Trump Pardons Alaska Truckers Targeted by the Feds

Jose Nino
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Trump Pardons Alaska Truckers Targeted by the Feds

(José Niño, Headline USA) President Donald Trump issued unconditional pardons Tuesday to Alaska diesel mechanics Zachary Czubak and Patrick Fleming during a campaign rally in Wasilla, according to Just the News. The men had pleaded guilty in 2022 to federal Clean Air Act violations involving changes to vehicle emissions equipment.

Trump invited Czubak and Fleming onto the stage before signing their pardons. The Hill reported that the men had faced charges over work involving diesel truck engines, with prosecutors alleging they had tampered with or removed emissions controls from vehicles.

“They wanted to put them in jail for 10 years because they fixed an engine, how sick,” Trump said.

Trump also criticized the regulations at issue, arguing that certain emissions equipment made vehicles more difficult and expensive to operate. “The concept is that if you allow people to fix the engines, they’re going to take all of the environmental crap that makes it bad, makes it expensive, that they’re going to do undo that. And when you undo that, you therefore send fumes into the air, so we’re going to put them in jail for ten years,” he continued. 

Just the News reported that Trump extended relief beyond an earlier clemency action involving an Alaska diesel mechanic. In July, Trump pardoned Michael Wayne Hanzuk, a Wasilla mechanic convicted for modifying emissions systems on diesel engines used in Alaska’s extreme climate. Senator Dan Sullivan welcomed that earlier pardon and called the prosecution unjust in a press release back in July. 

Federal prosecutors alleged that Czubak, Fleming, and Hanzuk altered or removed pollution control equipment from at least 37 vehicles between July 2019 and September 2020, according to The Hill’s account of reporting by the Anchorage Daily News. Czubak and Fleming each admitted violating the Clean Air Act through illegal equipment tampering. 

Fleming expressed gratitude after Trump signed the paperwork. “This means the world to me,” Fleming said. “We’re not criminals. We’re not trying to hurt anybody. We want to help Alaskans. We want to help people with diesel trucks, with vehicles across the world.” 

José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino 

Teen Shooter Kills 4 at Oregon Elementary School

Headline USA Editor
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Teen Shooter Kills 4 at Oregon Elementary School

(Headline USA) A 16-year-old shot his way through locked doors to get into an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, on Thursday, killing three children and a teacher. He was then shot by a person at the scene who followed him inside, authorities said.

The suspect was found dead inside the school minutes after the shooting was first reported, Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said.

The three children killed were aged 5, 8 and 11. Another child, 7, and a teacher, 54, were injured and taken to the hospital in critical condition, he said.

The first 911 call came just before 1 p.m. from a person in a vehicle outside Silver Rail Elementary who reported being shot at by someone with a long gun, Krantz told reporters. Further 911 calls came from inside the school, and officers arrived on scene within minutes, police spokesperson Sheila Miller said.

The attacker, who police identified as a Bend resident, was shot and went down inside the school shortly after officers arrived, she said.

Police said they did not know if the shooter knew anyone at the school or whether he had attended.

Children were taken by bus to a nearby church serving as a reunification center for families. Parents hugged, kissed and held their kids’ hands as they walked to their cars, with some bringing along favorite stuffed animals or other comfort items from home.

The school in Bend, which is about 125 miles (200 kilometers) southeast of Portland, had 459 enrolled students as of last year, according to the Oregon Department of Education. The school serves students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

The high-desert city has ballooned in population over the past three decades and is a tourism and outdoor recreation hub near Mount Bachelor.

Classes, sports and extracurriculars were canceled Friday for all 32 schools in the Bend-La Pine district.

The shooting was the 28th mass killing in the U.S. this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

The attacker used a pump-action shotgun that was purchased by his mother, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the shooting. The official spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Report: Pentagon Plans To Withhold Report on Minab School Massacre Past Midterms

Headline USA Editor
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Report: Pentagon Plans To Withhold Report on Minab School Massacre Past Midterms

(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) Bloomberg reported on Thursday that top Pentagon officials have expressed that they will withhold the release of an internal report on the US bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, southern Iran, which massacred at least 120 children, through the midterm elections.

