Justice Department officials in Los Angeles said on Monday that they had arrested four left-wing activists accused of plotting to set off homemade bombs outside two companies in the area on New Year’s Eve.
The investigation and arrests grew out of an executive order President Trump issued in September declaring antifa to be a terrorist group as well as a separate written order instructing the F.B.I. to more aggressively pursue investigations of potential left-wing violence.
At a news conference to announce the arrests, Bill Essayli, picked by Mr. Trump to run the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, said the investigation had been initiated partly because of the president’s order “to root out left-wing domestic terror organizations such as antifa.”
Trump administration officials have characterized antifa as a clearly defined group with a national organization, but the movement is in fact a decentralized collection of ideologically like-minded local groups.
Mr. Essayli argued that the case should dispel any skepticism toward the administration’s claims about the danger of violence from the left. “These threats are sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity and direct policy outcomes and prevent the proper functioning of a democratic society,” he said.
A criminal complaint charged two women and two men with conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive device, after the F.B.I. conducted an undercover operation in which it said it caught the four trying to assemble and test pipe bombs in the Mojave Desert last week.
The authorities describe the four as part of a small offshoot of the Turtle Island Liberation Front, a group officials describe as “anticapitalist” and antigovernment. Investigators said the leader of the conspiracy was Audrey Carroll, who shared a handwritten summary of the plan with others, including someone who turned out to be a paid F.B.I. informant.
According to the complaint, the plan said that pipe bombs would be “simultaneously detonated at five locations targeting two U.S. companies at midnight” in the Los Angeles area and that the group intended to detonate the bombs when no one was around.
F.B.I. agents tracked members of the group as they bought potential bomb parts on Amazon, and went to the desert on Friday to test the material.
“What we’re doing will be considered a terrorist act,” Ms. Carroll told a co-conspirator as they drove to the desert, the complaint said.
Two of those charged also discussed plans to conduct other attacks next year, targeting Immigration and Customs Enforcement “agents and vehicles with pipe bombs beginning in January or February 2026,” according to the complaint.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
The post Justice Dept. Charges Four in Los Angeles Over Left-Wing Bomb Plot appeared first on New York Times.
