by Atomwaffen. In January 2019, the police responded to her home in Alexandria, Va., after a swatting call.
Last month, prosecutors said, Mr. Denton met with an undercover F.B.I. agent and described his efforts.
“Denton said that if he was ‘raided’ for swatting ProPublica then it would be good for Atomwaffen Division because the swatting would be seen as a top-tier crime,” Jonathan Myles Lund, an F.B.I. agent, wrote in an affidavit. The affidavit named 134 law enforcement agencies that investigators believe received swatting calls from Mr. Denton and others.
Authorities said Mr. Denton operated with others, including two foreign nationals who live outside the United States, and another man, John William Kirby Kelley, who was arrested earlier and accused of playing a role in the swatting incidents. Mr. Kelley was a student at Old Dominion University.
In Seattle on Wednesday, prosecutors unsealed a conspiracy charge against Kaleb James Cole, 24, a leader of Atomwaffen’s chapter in Washington, accusing him of sending threatening mail and cyberstalking. The others charged were Cameron Brandon Shea, 24, of Redmond, Wash., described as a high-level recruiter for the group; Taylor Ashley Parker-Dipeppe, 20, of Spring Hill, Fla.; and Johnny Roman Garza, 20, of Queen Creek, Ariz.
Authorities said the men took part in an operation called Erste Saule, or “first pillar” in German, which Mr. Shea described in an encrypted chat room as an effort to target “journalists houses and media buildings to send a clear message.”
The goal, Mr. Shea said, was to “erode the media/states air of legitimacy by showing people that they have names and addresses, and hopefully embolden others to act.”
Prosecutors said Mr. Cole and Mr. Shea were the primary organizers. When members of Atomwaffen suggested Jewish or black journalists as possible targets, Mr. Shea and Mr. Cole offered praise. Mr. Shea said he wanted his victims to feel “terrorized.” Mr. Cole suggested buying rag dolls and sticking knives through their heads and leaving them at the locations of their targets, according to the charges.
The charges, announced on Wednesday in Virginia and Washington State, are part of a broader recent crackdown by federal law enforcement on violent white supremacists in the United States. Authorities said the individuals were associated with the Atomwaffen Division, a small but violent paramilitary neo-Nazi group.
In the Virginia case, prosecutors accused John Cameron Denton, 26, whom they described as a former Atomwaffen leader, of harassment through a tactic known as “swatting” — calling the police and falsely describing an imminent threat at a specific location, causing the authorities to respond in force.
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In one instance, prosecutors said, Mr. Denton targeted an investigative journalist at ProPublica because he was angry that the news organization had named him in its reporting on Atomwaffen. In other cases in 2018 and 2019, Mr. Denton and others placed swatting calls that targeted Old Dominion University and Alfred Street Baptist Church, prosecutors said.
According to a person familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly, Kirstjen Nielsen, then the secretary of homeland security, was the cabinet official targeted by Atomwaffen. In January 2019, the police responded to her home in Alexandria, Va., after a swatting call.
Last month, prosecutors said, Mr. Denton met with an undercover F.B.I. agent and described his efforts.
“Denton said that if he was ‘raided’ for swatting ProPublica then it would be good for Atomwaffen Division because the swatting would be seen as a top-tier crime,” Jonathan Myles Lund, an F.B.I. agent, wrote in an affidavit. The affidavit named 134 law enforcement agencies that investigators believe received swatting calls from Mr. Denton and others.
Authorities said Mr. Denton operated with others, including two foreign nationals who live outside the United States, and another man, John William Kirby Kelley, who was arrested earlier and accused of playing a role in the swatting incidents. Mr. Kelley was a student at Old Dominion University.
In Seattle on Wednesday, prosecutors unsealed a conspiracy charge against Kaleb James Cole, 24, a leader of Atomwaffen’s chapter in Washington, accusing him of sending threatening mail and cyberstalking. The others charged were Cameron Brandon Shea, 24, of Redmond, Wash., described as a high-level recruiter for the group; Taylor Ashley Parker-Dipeppe, 20, of Spring Hill, Fla.; and Johnny Roman Garza, 20, of Queen Creek, Ariz.
