amphotora/iStockBy ALEXANDER MALLIN and MEREDITH DELISO, ABC News
(KENOSHA, Wis.) — Two Missouri men were arrested on firearm charges after a tipster warned law enforcement the pair were traveling to Kenosha, Wisconsin, with assault-style weapons, according to court documents.
Michael M. Karmo, 40, and Cody E. Smith, 33, were arrested at a hotel near Kenosha on Tuesday and charged with illegal possession of firearms, the Department of Justice announced Thursday. According to the criminal complaint against them, they were found with a major cache of firearms and weapons in their vehicle and hotel room that included an AR-15, a shotgun, handguns, a dagger, a saw and magazines.
Civil unrest, violence and looting erupted in Kenosha after Jacob Blake, who is Black, was shot seven times in the back by a Kenosha police officer on Aug. 23. Two protesters were fatally shot, and a third wounded, by an alleged 17-year-old gunman during protests in the days following Blake’s shooting.
According to the complaint, the Kenosha Police Department advised the FBI on Tuesday that a law enforcement agency in Iowa had received a tip that Karmo and an unidentified man were traveling with firearms from Missouri to Kenosha. Karmo allegedly told the tipster on Aug. 31 that “he was going to Kenosha with the intention of possibly using the firearms on people,” the complaint stated.
Text messages between Karmo and the tipster allegedly included a photograph of Karmo holding a rifle with a drum-style magazine in it along with the message, “This is the game changer,” the complaint said.
After receiving the tip, law enforcement looked at a Facebook page with the username “Michael Karmo” and found photos of someone who appeared to be Karmo posing with firearms, including assault-style rifles, according to the complaint. The complaint also included photos from Karmo’s alleged account, including one that appears to be Karmo posing with a gun in front of a Blue Lives Matter flag.
FBI officials tracked down Karmo and Smith Tuesday evening outside a Toyota Highlander in the parking lot of a hotel in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, the complaint said. Items allegedly recovered from the car and their hotel room included an Armory AR-15 assault rifle, a Mossberg 500 AB 12-Gauge shotgun, two handguns, a “homemade silencer-type device,” a twisted cable survival saw, ammunition, body armor and a drone, according to the complaint.
Both men had prior convictions that prohibited them from possessing firearms and ammunition, according to the DOJ.
In interviews with the FBI, Smith allegedly said he and Karmo traveled to Kenosha to attend a rally for President Donald Trump on Tuesday and “to see proof of the rioting,” according to the complaint.
Karmo allegedly told the FBI the two co-workers and roommates next planned to go to Portland, Oregon, which has had nightly, at times violent, protests for several months. One person was shot and killed in downtown Portland Saturday during demonstrations.
“Karmo stated that he would be willing to ‘take action’ if police were defunded,” the complaint alleged.
Karmo allegedly told the FBI he and Smith are members of an organization called the 417 Second Amendment Militia, the complaint said.
Both men waived their Miranda rights, according to the complaint.
Dozens of people have been arrested since the police shooting of Blake. On Wednesday, the city ended a state-of-emergency curfew that had been in place since Aug. 24.
Amid calming tensions, Trump visited Kenosha on Tuesday to survey the damage and thank law enforcement, while former Vice President Joe Biden visited Blake and his family on Thursday.
(WASHINGTON) — Washington, D.C., police released body camera footage Thursday of the fatal police shooting of an 18-year-old Black man, following protests outside a police station and Mayor Muriel Bowser’s home.
The footage was shared less than 24 hours after Deon Kay was shot and killed by a patrol officer from the Metropolitan Police Department’s Seventh District in southeast Washington, D.C.
“Our community is hurting, and we know that they want answers,” Bowser said at a press briefing Thursday. “We are still gathering all the facts in MPD, and my administration will conduct a full investigation of this incident.”
