Transcription
The scene.
The FBI has announced that it foiled an attack at the White House UFC event. I'm Holly Firfer in Atlanta. You're on the scene. Around 100,000 people gathered for the UFC fighting event on Sunday. And now we're learning that multiple people are in custody. Scripps News investigative correspondent Patrick Terpstra joins us now to talk about all of this. And Patrick, what do we know about this plan? Was it a serious effort to carry out an attack? What happened?
Well, Holly, we just received a criminal complaint that was filed in Ohio against a 19-year-old named Tyson Proper. And this complaint says that essentially this was a very troubled young man, 19 years old, lived with his parents. And his parents contacted authorities last week saying that they had heard him talking about a potential plot in Washington and they became very alarmed. Authorities from the Knox County, Ohio Sheriff's Office went to the house, talked to the parents, searched the home and found an AR-style rifle as well as ammunition and tactical gear. They also found that it appears that Proper had been speaking on the encrypted Signal app with as many as 19 others about a plan to attack the UFC fight in Washington last weekend.
This says that the plan was essentially for them to all meet up in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the days before the UFC fight and make their way to Washington where, according to this criminal complaint, what they hoped to do was to use explosive drones and flying these drones into buildings around the White House to then cause a mass evacuation and to have sniper teams fire at people in this crowd. Now, all of this obviously very disturbing, but it appears from this criminal complaint that other than the guns and the ammunition, there weren't massive amounts of drones. There's no indication that this was something that was actually going to happen. But it is still obviously something that authorities are taking very seriously. We heard the Vice President, JD Vance, talking on FOX Today, thanking law enforcement for breaking up whatever this plan was before it happened. Thank God. This attack was apparently for good, or never got to the point where it was carried out. This could have been a very terrible tragedy.
But it goes to show why we have so much appreciation for the guys who keep us safe, for federal law enforcement, because these are the types of attacks that they're preventing every single day.
And the FBI says that multiple people are in custody. Again, we're talking about 19 individuals named in this criminal complaint that were participating in this Signal encrypted chat about a potential plot here. But so far, the only arrest we know about is this 19-year-old Tyson Proctor. He faces four charges, including conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States and attempted murder of an officer or employee of the United States. He remains hospitalized in Ohio out of concern he had homicidal ideations, homicidal thoughts, Holly.
And Patrick, just a quick question to follow this up. I mean, I would assume that there's restricted airspace around the White House at any given time. But were there tighter controls because of this event? I mean, is it even a possibility that they could have flown drones over this? It would have been a really kind of plot to carry out anywhere near the White House. Drones are, of course, forbidden.
And the U.S. Secret Service has anti-drone technology to make sure that aircraft like that really can't fly. Also, this plan apparently called for sniper teams. How would they get in the city? Got on top of buildings? What would they even have the capability to do that? All of these are questions that we're going to learn as we perhaps see more criminal complaints filed against others. And as this case now against Tyson Proper, this 19-year-old in Ohio, plays out.