According to an earlier Bloomberg investigation into the attack, within hours of the strikes, Pentagon personnel were aware that the US was responsible, but the Trump administration has still not admitted to carrying out the attack.

The new Bloomberg report said that advisors to US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have conveyed to other Pentagon personnel that the report on the massacre, which found flawed intelligence, outdated imagery, and an overreliance on AI contributed to the attack, will not be shared with the public before the November 3 elections. Officials said the investigation has been all but complete for several months.

The exact toll in the bombing varies, with Bloomberg putting the number of children killed at 123, while the general prosecutor in Minab said in early April that the final death toll was 156, including 120 students — 73 boys, 47 girls — 26 female teachers, the unborn child of a pregnant teacher, seven parents, a school bus driver, and a technician at a nearby clinic.

Drop Site News recently published an extensive report on the massacre from the perspective of the parents of the people who experienced it, including parents and relatives of children who were killed, children who survived, rescue workers, and teachers.

The massacre is one of the worst US war crimes since the Vietnam War, and it came after Hegseth hollowed out mechanisms meant to reduce civilian harm. Last month, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced a resolution to impeach Hegseth that included an article about how the Pentagon chief ignored US laws meant to minimize civilian harm and tied it to the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School.

“The elementary school was struck after Secretary Hegseth sought to repeal congressionally mandated civilian-protection requirements, dismantled the Department’s civilian-harm mitigation infrastructure, removed the senior-most Judge Advocates General responsible for independent legal oversight, stripped civilian protection from the National Defense Strategy, and publicly denigrated legal restraints on military force as obstacles to ‘maximum lethality,’” the resolution reads.

US Considers Using ‘Mother of All Bombs’ Against Iran

Headline USA Editor
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US Considers Using ‘Mother of All Bombs’ Against Iran

(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) The US military has drawn up new strike plans against Iran that include potentially using the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), nicknamed the “mother of all bombs,” according to a report from CNN.

The MOAB is the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal and has been used only once before in a strike on a village in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province in 2017. The US said the strike killed dozens of ISIS-K fighters, and the now-defunct US-backed Afghan government said no civilians were killed because they evacuated due to the ISIS occupation. But since returning, the residents have dealt with environmental effects and the damage from the attack, which destroyed about 30 civilian homes.

The MOAB is about 30 feet long, and due to its size, it must be dropped from a C-130 cargo aircraft close to the intended target, meaning that any MOAB strike on Iran would be vulnerable to Iranian air defenses.

The CNN report said that the potential target of the MOAB includes Iranian energy infrastructure, with one source telling the outlet that President Trump ordered the military to develop additional strike packages against Iranian targets that include “a lot of energy infrastructure” and the potential use of a MOAB.

The other potential target is Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, known in Iran as Kolang Kouh. The US and Israel have alleged there may be nuclear activity underneath the mountain, allegations that Iranian officials have denied. The problem with a MOAB strike is that it is designed for a massive surface-level blast, not for penetrating underground like the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), the bunker-busting bomb that the US dropped on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, which is heavier than the MOAB but carries less explosive.

Sources speaking to CNN said a potential MOAB strike could be more of a psychological operation. “POTUS has unfortunately put himself in a situation where he is almost compelled to do something and, without the ammunition designed to penetrate that level … you have to look at psychological effects for which the MOAB is well-equipped,” a source familiar with the planning told the outlet.

Any MOAB strike could result in devastating civilian casualties since the bomb has the power to destroy nine city blocks. The CNN report said that some US officials have warned that dropping the massive bomb was unlikely to force Iran’s capitulation or achieve a strategic military victory.

Judge Tosses Ex-CIA Chief John Brennan’s Lawsuit

Headline USA Editor
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Judge Tosses Ex-CIA Chief John Brennan’s Lawsuit

(Headline USA) A federal judge on Thursday rejected a lawsuit from John Brennan that sought to force the Justice Department to preserve investigative records so that the former CIA director can challenge any eventual criminal case against him as a selective and malicious prosecution.