According to MPD Police Chief Peter Newsham, officers responded to reports of “a man with a gun” at approximately 3:49 p.m. Police had seen a livestream on social media of the man, whom they knew, he said. Newsham did not indicate if the man was Kay.
As police arrived on the scene, two individuals left a car and allegedly fled on foot with the officers in pursuit. The officer involved in the shooting was following one of the men, but stopped when the suspect “gained too much distance,” the chief said.
When the officer turned around, “that’s when Deon Kay approached and displayed a handgun. And in response to that the officer fired one round,” Newsham said.
Kay was shot once in the chest, Newsham said. Police rendered first aid and he was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the chief said.
The officer saw Kay allegedly throw the firearm at some point during the incident. A handgun believed to be Kay’s was found nearly 100 feet from the scene of the shooting, Newsham said.
Newsham described Kay as a “validated gang member” from the area. “I know that he’s had multiple touches with the criminal justice system,” he said, adding that it’s clear that Kay “fell through multiple safety nets before yesterday afternoon.”
Two people at the scene were arrested, police said. A 19-year-old was charged with carrying a pistol without a license. He was allegedly in possession of an unregistered “ghost gun,” according to Newsham. An 18-year-old was charged with no permit for not having a driver’s license.
The officers involved in the incident have been placed on administrative leave, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia is conducting an independent review surrounding the use of force, Newsham said.
The officer who discharged his weapon was identified as Alexander Alvarez, in compliance with police reforms enacted in July that requires MPD to release the names of officers involved in the use of deadly or serious force. The reforms also require MPD to release body camera footage within five days of such an incident. The legislation passed amid protests over police brutality after the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody.
Newsham encouraged people to watch the footage and “draw your own conclusions, in hindsight or not,” when asked at which point Kay allegedly discarded a gun.
“One of the reasons we put it out as quickly as we did is because there’s a lot of misinformation in the current climate that we have, not only here in Washington, D.C., but across the country,” Newsham said. “Misinformation can lead potentially to some disturbances in our city, and that’s the last thing that we wanted to see.”
In the bodycam footage of the incident released Thursday, Alvarez can be seen exiting the passenger side of a squad car and immediately running through the parking lot of an apartment complex. During the shaky, quick-moving footage, he can be heard saying “Don’t move” several times before the sound of gunfire. Kay is then seen falling to the ground.
Following the shooting, an officer can be heard saying, “He tossed it down there.” Alvarez then appears to look for a gun. “I gotta find it,” he says. About two minutes after the shooting, he says, “I got it right here.”
“This is the one that he was holding,” Alvarez can be heard telling a second officer, whose face is blurred.
Alvarez later asks the other officer, “Is he in bad shape?” To which the officer responds, “Don’t worry about it right now.”
Alvarez starts to move back toward the scene of the shooting when the officer tells him to “stay right there.”
“I know you’re worried about everything that’s going on. Don’t worry, people are taking care of everything else,” the officer says.
During the footage, the second officer can be heard talking to a dispatcher about a suspect that had allegedly fled on foot. “It’s a possibility he might be armed as well,” the officer says.
On Thursday, the department shared images of two recovered handguns.
Following news of the police-involved shooting, protesters gathered outside of the Seventh District police station Wednesday night. More than two dozen protesters also demonstrated in front of Bowser’s home Thursday morning, demanding that the police chief be fired.
(MIAMI) — Police arrested a Miami high school student on Thursday for allegedly carrying out a string of crippling cyberattacks targeting Miami-Dade County Public Schools’ online learning system as students headed back to school.
The 16-year-old has not been identified by name, but the student is a junior at South Miami Senior High School in Miami-Dade County, Florida, school officials said Thursday.
Officials with Miami-Dade County Public Schools said the teen carried out several Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks, which are designed to disrupt a network’s server by overwhelming it’s system with a flood of internet traffic.
The suspect was charged with Computer Use in an Attempt to Defraud — a third-degree felony, and Interference with an Educational Institution — a second-degree misdemeanor, according to the district, which serves some 275,000 students.