Authorities said the men took part in an operation called Erste Saule, or “first pillar” in German, which Mr. Shea described in an encrypted chat room as an effort to target “journalists houses and media buildings to send a clear message.”
The goal, Mr. Shea said, was to “erode the media/states air of legitimacy by showing people that they have names and addresses, and hopefully embolden others to act.”
Prosecutors said Mr. Cole and Mr. Shea were the primary organizers. When members of Atomwaffen suggested Jewish or black journalists as possible targets, Mr. Shea and Mr. Cole offered praise. Mr. Shea said he wanted his victims to feel “terrorized.” Mr. Cole suggested buying rag dolls and sticking knives through their heads and leaving them at the locations of their targets, according to the charges.
© Mira/Alamy Prosecutors said that John Cameron Denton and others placed calls to law enforcement that targeted Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., and other institutions.
Authorities said Mr. Cole and Mr. Shea created posters that included Nazi symbols, threatening language and masked figures with guns and Molotov cocktails, then printed and delivered or mailed the posters to their targets.
Among the recipients were a broadcast journalist in Seattle who had reported on Atomwaffen and two people associated with the Anti-Defamation League. In Tampa, Fla., the group targeted a journalist but delivered the poster to the wrong address, and in Phoenix, a poster was sent to a magazine journalist, according to the Justice Department.
Chris Ingalls, an investigative reporter with KING-TV in Seattle, said he was among the people targeted. Federal agents contacted him last month to warn him that Atomwaffen members might visit him in person, so he moved his family out of their home, he said.
After returning, he said, he received a letter in the mail that included a depiction of a person with a press badge, his personal information and the words “Death to Pigs.”
“I’ll be looking over my shoulder for a long time,” Mr. Ingalls said.
Raymond Duda, the top agent in the F.B.I.’s Seattle office, said Atomwaffen surfaced on law enforcement’s radar in 2018, and members have gone on to participate in military-style training camps and “hate camps.”
He said F.B.I. agents were continuing to investigate the group around the country and that others could be charged. “The network is clearly throughout the United States,” Mr. Duda said. “We have investigative activity from the East Coast to the West Coast ongoing.”
Members of the Atomwaffen Division, which has been linked to a series of killings, have come under increased scrutiny from federal officials in recent months. Late last year, authorities in King County, Wash., charged Mr. Cole with unlawful possession of a gun after he was stopped by the police in Texas. Previously, authorities in Washington State had sought to take away Mr. Cole’s guns under a “red flag” law that allows a court to confiscate weapons from someone who is deemed to be a threat.
Another member of Atomwaffen, Aiden Bruce-Umbaugh, who was traveling with Mr. Cole in Texas, pleaded guilty this month to possession of a firearm and ammunition by a prohibited person. Mr. Bruce-Umbaugh is also from Washington.
The two complaints filed in Virginia and Washington State offer the most detailed official documents to date describing the group’s operating methods.
The Atomwaffen Division is sometimes referred to as an “accelerationist” group, meaning it wants to instigate the collapse of the United States by sparking a race war that will eventually lead to the creation of a white ethnostate. Atomwaffen is German for “atomic weapons,” a particular interest of its founder.
The fringe group is similar in its racist ideology to the Base, seven of whose members were arrested in an F.B.I. operation across several states last month.
Atomwaffen first came into public view in May 2017 when a Florida teenager, Devon Arthurs, told the police that he had shot dead two of his roommates. The three had all been members of a neo-Nazi group founded by a fourth roommate, Brandon Russell, Mr. Arthurs told the police.
Police officers found a cache of explosives, weapons and neo-Nazi and white supremacist paraphernalia in their apartment and garage. Mr. Arthurs said the group had planned to use the stockpile to attack the nation’s power grid, nuclear reactors and synagogues.
