Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: In April of twenty twenty, we were all talking about
Speaker 2: what we were going to buy with our twelve hundred
Speaker 2: dollars COVID stimulus check. I vaguely recall making the decision
Speaker 2: to go ahead and bite the bullet and buy a toaster.
Speaker 2: No more preheating the whole oven, just a toast of
Speaker 2: little bread in my house. Life's too short not to
Speaker 2: enjoy a crisp pot sandwich from time to time, and
Speaker 2: starting to feel like life might be even shorter. It
Speaker 2: was a fraud time. We all coped differently, but about
Speaker 2: three hundred miles south of where I was obsessively reading
Speaker 2: reviews for small appliances, an unnamed witness was chatting with
Speaker 2: an acquaintance at Camp La June. He was thinking about
Speaker 2: using his check to buy a handgun at a nearby
Speaker 2: store in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and he was far from
Speaker 2: the only one with this idea. The FBI reported a
Speaker 2: twenty percent increase in gun sales over the previous year
Speaker 2: during those early months of the pandemic. I guess when
Speaker 2: Americans get scared, they turn to guns, even when that
Speaker 2: doesn't really make any sense. But everybody wanted a gun
Speaker 2: even beyond the average American lust for guns. So lines
Speaker 2: were long, and prices were high, and paperwork was backlocked.
Speaker 2: The acquaintance our unnamed witness was talking to about the purchase.
Speaker 1: Said, oh, no, you don't want to do that.
Speaker 2: I can get you a great deal in a Glocken
Speaker 2: nineteen with no serial number for just fifteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: You'll even get a silencer. Before discussing the details of
Speaker 2: the deal, Liam Collins placed his phone inside of the microwave.
Speaker 2: For those of you who only have normal friends and
Speaker 2: have never been asked to put your cell phone in
Speaker 2: the microwave, the idea is that the appliance acts as
Speaker 2: a Faraday cage, preventing the device from transmitting a signal
Speaker 2: of any kind, so it can't be used to monitor
Speaker 2: a conversation you don't want the government to know about.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure this technique is terribly worthwhile.
Speaker 2: I mean, the government can get a warrant to track
Speaker 2: your phone to WI or tap your phone, but I've
Speaker 2: never read a case where a warrant was obtained to
Speaker 2: use someone's cell phone as a passive listening device. I'm
Speaker 2: sure it's possible, I just don't know how likely it
Speaker 2: is that the government is using your phone this way,
Speaker 2: but it's a common enough idea in certain circles. And
Speaker 2: with the spone safely stowed in the microwave, William Collins
Speaker 2: started cooking something a little hotter than ramen. We opened
Speaker 2: the door to the investigation that revealed a neo Nazi
Speaker 2: terror plot to kick off a race war. I'm Molly Conger,
Speaker 2: and this is a weird blue guys. I usually start
Speaker 2: the process of sorting out a story by making a timeline.
Speaker 2: Chronological order isn't always the best way to tell a story,
Speaker 2: but it's the best way I found to understand how
Speaker 2: the pieces fit together so I can try to make
Speaker 2: sense of it for us. I lay out every scrap
Speaker 2: of information I can find in the court record and
Speaker 2: existing reporting by other journalists, and all the odds and
Speaker 2: ends I can scrape together from the vast corners of
Speaker 2: the Internet. After I published a piece last year about
Speaker 2: a different weird little guy, he actually reached out to
Speaker 2: a journalist I know who had an existing source relationship
Speaker 2: with him and asked.
Speaker 1: How did she know that thing about my grandmother? Well,
Speaker 1: it's my job to know.
Speaker 2: I spent an entire day finding county court records for
Speaker 2: everyone you've ever met, and read a few dozen issues
Speaker 2: of your hometown newspaper from the early nineties. I'm kind
Speaker 2: of a weird little guy too, I guess, and I
Speaker 2: can get a little carried away. I mean, I'm deeply
Speaker 2: committed to placing everything in its proper context, but sometimes
Speaker 2: I've got four generations of a guy's family tree mapped out.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at his cousin's wedding photos on Instagram, and
Speaker 2: I've got a copy of his grandparents marriage license saved
Speaker 2: to my desktop, and I realize I've lost the plot
Speaker 2: a little. In this case really complicated my process. With
Speaker 2: five defendants, three superseding indictments, and four years in court,
Speaker 2: it's hard to find a single beginning for the timeline.