School district officials said the cyberattacks had “maliciously disrupted teaching and learning” across the district, which is the country’s fourth-largest school district.
Investigators were able to locate the student by tracing an IP address associated with the attacks.
The suspect allegedly told authorities that they had orchestrated eight malicious attacks since Monday when Miami public schools began its fall online learning program amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The student admitted to orchestrating eight Distributed Denial-of-Service cyber attacks, designed to overwhelm District networks, including web-based systems needed for My School Online,” the district said in a statement. “The student used an online application to carry out these attack.”
Miami-Dade County Public Schools said it has been the target of more than a dozen of these types of attacks since the 2020-2021 school year began.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools chief Edwin Lopez said he believes there are additional suspects involved, but investigators are working to determine if that’s the case.
“We believe, based upon our investigation, that other attackers are out there. We will not rest until every one of them is caught and brought to justice,” Lopez said in a statement. “Cyber attacks are serious crimes, which have far-reaching negative impacts. Our message to anyone thinking of attempting a criminal act like this is to think twice. We will find you.”
Miami-Dade superintendent of schools Alberto Carvalho thanked investigators for their “tireless efforts” this week and vowed to move beyond the disruption.
“I commend our detectives, the FBI, Secret Service, and FDLE for their tireless efforts to pursue those responsible for these attacks,” Carvalho said. “It is disheartening that one of our own students has admitted to intentionally causing this kind of disruption, however, I am confident that the M-DCPS family will continue to show its resilience and commitment to education, in the face of adversity.”
The district said it was working with the FBI, the Secret Service and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to ensure a “thorough investigation” is conducted.
ABC NewsBY: EVAN MCMURRY, JOHN KAPETANEAS, CHO PARK, EAMON MCNIFF, and JUJU CHANG, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — It was a statement that shocked almost everyone watching. For a few, it was a moment a long time coming.
When pressed about a baseless conspiracy theory that he is leading the charge against a global Satanic pedophilic and cannibalistic syndicate, the president of the United States appeared to approve.
“If I can help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it,” President Donald Trump said during a White House press conference in August.
Trump said that he knew little of the ascending fringe movement known as QAnon.
But for the multiplying number of QAnon supporters, that apparent nod from the catalytic figure of their worldview was the culminating event of three years of online theorizing, prophesying and posting.
QAnon had arrived in the mainstream, exactly where its acolytes always believed it belonged.
The next destination for the movement — one blamed for numerous acts of violence and deemed a potential domestic terror threat by the FBI — could be the halls of Congress.
‘Regardless of how deranged it sounds’
“The broad narrative of QAnon is that the world is controlled by a Satanic cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles,” Travis View, co-host of the podcast “QAnon Anonymous,” told “Nightline.”
“And this cabal, they control everything,” said View, who has tracked the movement since it emerged from the labyrinths of 4Chan in 2017. “This includes the media and entertainment and politicians. QAnon followers believe that this cabal would’ve continued ruling the world indefinitely were it not for the election of Donald Trump.”
The amorphous belief system has generated a wide spectrum of fictional and ludicrous beliefs based on deciphering cryptic messages believed, without any evidence, to be released online by a figure — or figures — claiming high-level clearance within the Trump administration.
Any number of Democratic Party leaders and celebrities, from Hillary Clinton to Chrissy Teigen, have been imagined at the center of expansively sinister plots.
Major events, from the 2017 Las Vegas shooting to the Mueller investigation to the coronavirus pandemic, have been assimilated into the increasingly sprawling theory — often, as soon as they occur.
Elements of anti-vaccination beliefs, COVID-19 misinformation, anti-Semitic tropes and more have also been recruited into the roster of beliefs, inflating QAnon into a catch-all of conspiracy theories.
“Q kind of encourages followers to basically believe whatever sounds most appealing to them, regardless of how deranged it sounds,” View told ABC News. “As a consequence, they run off in these wild directions.”