A lawyer for Brennan conceded during arguments last month that the request for a court order was unusual but said it was necessary given what he called the Justice Department’s alleged pattern of vindictiveness in its pursuit of Brennan and its recent track record of erasing or failing to preserve communications and records in other matters.

The lawsuit contends that the records being sought would demonstrate that any prosecution of Brennan, who has been investigated for months by the Trump administration Justice Department but not charged, is the product of a political vendetta to punish one of President Donald Trump’s perceived adversaries.

But U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb denied Brennan’s request, saying his arguments were too speculative at the moment and that the former CIA director had not proven that the Justice Department was failing to preserve records relevant to a future malicious prosecution argument.

“Brennan’s allegations — that he is being targeted by the Trump Administration not because of his conduct, but because he has opposed the current president — are deeply concerning,” Cobb wrote in dismissing the lawsuit. “If he was eventually able to prove those allegations true, that would certainly suggest that his potential prosecution is vindictive. But even taking all of Brennan’s allegations to be truthful at this stage, the injury he alleges is simply too attenuated from the actions he seeks to enjoin to warrant a finding of standing here.”

Lawyers for Brennan said in a statement that Cobb’s decision addressed a technical matter of legal standing and was not based on their argument “that the Justice Department is using the criminal justice system to target and investigate him for politically vindictive reasons.” They said the government had refused to offer assurances that it was preserving records and communications that would reveal the “motivations behind its investigations of Director Brennan.”

“With this lawsuit, Director Brennan has served notice that the government’s conduct and its document preservation will be carefully scrutinized in the event of any future indictment. Director Brennan will continue to vigorously defend himself against these baseless investigations, and he will challenge any attempt to use the criminal justice system for personal and political retribution,” said Brennan’s lawyers, Ken Wainstein and Dan Gelber.

As CIA director in the final years of President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration, Brennan was a key figure in the U.S. intelligence community’s speculation that Russia had allegedly interfered in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Trump. 

Trump spent much of his first term shadowed by a weaponized investigation into whether his campaign had conspired with Russia.

Brennan over the last year has been subject to Justice Department investigations into whether he made false statements before the House Judiciary Committee in 2023 and in a broader Florida-based inquiry into whether he and other former intelligence and law enforcement officials engaged in a conspiracy to keep Trump from power.

He has been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in the broader conspiracy investigation, though the date of his appearance has been postponed. His lawyers have said they’ve been told by prosecutors that he remains a person of interest in the false statements investigation.

Brennan has vigorously denied any wrongdoing, with Wainstein telling Cobb during arguments last month that the notion of a broad anti-Trump conspiracy was “fiction.”

It is unclear whether Brennan will face charges, but his attorneys sued in July to put the government on notice that they would challenge any prosecution on vindictive prosecution grounds. They said records they received from the government through a court order would help support their argument.

Cobb was nominated in 2021 by President Joe Biden, who earlier served as Obama’s vice president.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press. 

FBI Agents Fired for Roles in Trump Classified Files Probe Sue to Get Their Jobs Back

Headline USA Editor
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FBI Agents Fired for Roles in Trump Classified Files Probe Sue to Get Their Jobs Back

(Headline USA) FBI employees fired for their roles in the weaponized investigation of President Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Florida estate sued on Thursday to get their jobs back. 

The complaint adds to the growing list of legal challenges to the mass terminations under FBI Director Kash Patel of agents who participated in investigations of the Republican president. 

The suit was filed in federal court in Washington on behalf of nine agents, intelligence analysts and staff operations specialists who were fired in February following earlier dismissals of agents who had worked on the investigation into Trump’s efforts to contest the 2020 election.

Patel has said in congressional testimony that employees he has fired had “weaponized” the FBI. Agents deny that claim in the lawsuit.

The nine fired FBI employees said they did not volunteer for the classified documents investigation, but were rather assigned to it as part of their work on specialized counterintelligence and counterespionage squads.

“By casting Plaintiffs’ work on the Plasmic Echo investigation as ‘politically weaponized,’ Defendants incorrectly presumed to know the personal political convictions of Plaintiffs and took unlawful action based on that presumption,” the lawsuit says, using the FBI code name for the classified documents investigation. “Worse still, Defendants incorrectly concluded that those personal political convictions affected or drove their work.”