Speaker 2: So than digging myself into a hole I can't get
Speaker 2: back out of, let's just start in twenty fifteen, Shortly
Speaker 2: before these five men's lives began to intertwine. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: Liam Jan Montgomery Collins, Justin Wade Hermansen, and Joseph Marino
Speaker 2: were all still in high school. Marino would soon have
Speaker 2: a chance encounter with a National Guard recruiter in his
Speaker 2: high school cafeteria. Collins was doing a little modeling, walking
Speaker 2: in a New York Fashion Week show for the Japanese
Speaker 2: designer North Hooleywood. The summer before his junior year, Marine
Speaker 2: Lance Corporal Jordan Duncan was living in Latvia studying Russian
Speaker 2: at the Defense Language Institute's Foreign Language Center, and Paul
Speaker 2: James Kreischuk Junior, not to be confused with his father,
Speaker 2: Paul Senior, a retired Suffolk County police officer, started more
Speaker 2: than fifty pornographic films that year, mostly in a genre
Speaker 2: called facial abuse, despite telling an industry publication the year
Speaker 2: before that he was getting out of the business, calling
Speaker 2: the work he did in facial abuse the most degrading
Speaker 2: job he'd ever done. Now, I'm not here to judge
Speaker 2: anybody's private life. I mean, beyond the premise of the show,
Speaker 2: I guess, which is kind of me passing some judgement of.
Speaker 1: These guys' lives.
Speaker 2: But as far as consensual adult film work, as long
Speaker 2: as everyone's safe and doing work they've chosen to do,
Speaker 2: that's not my business. That's not what we're here to
Speaker 2: figure out. But personally, I'm not very knowledgeable about pornography.
Speaker 2: I fear I may be outing myself as kind of
Speaker 2: apprude here, but I wanted to figure out if this
Speaker 2: was actually as gross as it sounds, or if it
Speaker 2: just seemed gross to me because it's not my cup
Speaker 2: of tea. So I had to do some research here
Speaker 2: that I really wish I had not. I read a
Speaker 2: few industry blogs, some forums for both performers and consumers,
Speaker 2: some interviews with performers who worked in the genre and
Speaker 2: with this particular studio.
Speaker 1: And some legal documents.
Speaker 2: According to a definition used by the examining attorney in
Speaker 2: an official decision by the US Trademark and Patent Office
Speaker 2: denying a trademark application, the term facial abuse is the
Speaker 2: act of sexually humiliating your partner by abusing and degrading
Speaker 2: her face during rough oral sex, by holding her head
Speaker 2: deep on your genitalia, slapping her face, and talking to
Speaker 2: her in a degrading manner during the process. And that's
Speaker 2: the nicest way to describe what I saw. The company
Speaker 2: seeking that trademark. D and D Media is listed as
Speaker 2: the production company behind one hundred and ninety two of
Speaker 2: the three hundred and eighty five credits listed on the
Speaker 2: Internet Adult Film Database profile for Polly Harker, the alias Kraishak,
Speaker 2: performed under for thirteen years. I regret every second I
Speaker 2: spent finding out more about this. I know, I said
Speaker 2: I'd like to know everything about a guy before I
Speaker 2: start writing, but I don't actually need to see him naked,
Speaker 2: and I really didn't expect to see him pour a
Speaker 2: dog bowl full of a woman's own vomit over her face.
Speaker 2: This is, unfortunately not the first time my research has
Speaker 2: led me to see aspiring terrorist's penis, but it is,
Speaker 2: without a doubt, the worst. Again, I don't want to
Speaker 2: put my own moral judgment on this aspect of things.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that a guy with a kink that
Speaker 2: makes my stomach hurt is necessarily evil. So I really
Speaker 2: did some extra digging here, and I found several women
Speaker 2: who had done work with dn E Media and with
Speaker 2: Paul Kreischuk specifically. I had really hoped. As I was
Speaker 2: gritting my teeth through the videos, I found that the
Speaker 2: women were just phenomenal actors that they were putting on
Speaker 2: a convincing show of being terrified of being unable to breathe.
Speaker 2: I understand there's a market for that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: I hoped that they'd all agreed ahead of time that
Speaker 2: she would only be pretending to sob and what looked
Speaker 2: like her desperately trying to get the man to stop
Speaker 2: was only scripted drama. And maybe that's the case for
Speaker 2: some of the videos, but several women have come forward
Speaker 2: over the years to say that was not their experience
Speaker 2: with D and D media. In twenty eleven, DNE released
Speaker 2: a facial abuse scene between Kreischuk and a woman performing
Speaker 2: under the name Clara Bo on the form Adult DVD Talk.
Speaker 2: Even fans of the genre unsettled, with one user writing
Speaker 2: they were pretty rough on her, even for fa multiple
Speaker 2: and hard slaps to the face, prolonged upside down djays
Speaker 2: both over the shoulder and on the couch, and not
Speaker 2: one but two body slams. I am sad she even
Speaker 2: took it for five minutes, let alone ten. Another user
Speaker 2: responded the editing was weird. They must have had to
Speaker 2: cut a lot of stuff out so it wouldn't look criminal.
Speaker 2: I noticed her eyes were closed for the most part
Speaker 2: of the second half. I wonder if he told her
Speaker 2: to do that to hide the bloodshot eye. She had
Speaker 2: on her blog. Claire herself replied to the thread back
Speaker 2: in twenty eleven, posting, to be honest, I don't know
Speaker 2: if I can look at it without dredging up the
Speaker 2: fucked up feelings it gave me. I'm all for some
Speaker 2: rough sex, I was happy with my scene for public disgrace,
Speaker 2: and I can't wait for Princess Donna to get back
Speaker 2: to the USA so I can get it.