‘We think humanity is literally at stake’
QAnon first came to national attention two years ago, when a group of attendees appeared prominently in “Q” t-shirts at a Trump rally in Tampa, Florida.
But the movement had already been festering in the caverns of the internet for some time.
QAnon metastasized out of “Pizzagate,” a false conspiracy theory that circulated during the 2016 election, which held that prominent Democratic Party figures were running a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C.-area pizza parlor.
The wildly baseless reports eventually led Edgar Maddison Welch to discharge an AR-15 assault rifle inside the restaurant, believing he was investigating the nonexistent trafficking operation hidden within.
Welch was sentenced in 2017 to 48 months in prison and “Pizzagate” dissipated after the incident.
Then, in October 2017, an enigmatic post appeared on the chatroom 4Chan claiming to be from a member of the Trump administration with ‘Q’-level clearance that anticipated, wrongly, the impending arrest of Hillary Clinton.
Q clearance is an actual level within the U.S. Department of Energy, though that’s where the link to reality ends.
Hundreds more “Q-drops” ensued as the theory incorporated the central suspicions, if not the specifics, of “Pizzagate.” Followers became convinced that a global pedophile ring was running in plain sight, and were assured that mass arrests of prominent Democrats and movie stars was imminent — prophecies that were routinely shown to be bogus.
“QAnon followers believe that Q’s posts are coded information from high-level military intelligence officials close to President Trump,” View said.
“So they’ve developed a lot of excuses as to why Q’s predictions always fail,” he explained. “They say, for example, misinformation is necessary or disinformation is necessary. This idea is that sometimes whenever Q gets something wrong, there is a legitimate reason they think that Q is trying to trick this global cabal that they believe that Trump and the Q Team is fighting against.”
Two QAnon devotees who spoke to “Nightline” in 2018 about their involvement remain staunch advocates today, despite the grandiose predictions’ failures.
“If you believe like we do, we think humanity is literally at stake here,” Melissa Dietrich, of Reading, Pennsylvania, recently told ABC News. “It’s not just about our country. It’s about, again, this global power structure that’s been in place forever.”
View said that the rapid intensification of some QAnon supporters’ beliefs distinguishes them from people who may passively believe in other conspiracy theories, such as the existence of aliens at Area 51.
“They’re being radicalized, in the sense that it becomes a major part of their life,” View said. “They spend so many hours, every day, obsessing over it. And it starts to detract from other areas of their life, like their family or their career.”
It’s a radicalization that could trigger offline violence, according to Eric Jackson, a former FBI agent who specialized in terrorism.
“If you look at their actions from the time of them expressing their feelings to the time of their action, it can be a very short period,” he said.
‘Things could get much, much worse’
In 2018, Matthew Wright blocked a highway atop the Hoover Dam and demanded the release of a report from the Office of the Inspector General, a common QAnon battle cry at the time.
Armed with a small arsenal, Wright led state troopers on an extended chase before he was apprehended. He pleaded guilty earlier this year to multiple charges, including making a terroristic threat.
This real-world act of violence perpetrated in connection with QAnon was one of several cited by the FBI in a 2019 bulletin saying the group was a potential domestic terror threat.
It wouldn’t be the last time QAnon was tied to mayhem.
In 2019, purported Gambino family boss Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali was gunned down at his Staten Island, New York, home in what initially appeared to be the beginnings of a mob war. Then, the story took a bizarre, QAnon-related twist.
According to court documents, murder suspect Anthony Comello was a QAnon follower who thought he was striking against the “Deep State,” with the protection of the president.
During an extradition hearing in March 2019, Comello displayed ink scribblings on his hand, including a large “Q” in the middle of his palm.
Commello, who is awaiting trial, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Some QAnon followers have recently begun targeting Child Protective Services and the foster care system, believing the agencies to be a “front” for child trafficking operations.
