By the time the police cruisers rolled up to the teenager’s home in Ohio one night in June, he and his alleged co-conspirators already had amassed guns, bullets and body armor.
He told officers he had never met the others in person. He did not appear to know their real names. They had converged online a few months earlier and, according to court affidavits, soon were developing plans for bloodshed. They arranged car pools to the nation’s capital. They mapped where to launch drones laden with explosives and where to station snipers.
Then the teenager’s mother overheard him on the phone.
Worried, she pressed him for answers. He said something about “recons” and “missions,” about needing to “deal with the evil government.” On June 10, she contacted the local police.
Her call launched a nationwide investigation. The authorities soon announced that they had uncovered a plot to attack the White House as it hosted an Ultimate Fighting Championship event celebrating President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and the nation’s 250th. It was planned for June 14, just four days after she raised the alarm.
This story is based on a review of the allegations in more than 300 pages of police reports, sworn affidavits and court documents, along with other official records such as body-cam footage.
The alleged scheme illustrates what researchers call a shrinking time frame between extremist ideation and violent action. Social media has accelerated that trajectory in a country where political life increasingly unfolds against a backdrop of threats, harassment and gunfire.
“Ten years ago, when I was coordinating terrorism prevention across the federal government, we were talking about initial exposure [to violent extremism] to plotting in terms of years,” said Brette Steele, a former Department of Homeland Security official who is now president of Eradicate Hate, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing hate-fueled violence. “Now, we’re talking more frequently in terms of months, sometimes even weeks.”
The alleged UFC Freedom 250 plot, coordinated almost entirely online across thousands of miles under the veil of aliases, took shape swiftly. Day and night the conspirators, seemingly aghast at the direction of the country, communicated on TikTok, SimpleX, Telegram and elsewhere about violent plans. It’s unclear whether their plans, as envisioned, would have put the president’s life in danger. But according to prosecutors, they had an arsenal of weaponry and violent intent that would have allowed them to wreak havoc in the nation’s capital.
Tycen Proper, 19, is the youngest of eight men from six states charged in federal court with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to commit murder. The charges carry sentences of up to 15 years or life in prison, respectively. Another man in Chicago faces a charge of obstruction of justice, and a man in California whom authorities say was also in a group chat planning the attack was charged with gun possession and destruction of records in late August.
The investigation remains ongoing.
All of the accused have pleaded not guilty. The attorneys for the alleged conspirators either declined to comment for this article or did not respond to requests. It remains unclear whether the group had the capacity to carry out its purported plans. Investigators intervened before any potential threats could spill off the screen.
The alleged conspirators’ online web stretched from the coalfields of West Virginia to the California desert, from a mobile home in the evergreen forests of Washington state to an abandoned church in Nebraska. Some men still lived with their parents, others with grandparents or children.
Digital breadcrumbs point to a hodgepodge of extreme resentments and frustration, an animus toward corporations and foreign interests, and an appetite for revolution.
Under the glow of streetlights that night in June, police told Proper they would like to take him to a local hospital so he could meet with behavioral health staff.
“I love you,” his mom said from the front porch as officers led him away.
The other men, meanwhile, continued to communicate about the plot, according to messages in court records. “Too late to back out now folks, the brakes are off,” one sent the next day. “Failure is not an option.”
The men appear to have found one another on TikTok. Court records don’t show the precise path that brought them together, though Proper told FBI investigators he learned about an “anti-government protest” planned for D.C. on the app.
In March, he joined others in a group chat on TikTok titled “Vanguard of the Old,” where they shared workout videos. They also traded their dissatisfaction about deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and their belief that the country was heading in the wrong direction.
A participant who “proved himself,” Proper told investigators, moved their conversations to more secure messaging platforms where the alleged attack plot formed.
“What are you thinking for a target?” Proper typed one day in mid-May, according to an FBI affidavit, about a month before the UFC event.
It needed to be “someone a majority of the country knows,” replied Daniel Eskridge, a 32-year-old who lived three states away in Missouri and said he was a father of five — someone Republicans and Democrats could unite over, according to an FBI affidavit. The alleged targets, though, soon took a partisan turn.
The group discussed attacking the power grid and officials who had received money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, according to the FBI. Proper named Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) and Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), plus West Virginia’s four-member congressional delegation and a state official.
“I think I can speak for everyone in saying we’re tired of not making s— happen and tired of being ruled over by treasonous pedophillic criminal politicians and foreign agents,” Eskridge wrote the Friday before Memorial Day, according to chat screenshots.
“If we are successful this could be the first battle of the second American Revolution,” he wrote another day. One participant later described him as “running the show.”
A plan appeared to crystalize: They would stage a demonstration on the north side of the White House, then fly drones packed with explosives overhead. The blasts would trigger evacuations, funneling people into sniper fire.
When investigators searched Proper’s phone, they found a Signal group with about 19 members, according to the FBI, plus smaller chats organized by role assignments and locations.
In one called “Hunters,” members exchanged aerial photos of White House grounds and mapped escape routes along the Potomac River, according to group messages. They debated how to obtain explosives and how many drones to build.
“As many and as deadly as we can get,” Abraham Alvarez, a 31-year old Nebraska resident, replied in one message. By then, a TikTok account that the FBI later linked to him had shared rock music montages of eagles, storm clouds and horseback riders crossing the desert, each video overlaid with a pledge to build “a people owned supply chain.” The account reposted clips about urban farmsteading, conditions in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities and rising food prices during the U.S. war with Iran.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, Alvarez is a Mexican national who overstayed a tourist visa and a recipient of DACA, the Obama-era program that allows people brought to the United States as children to temporarily remain.