Speaker 1: On bound gang bangs.
Speaker 2: But facial abuse was exactly what they say in the
Speaker 2: title abuse with a facial.
Speaker 1: At the end.
Speaker 2: So this isn't just a woman who is regretful about
Speaker 2: her time in the industry or someone who showed up
Speaker 2: to shoot in a genre she was inexperienced with. She's
Speaker 2: shot BDSM and kink content. People are getting hurt for real,
Speaker 2: she wrote in twenty eleven. It's not the same as
Speaker 2: kink or typical BDSM. In twenty twenty three, she spoke
Speaker 2: again about the experience with journalist Paul mulholland. She told
Speaker 2: moholland that there was an agreed upon tap out signal
Speaker 2: she needed to stop for any reason, but when she
Speaker 2: tried to stop the scene, she was ignored. I tapped
Speaker 2: his thighs because I couldn't breathe anymore, and he didn't care.
Speaker 2: He actually grabbed the back of my head and pulled
Speaker 2: me closer, and I had to from kneeling push on
Speaker 2: his thighs, get my feet underneath me, and literally launched
Speaker 2: my entire body weight backward to get off of him.
Speaker 2: They didn't cut this from the video. Paul Kryshut, covered
Speaker 2: in distinctive tattoos, can be seen ignoring BOE's attempt to
Speaker 2: end the scene as the blood vessels in her eyes burst.
Speaker 2: A woman who performs as Felicity Feeline says the videos
Speaker 2: she did for D and E Media are her greatest
Speaker 2: regret of her nine years in the industry, and she's
Speaker 2: made several videos about the violent shoots and the subsequent
Speaker 2: harassment and coercion from the director, though she doesn't name him.
Speaker 2: Both of the credits on her Internet Adult film Database
Speaker 2: profile for DNA shoots are videos starring opposite Kraishuk.
Speaker 3: And that's what their goal is. They want to completely
Speaker 3: ruin a woman on camera, and they will do anything
Speaker 3: in their power legally to do it. Maybe they overstep
Speaker 3: the legal boundaries at points, but that's to be determined
Speaker 3: by someone in law, because I don't want to go there.
Speaker 2: In other videos, I sincerely regret watching Kraishuk chokes and
Speaker 2: slaps a black performer for rating her and calling her
Speaker 2: racial slurs as she sobs if her experience was anything
Speaker 2: like Clara's or Felicity's or any of the other women
Speaker 2: who've come forward about this company not acting. So that's
Speaker 2: who pol was before all of this starts. His last
Speaker 2: pornographic film was released in twenty eighteen, so it seems
Speaker 2: likely he stopped shooting porn in twenty seventeen, which is
Speaker 2: about when he made the career switch to illegally manufacturing
Speaker 2: firearms for guys. He met on a Nazi message board
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, when Liam Collins was a senior at
Speaker 2: New Providence High School in a northern New Jersey suburb.
Speaker 2: He started posting on Iron March.
Speaker 1: The forum first.
Speaker 2: Appeared online in twenty eleven, launched by a Russian nationalist
Speaker 2: named Alisher Mukitnadoff, and in its six years online it
Speaker 2: was an incubator for neo Nazi ideology around the world.
Speaker 2: Fascist organizations like National Action in the UK, Adam Waffin,
Speaker 2: and the us Skidas in Lithuania and Antipodian Resistance in
Speaker 2: Australia were born on the forum. These and other organizations
Speaker 2: grew and networked, recruiting online posters into real life terror cells.
Speaker 2: The site disappeared without explanation one day in November twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: The webmaster for The Daily Stormer at the time, Andrew Ahenheimer,
Speaker 2: perhaps better known as Weave, speculated that there was international
Speaker 2: pressure to take the site offline after an incident in
Speaker 2: Florida earlier that year, Adam Woffin founder Brandon Russell was
Speaker 2: arrested when police found a stash of explosives and bomb
Speaker 2: making supplies in his garage. The police were only in
Speaker 2: his garage because his roommate fellow Adam Woffin member Devin
Speaker 2: Arthur's and Iron March user, the vice of WULFA, told
Speaker 2: investigators that Russell planned to target infrastructure and synagogues, and
Speaker 2: Arthur's was only talking to the police because he'd been
Speaker 2: arrested for murdering their other two roommates, Andrew Onischuk and
Speaker 2: Jeremy Himmelman, in the apartment the four shared. Now obviously
Speaker 2: the double murder and the bombing plot are the bigger
Speaker 2: deal here. But do you just want to point out
Speaker 2: that Devon should have put a little more effort into
Speaker 2: the screening. These guys love costplaying the whole Hitler vibe,
Speaker 2: using German words in their handles. But if he's one
Speaker 2: white wolf, it'd be der weis a wolf. If he's
Speaker 2: multiple white wolf wolves, it's device in Vilfa. The vice
Speaker 2: of Volfa isn't anything. I guess it doesn't matter because
Speaker 2: it'll be twenty five years to life before he logs
Speaker 2: back on. Other former posters on the Terrorism Training for
Speaker 2: Him believed the Russian government pressured Mukitnadov to take the
Speaker 2: site offline because users were recruiting and raising money for
Speaker 2: the Ukrainian Nu Nazi paramilitary group Azov Battalion, which is
Speaker 2: considered a terrorist organization by the Russian government. A twenty
Speaker 2: twenty investigation by the Russian language office of PHOEBC News.