At least three parents who are allegedly QAnon supporters are facing charges for attempting to take their children from their legal guardians.
One of those parents, Alpalus Slyman, gathered his five children into his car after allegedly throwing their mother from the vehicle, believing her to be involved in child sex trafficking. He livestreamed the ensuing police chase on Facebook.
“If you truly believe that they are truly doing these Satanic evil things in pools, underground, and raping babies, and Pizzagate … all of this is real … that’s not a conspiracy theory,” Slyman said on Facebook. “Because once the facts are out — that’s not just a theory — that’s a fact.”
When Slyman’s daughter tried to commandeer the wheel from him, he appealed to Trump and QAnon, shouting, “Donald Trump, I need a miracle or something. Somebody, QAnon, help me.”
“It’s a movement that has inspired some of its followers to commit really egregious criminal actions, including acts of terrorism, kidnapping and vehicular assault,” said Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch, which monitors extremist groups.
“So Trump’s statements about QAnon, speaking favorably of them, I fear, as having watched this for so long, is incredibly dangerous,” Holt warned. “This is something that I believe should be nipped in the bud as fast as possible and condemned. Otherwise things could get much, much worse from here.”
“Their ideology and their rhetoric are becoming more violent,” said Jackson, who feared QAnon may be inspiring lone wolf terrorists to commit attacks.
“Where QAnon may be a foundation for those types of individuals … they’re operating beneath the radar,” he said. “They’re using social media to gather their ideology.”
‘The potential to lead to offline harm’
Social media companies have — belatedly — begun taking action.
Twitter cracked down in July on accounts and hashtags related to QAnon, citing an uptick in terms of service violations by supporters, especially concerning “behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm.” TikTok took similar action less than one week later.
Facebook, a nexus for QAnon supporters, followed suit in August, removing nearly 1,000 pages and significantly curtailing the reach of thousands of pages, groups and Instagram accounts.
Facebook characterized the effort as part of an expansion of its “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy” to cover “organizations and movements that have demonstrated significant risks to public safety but do not meet the rigorous criteria to be designated as a dangerous organization.”
All three companies significantly lagged behind Reddit, which deplatformed QAnon in fall of 2018. Many worry these recent moves are too little, too late.
Researcher Marc-André Argentino, a PhD candidate at Concordia University focused on technology and extremist groups, told ABC News last month that QAnon-associated Facebook pages and groups exploded this year, boasting a 651% increase since March as groups allied with the conspiracy theory jumped from just over 200,000 members to 1.7 million.
Despite the platforms’ crackdown, followers were recently able to infiltrate #SavetheChildren, a non-QAnon related hashtag, according to NBC News, raising concerns that social media users could be interacting with QAnon content without realizing it. ‘Q is the information’
Having vaulted from the depths of 4Chan to the heights of the White House briefing room, QAnon now looks poised to enter the machinery of U.S. politics.
Nineteen QAnon-supporting congressional candidates are on the ballot this year, according to a tally from the left-leaning research group Media Matters.
And while few are favored to prevail in their general elections, at least two candidates tied to the theory have a strong chance of being sworn in next January.
The likeliest is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently won the runoff for the Republican primary in Georgia’s 14th congressional district, despite a history of praising QAnon and other conspiracy theories and her espousal of a litany of racist, anti-Semitic and Islamaphobic views.
In a video originally posted to Facebook and later reposted to YouTube, Greene called the poster behind the “Q-drops” a “patriot,” and claimed “he’s on the same page as us and he is very pro-Trump.”
“Now, he appears to have connections at the highest level,” she continued. “It’s not just someone poking in the dark, messing with people. He seems to be very high up. He seems to be very close to President Trump.”
Fellow Republicans distanced themselves from Greene during the runoff. But following her victory, Greene earned an endorsement from President Trump, who tweeted that she was a “future Republican Star … a real WINNER!”
