A worried mother’s call to police in rural Ohio four days before Donald Trump’s 80th birthday celebrations at the White House set in motion an FBI investigation that uncovered an elaborate plot to use explosive drones and concealed rooftop snipers to massacre high-profile guests at the president’s UFC birthday event on the South Lawn.
Tycen Proper, 19, from Danbury, Ohio, north of Columbus, had been spending his graduation money on guns and body armour and talking to online contacts about “recons” and “hit and run missions.” His parents alerted Knox County police after finding maps of Washington exchanged via text and Discord, watching their son spend $3,000 on an AR-style rifle, a bullpup rifle painted with the American flag, body armour and “lots” of ammunition. They told officers he was planning to leave that weekend to meet up with his online associates.
When police searched his room, they found a journal in which Proper had written that the government sought to “control people and to sacrifice children and others to a demonic figure.” A list of 46 names — including celebrities and politicians — was also discovered, along with spent ammunition.
What began as a family welfare call quickly escalated into a nationwide FBI operation. According to sworn affidavits, the alleged conspiracy had been coordinated across TikTok, Signal and the encrypted messaging app SimpleX, and centred on a multi-stage attack timed to coincide with UFC Freedom 250, the cage-fighting event held on the White House South Lawn to mark Trump’s birthday and the 250th anniversary of American independence.
The plan, as described by the FBI, involved staging a protest on the north side of the White House before flying small explosive-laden drones over the north side of the arena structure known as the Claw. The explosions would force the crowd and what the plotters called “HVTs” — high value targets — to evacuate southward, where concealed snipers would be waiting. A getaway route along the Potomac River to a safe house had also been identified. One Signal group named “Hunters” had 19 members, with smaller splinter chats organised by the locations from which conspirators planned to shoot.
In one chat titled “Ops Stage One,” a user called Fulcrum6 wrote: “Once each team is mission ready the green light will be given and the drone rigged with explosives will fly. They will initiate the attack. Rooftop snipers will initiate their part of the plan eliminating HVTs.” In a separate exchange, co-conspirator Michael Alan Thomas wrote: “$1300 gets us the drones and the charges. Yes we should all pitch in and we need it asap.” He also told the group: “Consider yourselves an enemy of the state,” and asked: “So, to be precise, you’re imagining executions right?”
On 13 May, Proper named Senator Marsha Blackburn as a target, writing: “She’s taken money from the pro Israel lobby and supports them.” He also shared images of four politicians — Senator Jim Justice, Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Congresswoman Carol Miller and Congresswoman Riley Moore — all drawn from the website of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, adding: “These are people we’re going to focus on.”
Five people have been arrested across Ohio, Missouri and California, with investigators believing up to 20 individuals were involved in total. Bryan Omar Roa and Michael Alan Thomas were arrested in California. Family members of Roa told the FBI he had told them that one day he would be gone and “something big” would happen in Washington. The person identified as Fulcrum6 was arrested in Missouri.
Thomas told FBI agents in interview that the aim of the attack was to create enough chaos to bring about the overthrow of the United States government. An FBI affidavit said: “Thomas indicated that he believes that the US government is run by an elite group of individuals who sacrifice and consume infants, who also were deeply involved with Jeffrey Epstein, and are now protected by President Donald Trump.”
According to another affidavit, the plotters were motivated by a mix of anti-government conspiracy theories including the handling of the Epstein files, anger at data centres consuming local water supplies, and beliefs about systemic government corruption. Experts have drawn comparisons with so-called accelerationist ideology — a strategy, common across different fringe movements, centred on the idea of deliberately triggering societal collapse to bring about political change. Kyle Shideler, director and senior analyst for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, cautioned that accelerationism is “not an ideology. It’s a strategy, which can be equally utilized by actors of any ideological bent.”
The plot was never executed. The alert raised by Proper’s mother days before the event proved decisive in preventing what the FBI described as an attack designed to “jumpstart” a revolution in the United States.