The lawsuit seeks, among other remedies, reinstatement to the FBI, an awarding of back pay and a court order declaring that the firings were unlawful.

The lawsuit says that the Mar-a-Lago agents and analysts were fired last February after Patel disclosed to Reuters that the FBI, as part of the investigation, had subpoenaed his toll records, which show the date, time and length of a phone call but not the content of the communications.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press. 

Trump DOJ Challenges California’s Mail-In Ballots

Headline USA Editor
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Trump DOJ Challenges California’s Mail-In Ballots

(Headline USA) The Trump administration sued California election officials Thursday, asking a judge to bar the state from counting mail-in ballots for next month’s midterm elections from people the federal government has identified as “likely” noncitizens until their status can be confirmed.

The lawsuit comes after the Justice Department said California officials failed to meet a 48-hour deadline to review a password-protected thumb drive that contains a list of 20,000 names the federal government believes are likely noncitizens who were sent ballots to participate in the Nov. 3 election. The state mails ballots to all registered voters. A top Justice Department official had sent a letter earlier this week threatening potential legal action if California didn’t comply.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said in a letter to the Justice Department that the federal government hasn’t provided evidence to support its allegation that 20,000 names on the state’s voter rolls are of noncitizens. She referenced an instance in which the federal government alleged nearly 16,000 possible noncitizens were listed on Nevada’s voter rolls, but the state determined that all were, in fact, U.S. citizens.

She also noted that voting is already underway in the state. Weber, a Democrat, said the Justice Department was “demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians’ right to vote, based on unverifiable information or methodology that you still fail to explain or provide.”

California’s elections are in “full compliance” with federal law, she added.

Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan said in a statement that his office received the letter and thumb drive this week, along with a “hand written note providing a password” to access the list of alleged noncitizens on the voter rolls. He said he did not consider the thumb drive a secure device. The secretary of state’s office said the password was written “on a sticky note.”

The Justice Department’s lawsuit says the federal government sought to “work collaboratively” with California to identify noncitizens registered to vote in the state, and “California made no serious effort to do so.”

“The United States thus seeks commonplace election relief when a ballot is called into question,” the lawsuit says. “This Court should enjoin California from presently tabulating vote by-mail ballots from likely noncitizens in the upcoming federal election until the voter’s citizenship status can be determined,” the lawsuit says.

Weber, who is named in the lawsuit, suggested the federal government’s outreach had not been collaborative.

She said that over the summer, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that California had 190,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls but refused to provide the methodology or data sources when the office asked for them.

In her letter Thursday, she called the recent demands “an emergency of the DOJ’s creation.”

The letter sent by acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter gave the state 48 hours to research the list of the 20,000 people it claims might not be citizens. For those whose citizenship cannot be independently verified, the state is to instruct local election officials to segregate their mail-in ballots until their status can be determined, and to not provide a ballot to anyone who has not yet received one.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press. 

Court Again Strikes Down Ohio’s Universal School Vouchers

Headline USA Editor
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Court Again Strikes Down Ohio’s Universal School Vouchers

(J.D. Davidson, The Center Square) Ohio’s universal school choice plan took another hit in the courts Thursday.

The 10th District Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that the state’s EdChoice and EdChoice Expansion voucher programs are unconstitutional.

Again, the court stayed the opinion, allowing the programs to continue while Attorney General Andy Wilson appeals to the Republican-majority Ohio Supreme Court.

Wilson said families using the state vouchers should see no immediate impact from the ruling.

Senate Democrats applauded the ruling, saying vouchers harm public schools.

“We are pleased to see that not one, but two courts have now found that EdChoice vouchers undermine the state’s constitutional responsibility to maintain a strong system of public schools,” Senate Democratic Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, said in a statement. “The Republican supermajority has continually expanded vouchers to private and religious schools that are allowed to remain unaccountable without the same transparency required of our public schools. This comes at the expense of our public schools, which are rigorously regulated and mandated to educate every student regardless of their income, ability or background.”