Pressed at a subsequent briefing about her QAnon statements, the president again praised Greene but sidestepped comment on the theory.
NEW: Asked about his praise of QAnon-embracing candidate who won GOP runoff in Georgia, Pres. Trump says Marjorie Taylor Greene "did very well in the election" and "had a tremendous victory," but does not comment on the fringe conspiracy theory. https://t.co/ihohIMxeWKpic.twitter.com/nbtG85hl5c
Greene, who is expected to easily defeat her Democratic opponent in the solidly red district in November, has since walked back her support of the theory, telling Fox News that “once I started finding misinformation, I decided that I would choose another path.”
‘We want to make sense of the world’
If scattered Republican candidates have dabbled in the theory, it may be because the leader of their party has flirted with it for years.
President Trump has retweeted dozens of QAnon-tied accounts, tweets and hash tags, with the first coming early on in the movement’s development in the fall of 2017. It’s a pattern of behavior at odds with his comment at the now-infamous press conference that he knew little of the group.
For a movement built around Trump as a savior-like figure, his refusal to disavow the theory appears to be a rallying cry for some, like Mike Cargile, a long-shot California congressional candidate.
“The president’s very deliberate, very exact, in what he says because he knows everything he says is getting scrutinized to the Nth degree,” Cargile told ABC News’ Juju Chang. “So when he makes little statements, little overtures, little retweets that seem to affirm something, I’d believe it.”
Cargile said he began investigating the theory because “I feel my responsibility as a congressional candidate is to know everything.”
“I give the allegation credibility. I don’t know if this is true or not,” Cargile told Chang. “So I started checking into it and a lot of it I agreed with. And there are some fringe elements I don’t agree with.”
While sex trafficking does exist, Chang pressed Cargile on whether he believed, despite lack of evidence, that “there is a deep state conspiracy that is trafficking in these young children.”
“I don’t have a doubt in my mind that this exists,” Cargile responded.
“I’m a very average human being,” he said. “And I think I have hundreds of millions of people out there like me who just want the world to make sense, and we want to make sense of the world around us.”
ABC News’ Chris Francescani contributed to this report.
(STURGIS, S.D.) — Pandemic or no pandemic, the show will go on in South Dakota.
The South Dakota State Fair opens Thursday and will run through Sept. 7. While it’s not clear how many people plan to attend this year’s event, more than 200,000 people visited the fair last year, according to the state’s department of agriculture.
Fair organizers have implemented health and safety measures, such as hand washing stations and social distancing requirements, at the five-day event, but assume no responsibility should guests become infected with COVID-19.
“Exposure to COVID-19 is an inherent risk in any public location where people are present,” according to the fair website. “By visiting the South Dakota State Fairgrounds, you voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19.”
The state fair comes on the heels of last month’s Sturgis motorcycle rally, which was attended by hundreds of thousands of people. At least 290 people in 12 states who attended the rally have tested positive for COVID-19, according to The Associated Press. A man from Minnesota who attended the rally has died.
Republican Gov. Kristi Noem supported holding the rally in her state. “We are not — and WILL not — be the subjects of an elite class of so-called experts,” she tweeted in August. “We the People are the government.”
A patron who visited multiple bars in Sturgis, as well as a tattoo shop employee, tested positive for COVID-19, according to the South Dakota Health Department.
On Aug. 7, the opening day of the rally, South Dakota had roughly 9,000 COVID-19 cases, according to the health department. By Sept. 3, positive cases had risen to 14,000. The state’s positivity rate also rose, from 6% for the 14 days before Aug. 7, to 15% for the 14 days before Sept. 3.
A high positivity rate can be a sign that a state is only testing its sickest patients and failing to cast a net wide enough to accurately capture community transmission, according to Johns Hopkins University. The World Health Organization recommends that governments get their positivity testing threshold below 5%.
amphotora/iStockBy ALEXANDER MALLIN and MEREDITH DELISO, ABC News