Speaker 1: Doesn't really support that theory.
Speaker 2: Mkitnadov was still living in Moscow and was never charged
Speaker 2: by the Russian government, something they would presumably do if
Speaker 2: they felt he was to blame for funding Asov. Both
Speaker 2: Mukitnadov and a spokesperson for Azov declined to speak with
Speaker 2: reporters from the BBC, so, despite speculation from his fans
Speaker 2: that he'd been murdered by Russian intelligence agents, he was
Speaker 2: alive enough in twenty twenty to hang up on a reporter.
Speaker 2: But before the site disappeared, it was a place for
Speaker 2: lonely Nazis to connect and in September of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: when Liam Collins was starting his senior year of high school,
Speaker 2: he was already recruiting members for a group project, as
Speaker 2: he called it, as Niez Gooda. He exchanged messages with
Speaker 2: a user named Panzerlier, a twenty three year old just
Speaker 2: finishing up a three year stint in the US Army.
Speaker 2: Colins said he was forming a group that would eventually
Speaker 2: become a paramilitary organization. He planned to join the Marines
Speaker 2: after high school to get the training he would need
Speaker 2: to lead the group, and was looking to recruit members
Speaker 2: with military and policing experience.
Speaker 1: I guess Panserliter.
Speaker 2: Passed the teens Vibe check because he became a member
Speaker 2: of the Fledgling group. A few years later, when he
Speaker 2: was outed as an Iron March poster and lost his
Speaker 2: job at the Lafayette, Indiana Police Department. Joseph Zacharrek would
Speaker 2: cooperate with federal investigators and testify before the grand jury
Speaker 2: then indicted Collins. The core group really came together when Collins,
Speaker 2: as Niezgoda, started corresponding with Paul Kreischach, who was posting
Speaker 2: on Iron March as visions from Patmos. In early twenty seventeen, Collins,
Speaker 2: still a high school senior, recruited the adult film actor.
Speaker 1: To the crew.
Speaker 2: Just a few months later, the growing group took a
Speaker 2: camping trip together, finally getting offline and meeting in real
Speaker 2: life to discuss their plans for the future. By August,
Speaker 2: Collins had joined the Marine Corps and moved down to
Speaker 2: Camp Lea. June, on Iron March, he posted that he
Speaker 2: had a tight knit crew of x mill and security
Speaker 2: that he was training with, going on hikes and doing
Speaker 2: live fire exercises. Collins posted that he couldn't really get
Speaker 2: into specifics online, writing that it's an inner circle thing,
Speaker 2: but it will serve its purpose when the time comes.
Speaker 2: Think of it as a modern day ss Kryshuck laid
Speaker 2: out his theory of operations in a post on Iron
Speaker 2: March in early twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4: First order of business is knocking down the system, mounting
Speaker 4: it and smashing its face until it has been beaten
Speaker 4: past the point of death. Eventually we will have to
Speaker 4: bring the rifles out and go to work. We will
Speaker 4: have to hit the streets and strike as many blows
Speaker 4: to the remaining power structure as we can. Keep it
Speaker 4: on the ropes, forget the ponds, and go for the knights, kings,
Speaker 4: and queens. Second order of business is the seizing of
Speaker 4: territory and the Balkanization of North America. Buying property in
Speaker 4: remote areas that are already predominantly white and right leaning,
Speaker 4: networking with locals, training, farming, and stockpiling. Essentially, we are
Speaker 4: laying the framework for a guerrilla organization and a takeover
Speaker 4: of local government and industry. Start buying property now in
Speaker 4: the types of regions mentioned above, and get to work
Speaker 4: on building your own group. As time goes on in
Speaker 4: this conflict, we will expand our territories and slowly take
Speaker 4: back the land that is rightfully ours. As we build
Speaker 4: our forces in our numbers, we will move into the
Speaker 4: urban areas and clear them out. This will be a
Speaker 4: ground we're very reminiscent of Iraq, as we will essentially
Speaker 4: be facing an insurgent force made up of criminals and
Speaker 4: gang members.
Speaker 1: And he meant it.
Speaker 2: You don't have to give these guys credit for anything,
Speaker 2: but you can't say he didn't mean it. A lot
Speaker 2: of guys talk like this online, but they don't all
Speaker 2: start an illegal amateur gunsmithing operation and move to Idaho.
Speaker 2: It's not entirely clear when Paul Kreischuk started making his
Speaker 2: own guns. The earliest payment listed across the slew of
Speaker 2: indictments as a transfer from one of his co conspirators,
Speaker 2: Joseph Marino, to Paul Kreischuk, in September of twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: The documents don't clearly spell out what that payment was for,
Speaker 2: but all the other money transfers discussed in the indictments
Speaker 2: are linked to shipments of firearms or their components. Kreishak
Speaker 2: had recruited Marino to join the group earlier that year.