The 10th District Court, which ruled 3-0, said the voucher program violates the state constitution by failing to provide a “thorough and efficient system of schools,” and that the constitution bans religious organizations from controlling public school funds.

It also said vouchers create an underfunded, competing system of private schools with less state oversight. It also rejected the state’s contention vouchers support parents rather than schools, saying private schools still have the power to reject students.

All eight members of the 10th District Court of Appeals are Democrats.

Wilson said the Republican-majority Legislature should be able to use taxpayer dollars to provide public and private school choice for parents.

“I believe that parents should have the option to send their kids to the school of their choice,” Wilson said. “If the legislature wants to help parents fund that choice, then that is within the authority of the General Assembly to do so.”

He also said spending more than $1 billion in taxpayer funds on the voucher program does not harm public schools.

“The current system does not hurt our public schools,” Wilson said. “There are many great public schools across the state that are doing a wonderful job educating students. This is about a family’s choice on how they want to educate their kids.”

A Franklin County judge in 2025 ruled in favor of public schools that challenged the voucher program for private school tuition.

Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Jaiza Page, in a 42-page ruling, said the state could not fund private schools at the expense of public schools.

FBI Disrupts North Korean Corporate Espionage Ring in North Texas

Headline USA Editor
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FBI Disrupts North Korean Corporate Espionage Ring in North Texas

(Bethany Blankley, The Center Square) FBI agents in north Texas have disrupted a North Korean espionage ring targeting U.S. companies. The scheme involves illegally obtaining information from U.S. companies to facilitate the country’s sanctioned weapons program, federal authorities allege.

The case “is about far more than fraud,” U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould for the Northern District of Texas said. “It is about a hostile foreign regime infiltrating American companies through stolen identities and covert access points inside our own borders.”

Federal agents disrupted what they describe as “a major illicit laptop‑hosting network” that enabled North Korean IT workers to unlawfully access U.S. corporate systems using stolen or falsified American identities for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), authorities said. The U.S. has designated DPRK as a state sponsor of terrorism.

The bust was made through a federal Operation Lonestar Roundup with the assistance of the U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. FBI special agents executed searches at more than 40 residences in Texas, seizing 187 laptops and keyboards, video and mouse devices. The devices were used as part of a “laptop farm” for DPRK IT workers, according to the complaint.

The majority were seized in north Texas. FBI agents seized approximately 100 devices that DPRK workers and their U.S.-based facilitators used to carry out the fraudulent scheme in north Texas, authorities said. The laptop farm was established to obtain remote employment and generate revenue for the DPRK’s sanctioned weapons programs, authorities allege.

“Every laptop farm we dismantle shuts down a revenue stream that the North Korean government relies on to fund weapons programs that threaten global stability,” Raybould said. “Operation Lonestar Roundup sends a clear message: we will not allow enemies of the United States to exploit our businesses or compromise our national security.”

Operation Lonestar Roundup in Texas was launched to disrupt “malicious cyber activity perpetrated by the North Korean government with the purpose of supporting its WMD and ballistic missile programs, intelligence program, and nuclear program,” FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge Joseph Rothrock said. “Each laptop seized potentially represents one company that has hired a DPRK IT worker.”

According to investigative findings, DPRK IT workers applied for and obtained remote positions at U.S. companies by using stolen or fabricated identity documents, virtual private networks and proxy infrastructure. The scheme made it seem as if they were physically located in the U.S. but were instead in North Korea, according to the complaint. To do this, they relied on U.S.-based facilitators “who received laptops from victim companies, housed and configured those devices, installed remote-access software and transferred earnings to DPRK‑controlled accounts,” according to the complaint.

CrowdStrike has been working with the FBI to target DPRK operatives nationwide. In late September, it says its Counter Adversary Operations team collaborated with the FBI to disrupt several laptop farms operating nationwide maintained by DPRK-nexus adversary FAMOUS CHOLLIMA. Between April and June, its team identified the infrastructure, it says.

FAMOUS CHOLLIMA is a North Korean state-sponsored hacking group involved in fraudulent IT-worker schemes that has been active since at least 2018, CrowdStrike says. It “likely conducts operations on behalf of North Korea’s Munitions Industry Department (MID), which funds and oversees the DPRK’s missile and nuclear weapons program.”