An FBI agent later deciphered his proposed targets: Trump, Vice President JD Vance, billionaire Elon Musk and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who did not attend the UFC event.
On Telegram, some discussed raiding a military facility for equipment, according to multiple FBI affidavits.
“I’m pretty sure the effective kill radius is 50 meters,” wrote William Falkner, a 21-year-old living in his grandmother’s mobile home in Washington state, seemingly discussing the destruction wrought by artillery shells. “It will be loud, but it’ll be quick.”
His personal social media presence was a jumble. On YouTube, he played video games and smoked a joint while discussing the existence of extraterrestrial life. On Instagram, he advertised plans to attend a “No Kings” protest in Seattle the previous summer. On TikTok, where his profile photo featured the fictional military character G.I. Robot (a DC Comics character fighting for the World War II allies), he posted an expletive-filled tirade against Trump voters, talked about “killing Nazis” and homemade napalm, and promoted fundraisers for people in Gambia and Gaza. He tagged many of his posts #altleftpipeline and #istandforempathyandmorality.
On SimpleX, another encrypted messenger, Michael Thomas, a 32-year-old Californian, told fellow participants to “consider yourselves an enemy of the state.”
He also outlined a four-tier ranking system, with the highest level reserved for members willing to break the law and potentially go into hiding. “You will be sacrificing for your country, and carrying a brunt of the weight,” Thomas wrote.
He later told investigators that he thinks the U.S. government is run by “an elite group of individuals who sacrifice and consume infants,” echoing sentiments of a conspiracy theory of QAnon, an extremist ideology that the FBI has deemed a domestic terrorism threat.
By early June, as the plans advanced, Thomas said the group needed $1,300 for drones, according to the FBI.
“I’m flat broke,” he wrote, musing about panhandling by the freeway.
He could carry a sign, he suggested: “fund the freedom fighters.”
For all their alleged online scheming, the men appear to have met in person only twice — and then only in pairs.
A few weeks before the UFC event, two of the alleged participants realized they both lived in Southern California. “I am willing to meet up for a beer bro if you’re interested,” 25-year-old Bryan Roa messaged in the “Vanguard of the Old Republic” group chat, according to an FBI affidavit.
Thomas proposed shooting and a campout. The next day, he told the group they had practiced vehicle dismount and marksmanship.
About 1,200 miles away, two other men met up at a mall in Omaha’s suburban sprawl. Jordan Rincker, 28, arrived with a shotgun and a bandolier of ammunition. Alvarez brought gear including a 3D printer, night-vision goggles and a face shield. The men traded the goods, and Alvarez handed Rincker $1,200 to disperse among the group, according to an FBI affidavit.
Interviewed later by investigators, Rincker said he went because he wanted to make a friend. Why, investigators asked, had he exchanged weapons and equipment?
Rincker conceded that he had been “a real idiot for not stepping aside” and believed he had “armed a terrorist.”
Not that long ago, “online radicalization alone wasn’t enough,” said Steele, the former DHS official, “there was always some component of in-person indoctrination or recruitment.” But as more and more facets of life are conducted via screens, “that is simply not the case anymore.”
While the planning for this potential attack took place with hardly any face-to-face contact, court records show the off-screen preparation the men made individually.
In Missouri, Eskridge told the group on SimpleX that he had built a firearms range on his property and planned a “bunker” under the floorboards of his shed.
In California, Roa told others he’d quit his job. His family had watched him become more irritable and anxious in recent months, spending increasing amounts of time shooting, they later told investigators. They said he alluded to an upcoming trip to D.C., where “something big” would happen, and warned that one day they would wake up and find him gone.
When his family awoke June 10 and discovered him missing, they considered reporting to the police but opted not to. En route to D.C., Roa’s vehicle broke down, forcing him to return home, he later told the FBI. He acknowledged that he had set out for the nation’s capital to protest but denied involvement in the conspiracy.
In Ohio, Proper quit his job at a landscaping company. He bought a semiautomatic shotgun painted with an American flag. His parents later estimated that he spent $3,000 of his high school graduation money on weapons and equipment. In his room, authorities found a journal. It included the names of dozens of politicians and celebrities, and pages in which he recounted how “the government sought to control people and to sacrifice children and others to a demonic figure.”
Much of the initial investigation unfolded while Proper was in the hospital, where local police had taken him because of homicidal thoughts. Before he was charged in federal court, he surrendered his phone and agreed to interviews, cracking open the group’s online world to investigators. Soon, the FBI made contact with Chandler Scaggs, a 21-year-old in West Virginia, who corroborated Proper’s account and admitted to being one of the snipers, according to an affidavit. He’d been expecting Proper to give him a ride to D.C.
“Its gonna be a f—ing bloodbath,” Thomas wrote three days before the UFC event, according to group messages. He added a heart-face emoji.
“This op is still a go.. we have 72hrs,” Alvarez wrote that same day.
Alvarez offered a long-abandoned Methodist church in Western, Nebraska, as a “fall back location.” Days later, local and federal authorities would raid it.
When investigators arrived at Eskridge’s Missouri home to arrest him, his wife said she knew he had been recruiting members. She said she had seen messages appear on a tablet they shared. In a corner of the kitchen, investigators found Eskridge’s tactical gear, neatly packed as if ready to go.
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