Speaker 2: In February of twenty eighteen, according to testimony from John Little,
Speaker 2: the investigator from the Naval Criminal Investigative Services assigned to
Speaker 2: this case, Marino had attempted to join Identity Europa, a
Speaker 2: now defunct white supremacist organization earlier that year, so he
Speaker 2: was clearly shopping around for the right fit, just looking
Speaker 2: for the right Nazi group for his interests. Little's testimony
Speaker 2: doesn't elaborate on this at all, but I did go
Speaker 2: on a bit of a fishing trip to see what
Speaker 2: I could find about this my own. He didn't find
Speaker 2: anything terribly satisfying, but he did find a single message.
Speaker 2: In the discord leaks published by Unicorn Riot in February
Speaker 2: of twenty eighteen, a user posted in the identity Europa
Speaker 2: Discord's new member chat, Hey I'm Joseph from New Jersey.
Speaker 2: My interviewer was aj But a YouTube channel with the
Speaker 2: same username has playlists that includes several videos of cops
Speaker 2: getting shot, a genre of video mentioned in the court records.
Speaker 2: Apparently the crew liked to watch things like this as
Speaker 2: part of their training, preparing to fight police to the
Speaker 2: death if the time came, and critiquing the way the
Speaker 2: officers reacted to getting shot, saying things like a true
Speaker 2: warrior wouldn't show pain. That YouTube account also added a
Speaker 2: video to a playlist about how National Guardsmen can prepare
Speaker 2: for overseas deployment at around the same time that Marino's
Speaker 2: National Guard unit did deploy to Cutter in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: So I can't tell you with ironclad certainty that the
Speaker 2: discord post I found is the one the investigator was
Speaker 2: talking about, but it seems like a pretty solid fit.
Speaker 2: And I guess Identity EUROPEO wasn't a good fit because
Speaker 2: he never posted there again. But back to the guns,
Speaker 2: because that's where all of this started. In April of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, investigators with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service NCIS
Speaker 2: sat down with that confidential witness, the guy who wanted
Speaker 2: to use his COVID bucks to buy a glock. When
Speaker 2: Liam Collins tried to persuade him to purchase the weapon
Speaker 2: from him instead of going to a store in town,
Speaker 2: Collins showed the potential customer videos of the kinds of
Speaker 2: equipment he could get. The video showed a man with
Speaker 2: very distinctive tattoos firing a pistol with a homemade silencer.
Speaker 2: John Little, the NCIS agent, later testified that they wanted
Speaker 2: to find photos of Kryshuk that would show that part
Speaker 2: of his arm to determine if Kraishuk was the man
Speaker 2: in the video. Obviously they had his driver's license photo,
Speaker 2: but you can't see his tattoos in any of the
Speaker 2: photos the government already had.
Speaker 1: So he set off to do a little.
Speaker 2: Open source research online and what he found was Paully Harker.
Speaker 1: So this NCIS.
Speaker 2: Agent absolutely watched some of the same pornographic videos I
Speaker 2: had to watch while researching this, and you can probably
Speaker 2: guess that you can definitely see the tattoos in the video.
Speaker 2: And given that this initial interview was with NCIS, not
Speaker 2: the FBI, we can guess that this confidential witness was
Speaker 2: likely a fellow marine, So credit where credit is due,
Speaker 2: I guess at least one marine in this story was
Speaker 2: offered the chance to do crimes of the Nazi and said,
Speaker 2: I think I got to talk to somebody about this
Speaker 2: instead of sign me up. And the NCIS investigators were
Speaker 2: probably very pleased to hear their new cooperating witness say
Speaker 2: the name Liam Collins. Just a few months earlier, they'd
Speaker 2: tried to talk to Collins himself about something else. When
Speaker 2: the contents of the defunct Iron March forum were leaked
Speaker 2: online in late twenty nineteen, Collins was quickly identified in
Speaker 2: the data Newsweek published an article on November eighth, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: identifying Collins as an active duty marine whose Iron March
Speaker 2: posts were riddled with slurs and plans to create his
Speaker 2: own paramilitary force. When NCIS investigators attempted to interview him
Speaker 2: about the allegations in the article, he asked for an
Speaker 2: attorney and declined to comment. There's no information available about
Speaker 2: what follow up occurred internally between that November interview and
Speaker 2: this confidential witness coming forward in April, but I really
Speaker 2: want to believe that they were developing their own investigation
Speaker 2: into Collins during that time before this gift fell into
Speaker 2: an elapse. Instead of arresting Collins immediately for trying to
Speaker 2: sell an illegal silencer to this witness, they set up
Speaker 2: a meeting. They needed their cooperating witness to actually buy
Speaker 2: the gun. Offering to sell it to him wasn't enough.