The scheme involves DPRK operatives using laptop farms to enable FAMOUS CHOLLIMA operatives “to pose as legitimate remote workers and siphon illicit wages back to their regime while maintaining persistent access to victim organizations” in the U.S.. authorities allege.

In north Texas, investigators said they uncovered DPRK operatives using a network of fraudulent Google email accounts to facilitate the scheme. The DOJ published the emails in the complaint.

The bust comes as the Trump administration’s FBI is aggressively pursuing cybercrimes and corporate espionage. These investigations are an outworking of National Security Presidential Memorandum 11 (NSPM-11) issued to advance American superiority in artificial intelligence technology.

A federal investigation into DPRK illicit financial networks is ongoing.

The FBI is encouraging any company or individual who has information about the DPRK scheme to come forward and file a report at ic3.gov.

Neo-Nazi Sentenced to Prison for Terrorist Plot Where FBI Agents ‘Encouraged’ Him

Ken Silva
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Neo-Nazi Sentenced to Prison for Terrorist Plot Where FBI Agents ‘Encouraged’ Him

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A former neo-Nazi in Tennessee was sentenced to serve 135 months in prison on Wednesday after pleading guilty to plotting to destroy a Tennessee energy facility in November 2024, days before the presidential election.

The one-time neo-Nazi, Skyler Philippi, was sentenced after his lawyers pushed for leniency on the grounds that undercover FBI agents “encouraged” him to participate in the plot. Philippi, who’s autistic and was hospitalized in 2015 for suicidal thoughts, also said he’s renounced his neo-Nazi beliefs.

Philippi’s lawyers had sought a 47-month prison sentence for their client—a drastic reduction from the 235-293 months that he was facing.

According to his lawyers, their client was “approached by undercover agents in July 2024.”

“He had recently moved to Tennessee and was homeless,” the lawyers said in a sentencing memorandum last month. “The agents befriended him, ate and drank alcohol with him, and made him feel special and part of the group.”

Philippi’s lawyers filed a partial transcript of recorded conversations between their client and the undercover feds, showing that they pushed him to act before the 2024 election.

“We got to do something quick. Man, it’s November,” one agent told him. “They’re going to steal [the election].”

Case History

According to the DOJ’s complaint, Philippi had been talking to an FBI informant online earlier in 2024 about committing a mass shooting at a YMCA in Columbia, Tennessee. Instead of arresting him for that, the FBI informant introduced Philippi to another informant, who was located physically closer to him.

That FBI informant, in turn, introduced Phillippi to an undercover agent in August 2024. During an in-person meeting, the defendant allegedly told the agent about his “manifesto,” which outlined desires to attack “high tax cities or industrial areas to let the kikes lose money.” During that conversation, he also allegedly told the agent about his previous affiliation with the Atomwaffen Division—a neo-Nazi terrorist group infiltrated by the FBI years ago.

On Sept. 28, 2024, the FBI introduced Philippi to yet another undercover agent. After the meeting, the undercover agents drove him to a substation to plot the attack, according to the complaint.

A few weeks later, Philippi told the undercover agents he wanted to participate in a “Nordic ritual”—something that’s often popular with neo-Nazi groups such as the Atomwaffen. Philippi said he never participated in such a ritual before, but “the UCEs told PHILIPPI they had previously participated in a Nordic ritual and offered to help set it up.”

As Philippi’s supposed plot progressed, he told the agents he was having trouble building the drone to use as a bomber. According to the criminal complaint, the FBI agents then gave him a drone to use.

Philippi is pictured test-flying the drone in the FBI’s criminal complaint. Afterwards, “PHILIPPI and the UCEs returned to the hotel and began preparing for the attack,” the complaint states.

Later that night, he and the undercover agents left their hotel to carry out the attack—stopping at a bar first, according to Philippi.

“Law-enforcement agents arrested PHILIPPI while he was preparing the drone and the explosives from the back of the vehicle,” the criminal complaint states.

Philippi was charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted destruction of an energy facility. He faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

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