In 2018, Mr. Russell, a member of the Florida National Guard, was sentenced to five years in prison for stockpiling the explosives. Mr. Denton then took over running the group, investigators said.
Mr. Russell first announced the existence of Atomwaffen in October 2015 on a now-defunct online forum that emerged from Russia called Iron March, which is popular with neo-Nazis.
“We are a fanatical, ideological band of comrades who do both activism and militant training,” he wrote at the time. “No keyboard warriorism.”
Mike Baker reported from Seattle, Adam Goldman from Washington and Neil MacFarquhar from New York.
Authorities said Mr. Cole and Mr. Shea created posters that included Nazi symbols, threatening language and masked figures with guns and Molotov cocktails, then printed and delivered or mailed the posters to their targets.
Among the recipients were a broadcast journalist in Seattle who had reported on Atomwaffen and two people associated with the Anti-Defamation League. In Tampa, Fla., the group targeted a journalist but delivered the poster to the wrong address, and in Phoenix, a poster was sent to a magazine journalist, according to the Justice Department.
Chris Ingalls, an investigative reporter with KING-TV in Seattle, said he was among the people targeted. Federal agents contacted him last month to warn him that Atomwaffen members might visit him in person, so he moved his family out of their home, he said.
After returning, he said, he received a letter in the mail that included a depiction of a person with a press badge, his personal information and the words “Death to Pigs.”
“I’ll be looking over my shoulder for a long time,” Mr. Ingalls said.
Raymond Duda, the top agent in the F.B.I.’s Seattle office, said Atomwaffen surfaced on law enforcement’s radar in 2018, and members have gone on to participate in military-style training camps and “hate camps.”
He said F.B.I. agents were continuing to investigate the group around the country and that others could be charged. “The network is clearly throughout the United States,” Mr. Duda said. “We have investigative activity from the East Coast to the West Coast ongoing.”
Members of the Atomwaffen Division, which has been linked to a series of killings, have come under increased scrutiny from federal officials in recent months. Late last year, authorities in King County, Wash., charged Mr. Cole with unlawful possession of a gun after he was stopped by the police in Texas. Previously, authorities in Washington State had sought to take away Mr. Cole’s guns under a “red flag” law that allows a court to confiscate weapons from someone who is deemed to be a threat.
Another member of Atomwaffen, Aiden Bruce-Umbaugh, who was traveling with Mr. Cole in Texas, pleaded guilty this month to possession of a firearm and ammunition by a prohibited person. Mr. Bruce-Umbaugh is also from Washington.
The two complaints filed in Virginia and Washington State offer the most detailed official documents to date describing the group’s operating methods.
The Atomwaffen Division is sometimes referred to as an “accelerationist” group, meaning it wants to instigate the collapse of the United States by sparking a race war that will eventually lead to the creation of a white ethnostate. Atomwaffen is German for “atomic weapons,” a particular interest of its founder.
The fringe group is similar in its racist ideology to the Base, seven of whose members were arrested in an F.B.I. operation across several states last month.
Atomwaffen first came into public view in May 2017 when a Florida teenager, Devon Arthurs, told the police that he had shot dead two of his roommates. The three had all been members of a neo-Nazi group founded by a fourth roommate, Brandon Russell, Mr. Arthurs told the police.
Police officers found a cache of explosives, weapons and neo-Nazi and white supremacist paraphernalia in their apartment and garage. Mr. Arthurs said the group had planned to use the stockpile to attack the nation’s power grid, nuclear reactors and synagogues.
In 2018, Mr. Russell, a member of the Florida National Guard, was sentenced to five years in prison for stockpiling the explosives. Mr. Denton then took over running the group, investigators said.
Mr. Russell first announced the existence of Atomwaffen in October 2015 on a now-defunct online forum that emerged from Russia called Iron March, which is popular with neo-Nazis.
“We are a fanatical, ideological band of comrades who do both activism and militant training,” he wrote at the time. “No keyboard warriorism.”
Mike Baker reported from Seattle, Adam Goldman from Washington and Neil MacFarquhar from New York.
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