Speaker 2: They needed him on record making the transaction, and so
Speaker 2: on April twenty fourth, twenty twenty, the cooperating witness transferred
Speaker 2: fifty teen hundred dollars provided to him by the government
Speaker 2: to Collins for the pistol and the silencer. Collins told
Speaker 2: the buyer that the money would then be transferred to
Speaker 2: someone he had done many similar deals with, someone he's
Speaker 2: known for years and trusts completely, even showing the witness
Speaker 2: the Venmo account he was sending the money to. The
Speaker 2: Venmo account was under the actual name for the man
Speaker 2: who would fulfill the order, Paul Kreischuk. An affidavit written
Speaker 2: for a search warrant later that summer says investigators were
Speaker 2: then able to follow that money. They went into Kreischuk's
Speaker 2: personal bank account, and he then used that money to
Speaker 2: make several purchases for the materials he'd need to fulfill
Speaker 2: the order.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm not a gun guy.
Speaker 2: Gun guys are some of the most pedantic little nerds
Speaker 2: on the planet, and so I'm going to say this preemptively.
Speaker 2: I do not want you to explain gun guy stuff
Speaker 2: to me. I did some research, and I consulted a
Speaker 2: couple of gun guys I know, and this is correct
Speaker 2: enough for us all to make it through the episode.
Speaker 2: One of the things Kreishuk purchased with the government's money
Speaker 2: from this controlled buy was called a solvent trap. If you,
Speaker 2: like me, are not a gun guy, you don't know
Speaker 2: what that is. So I was looking online websites where
Speaker 2: you can buy solvent traps, and the odd copy on
Speaker 2: these websites seems convincing enough. It's a little tube you
Speaker 2: can screw onto the end of your gun when you're
Speaker 2: cleaning it, and its alleged purpose is to collect the
Speaker 2: excess solvent that's used to clean the weapon. So convenient, right,
Speaker 2: But as I read through some of these sites, it
Speaker 2: felt like I was being lied to. If this is
Speaker 2: such a necessary object that everyone needs every time they
Speaker 2: clean their gun, why haven't they always existed? Why have
Speaker 2: I never heard of this being an issue that every
Speaker 2: gun owner is facing every day, big puddles of solvent
Speaker 2: every time you clean your gun. And I feel like
Speaker 2: I've seen people clean guns inside. If this is something
Speaker 2: that makes a large mess with a volatile chemical, surely
Speaker 2: you wouldn't do it inside. So I asked some gun guys,
Speaker 2: it's not a thing. Nobody uses a solvent trap to
Speaker 2: clean a gun. It's a flimsy gus story for an
Speaker 2: object that can be easily modified with minimal skill to
Speaker 2: create a homemade silencer. And silencers are not completely illegal.
Speaker 2: It's very possible to own one legally, but you have
Speaker 2: to do some paperwork and pay some money and wait
Speaker 2: a little while, and then of course the government knows
Speaker 2: you have it, and they are banned at the state level,
Speaker 2: and a handful of states, including New York, New Jersey,
Speaker 2: and Rhode Island, three states where we'll see him making
Speaker 2: or shipping them to. So based on the information they
Speaker 2: got from this controlled buy with their cooperating witness, they
Speaker 2: now know that Liam Collins is selling guns and silencers
Speaker 2: in North Carolina. He's sending that money to Paul Kreyschuk
Speaker 2: and Idaho, and then Kryshuck is doing a little amateur gunsmithing,
Speaker 2: and then he's putting these guns in the mail. And
Speaker 2: now this isn't arts and crafts between friends or small
Speaker 2: business entrepreneurship. That's gun trafficking. And they already know Collins
Speaker 2: was active on Iron March. They've tried asking him about it,
Speaker 2: and the investigation quickly leads them to kreischuk'sccount and the
Speaker 2: Iron March data too, and then to the conversations that
Speaker 2: Collins and Kreishach had been having together about creating a
Speaker 2: modern dass about buying land to the Pacific Northwest, about
Speaker 2: recruiting people with military backgrounds for a coming domestic conflict
Speaker 2: about arming themselves. Kishak had recently moved from New York
Speaker 2: to Idaho, and he's making guns. This plan is already
Speaker 2: in motion. Based on the package they could confirm was
Speaker 2: the result of their controlled buy, investigators discovered that Kreischuk
Speaker 2: was using a fake driver's license with the name Sean
Speaker 2: Corkoran to rent a private mailbox in Idaho, and their
Speaker 2: cooperating witness was far from the only person receiving packages
Speaker 2: from this Shan Corkoran. Financial records for Collins and Kreishuk
Speaker 2: showed numerous similar transactions involving the pair with apparent buyers,
Speaker 2: many of whom were identifiable as other Iron March posters
Speaker 2: or other active duty Marines. Investigators obtained warrants to intercept
Speaker 2: a trio of packages from that adres in Idaho and
Speaker 2: addressed to another marine in Collins's unit. Inside they found
Speaker 2: a pistol with no serial number and a silencer with
Speaker 2: the parts distributed across the three boxes. I guess so
Speaker 2: it would be less suspicious, I don't know. A few
Speaker 2: days later there was another trio of packages with the
Speaker 2: same contents. Both times, investigators opened the packages, documented their contents,
Speaker 2: packed them back up and.
