Three Nevada men were arrested on terrorism-related charges related to causing violence during recent protests to reopen the economy in Las Vegas.
The trio, who are white, have ties to a loose movement of right-wing extremists that advocate for the overthrow of the U.S. government.
All three arrested have military experience and are accused of conspiring to carry out a plan that began in April in conjunction with protests to reopen the state’s economy, which closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. The three reportedly were going to capitalize on protests that sparked last week after the death of George Floyd.
The three were arrested on Saturday on their way to a downtown Las Vegas protest after filling gas cans at a parking lot and making Molotov cocktails.
The criminal complaint filed in a federal court in Las Vegas on Wednesday said the three self-identified as part of the “boogaloo” movement and were part of a Nevada-based boogaloo Facebook page, a term which U.S. prosecutors say is “used by extremists to signify coming civil war and/or fall of civilization.”
The men were identified as Stephen Parshall, 35, Andrew Lynam Jr., 23, and William Loomis, 40, and were being held on $1 million bond each in the Clark County jail Wednesday. Lynam is currently an Army reservist, Marshall was formerly enlisted in the Navy, and Loomis was formerly enlisted in the Air Force. Each face two federal charges, including conspiracy to damage and destroy by fire and explosive and possession of unregistered firearms which could bring twenty then another 10 years in prison, in addition to multiple terrorism-related state charges.
“Violent instigators have hijacked peaceful protests and demonstrations across the country, including Nevada, exploiting the real and legitimate outrage over Mr. Floyd’s death for their own radical agendas,” said U.S. Attorney Nicholas A. Trutanich for the District of Nevada. “Law enforcement is focused on keeping violence and destruction from interfering with free public expression and threatening lives.”
Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed black man, died in police custody last week after a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, pinned him down by placing a knee on the back of his neck for several minutes. Footage of the incident set off a wave of outrage, leading to protests in major cities across the nation, some of which became violent as some protesters rioted, looted stores, destroyed property, burned buildings, and clashed with police. Chauvin is now facing charges of second-degree murder.
Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and others have blamed right-wing extremists and white supremacists for the disruption in multiple cities and demonstrations. President Trump, on the other hand, placed blame on far-left actors and radical group, antifa, whom he announced he would seek to designate as a domestic terrorist group.
The 15-page criminal complaint against the three men, signed off on by FBI special agent Blake Vogt, notes that on June 1, the FBI Las Vegas Evidence Response Team executed and search warrant on Parshall’s car, seizing “numerous accelerant, to include gasoline, fuel injector cleaner, and hair spray, strips of clothes and four flats jars filled with a liquid that tested positive as gasoline.” Vogt wrote that an FBI special agent bomb technician examined the items and concluded that they were “commonly used to assemble an Improvised Incendiary Device commonly referred to as a Molotov cocktail.”
The plot unraveled, according to court documents, when a “reporting party” told the FBI that Lynam and Pashall were “potentially planning terrorist activity” in April, with the “reporting party” signing up to become a confidential human source for the bureau. Loomis also became a subject in May. The confidential human source met Lynam and Parshall at a ReOpen Nevada rally in Las Vegas in early April 2020, where Lynam said that “their group was not for joking around and that it was for people who wanted to violently overthrow the government” and Parshall “appeared to agree.”
Lynam told the bureau source that he “intended to target structures that did not have a defense system” while Marshall “had maps that showed terrains and locations.” During a group hike in late April, the men discussed a “trial run” to destroy a ranger station near Lake Mead. On May 9, Lynam, Marshall, and the bureau’s source attended an Open Nevada protest, and Lynam and Marshall talked about a future plan for the next May 16 protest, where they intended to follow the guidelines of the Irish Republican Army’s Green Book to get the government “to show its hand” by creating a “chaotic and confusing scene.” While at the next protest, Loomis joined the group.
After Floyd’s death, the group’s thinking shifted gears, and the men discussed a “fire bomb” to destroy a power substation to “incite chaos and possibly a riot.” The group attended a May 29 Las Vegas rally hoping to stir up trouble, and on May 30 decided to attend a Black Lives Matter rally with at least one AR-15 and their home-made Molotov cocktails, which is when they were apprehended.
Earlier this week, Politico reported on a Department of Homeland Security intelligence note sent to law enforcement officials nationwide, warning that both anarchic and militia extremists planned on exploiting the Floyd protests and the ensuing chaos. The memo pointed to “previous incidents of domestic terrorists exploiting First Amendment-protected events” to justify fears of “domestic terrorist actors.”
The memo also pointed to FBI reported that on May 27 “a white supremacist extremist Telegram channel incited followers to engage in violence and start the ‘boogaloo ’— a term used by some violent extremists to refer to the start of a second Civil War — by shooting in a crowd.” A message on the encrypted channel told the potential shooters that they should “frame the crowd around you” for the violence.
Attorney General William Barr said May 31 that “the violence instigated and carried out by antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly.”