Speaker 1: Put them back in the mail. So just because you
Speaker 1: haven't been caught doesn't mean you're not caught. Right.
Speaker 2: You see this in a lot of investigations where they
Speaker 2: know exactly what you're doing, and they're watching you do it,
Speaker 2: and they're letting you do it enough times to get
Speaker 2: yourself in deeper trouble. So don't think that just because
Speaker 2: the package with your illegal gun arrived that it's all
Speaker 2: good now. So the packages go back in the mail,
Speaker 2: and then they waited outside the post.
Speaker 1: Office to see who picked them up.
Speaker 2: Physical surveillance showed Justin Hermannson, a marine in Collins unit,
Speaker 2: and another member of this Nazi paramilitary pick up one
Speaker 2: set of those packages. A few days later, when NCIS
Speaker 2: conducted another controlled meat with their cooperating witness, it was
Speaker 2: Hermanson who arrived to hand over the gun to the buyer.
Speaker 2: So they're kind of dead to rights here on the
Speaker 2: firearm trafficking. Collins and Kraaishak, and to a lesser degree Hermanson,
Speaker 2: have all participated in this scheme to make ship and
Speaker 2: sell these guns and silencers. But now it's becoming clear
Speaker 2: that there's something else going on here. In July Liam
Speaker 2: Collins bought a plane ticket to fly to Boise. Joseph Morino,
Speaker 2: that National guardsman in New Jersey who had made his
Speaker 2: own transfers directly to Kaishak the year before, bought a
Speaker 2: plane ticket too, and Jordan Duncan, a former Marine who
Speaker 2: had also made several transfers to Kaishak corresponding with packages
Speaker 2: mailed to him and his brother in Texas, was surveilled
Speaker 2: driving from San Antonio to Idaho and unloading a large
Speaker 2: number of very heavy boxes from his car into Kaishuk's garage.
Speaker 1: What are they doing?
Speaker 2: The investigators got a warrant to track Liam Collins's location
Speaker 2: by his cell phone during this trip, but he ultimately
Speaker 2: did not go. This was July twenty, twenty lifetime ago.
Speaker 2: There were pandemic related restrictions for active duty Marines that
Speaker 2: prevented him from traveling, but Joseph Marino, Jordan Duncan, and
Speaker 2: Liam Collins's little brother Tate did make the trip. FBI
Speaker 2: agents surveiled the group when they met in Boise. Photos
Speaker 2: and videos were covered from the men's phones show them
Speaker 2: wearing the skull print half face mask closely associated with
Speaker 2: Adam Woffen. At the time shooting their guns and posing
Speaker 2: for group photos giving the Nazi salute. During that visit,
Speaker 2: they conducted several live fire training exercises out in the
Speaker 2: middle of nowhere. In August of twenty twenty, investigators installed
Speaker 2: a pole camera outside the post office near Camp La June,
Speaker 2: where Collins and Hermanson were picking up these packages. They
Speaker 2: considered installing a pole camera outside Joseph Marino's home in
Speaker 2: New Jersey, probably to document the deliveries of stolen military
Speaker 2: equipment that Collins was having dropped off by a third party,
Speaker 2: but the lighting was no good and the camera never
Speaker 2: went up. They conducted another controlled by with their cooperating witness,
Speaker 2: this time having the witness purchase a short barreled rifle
Speaker 2: and another silencer and confirming the details of the purchase
Speaker 2: over FaceTime with Collins. They got another warrant to track
Speaker 2: Liam Collins using his cell phone, and they got warrants
Speaker 2: for the iCloud accounts belonging to Paul Kreischuk, Jordan Duncan,
Speaker 2: Justin Hermanson, Liam Collins, and Tate Collins. Joseph Marino was
Speaker 2: sparing that particular intrusion. The affidavit notes that he was
Speaker 2: a Samsung user, so he did not have an iCloud account,
Speaker 2: And now, unbeknownst to them, they are on a collision
Speaker 2: course with a federal indictment, and at the same time,
Speaker 2: they're ready to move past just mailing each other guns.
Speaker 2: They're ready to move on to the next phase. In August,
Speaker 2: Jordan Duncan and Paul Kreischuk were chatting about Duncan's upcoming
Speaker 2: move to Boise. Kraischuk tells Duncan to go ahead and
Speaker 2: follow BLM Boise on Instagram because he's been getting a
Speaker 2: lot of really good intelligence from their posts, and Duncan writes,
Speaker 2: I'm like four weeks away from being there. Fam been
Speaker 2: thinking a lot more about stuff you and I need
Speaker 2: to be doing, and Kaishuk tells him playtime is over,
Speaker 2: writing he is looking forward to you getting out here
Speaker 2: so we can get shit done.
Speaker 1: Duncan replies, Yeah, I feel you.
Speaker 2: The closer I get to it, the more I think
Speaker 2: about everything we have to do, and brother, we are
Speaker 2: going to have to move some mountains. In September twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: Jordan Duncan takes a pretty serious pay cut to take
Speaker 2: a job up in Idaho and moves up to Boise
Speaker 2: to be near Kraishuk. Liam Collins is discharged from the
Speaker 2: Marines and sets off on a road trip that includes
Speaker 2: a stop in New Jersey to speak with Joseph Marino
Speaker 2: in person. In October, Justin Hermanson recruits another marine to
Speaker 2: the group. Collins instructs this new member to buy a
Speaker 2: bunch of ten right and explosive that can be ignited
Speaker 2: by shooting at it. Paul Kreischuk was preparing to take
Speaker 2: the entrance exam to become a firefighter in Boise, and
Speaker 2: Liam Collins moves to Idaho, moving in with Jordan Duncan
Speaker 2: and Boise. On October sixteenth, twenty twenty, Joseph Zakerk, that
Speaker 2: police officer in Indiana is publicly identified in the Iron
Speaker 2: Marsh Leaks. He is immediately fired and so just days
Speaker 2: before Jordan Duncan, Liam Collins, and Paul Kreischuk are arrested.
Speaker 2: They don't know they're about to be arrested. They're all
Speaker 2: in the group chat urging Zacharic to just move out
Speaker 2: to Boise to be with them. You know you've lost
Speaker 2: your job, you don't have anything else to do right now.
Speaker 2: Just come on out here with us. But after being
Speaker 2: publicly outed and losing his job, Zachark just wants out altogether.
Speaker 2: It's just not worth it anymore, and he later tells
Speaker 2: federal agents that he's very worried the group will think
Speaker 2: that he talked to the cops, which is I guess
Speaker 2: kind of a silly thing to worry about, because he
Speaker 2: was a cop until the day before this, But I
Speaker 2: guess he means other cops and about this. So the
Speaker 2: more they insist that you have to come out here.
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to leave the group, you have to
Speaker 2: come out here to be with us, the more scared
Speaker 2: he gets that they only want him to come out
Speaker 2: to Boise so they can kill him. And that's the
Speaker 2: week the first indictment came down, and it's only for
Speaker 2: Liam Collins and Paul Kreishak, and they're only charged with
Speaker 2: the gun trafficking. The Feds pick up Jordan Duncan the
Speaker 2: same day, charging him with conspiracy.
Speaker 1: He was arrested as.
Speaker 2: He walked across the parking lot on his way into
Speaker 2: work that morning. A dozen agents through flash bangs before
Speaker 2: rushing him, and on the day of that arrest, all
Speaker 2: the Feds know for sure is that these guys are
Speaker 2: making and mailing guns, and that they have these extremist views.
Speaker 2: It's not illegal to have those extremist views. You can't
Speaker 2: arrest them for having those views. But if you know
Speaker 2: they're trafficking those guns to members of their Nazi paramilitary group,
Speaker 2: there are going to be some follow up quests that
Speaker 2: aren't about the National Firearms Act. And right around the
Speaker 2: time of these first arrests, investigators interview Maxwell Womack, the
Speaker 2: most recent recruit to the organization, the one who bought
Speaker 2: all that tannerite. Justin Hermanson had recruited this fellow marine
Speaker 2: just weeks before the indictment. He's only mentioned by name
Speaker 2: a few times. It looks like he came into things
Speaker 2: right there at the end and hadn't necessarily broken the
Speaker 2: law yet and was very cooperative during the investigation. And
Speaker 2: they also interviewed Joseph Zacherik, the cop with Cold Feet.
Speaker 2: He too was cooperative and was never charged in connection
Speaker 2: with the group's activities. And both of these men tell
Speaker 2: investigators in October of twenty twenty that their former friends
Speaker 2: had talked a lot about attacking the power grid. They
Speaker 2: were obsessed with the Metcalf sniper attacked as still unsolved
Speaker 2: incident in twenty thirteen, where a small team of gunmen
Speaker 2: damaged seventeen transformers at the Metcalf transmission substation outside of
Speaker 2: San Jose, California. The attack failed to actually take out
Speaker 2: power to the area, but it did cost fifteen million
Speaker 2: dollars in damage. And it's a source of great fascination
Speaker 2: for a certain kind of guy, a guy who wants
Speaker 2: to turn out the lights. It's sort of proof of
Speaker 2: concept that you can take out a substation with just
Speaker 2: a rifle. And when they arrested Paul Kreischak, they found
Speaker 2: a piece of paper in his wallet. On one side
Speaker 2: there was a handwritten list of intersections. Each intersection corresponded
Speaker 2: to the location of a piece of critical infrastructure for
Speaker 2: the power grid in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and California. And
Speaker 2: on the other side there were a dozen names. The
Speaker 2: people on the list were mostly local and state politicians.
Speaker 2: It included the governor of Oregon and a California state
Speaker 2: representative who happens to be both gay and Jewish. Alicia Garza,
Speaker 2: a co founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, posted
Speaker 2: a tweet that week that the FBI had visited her
Speaker 2: home to inform her that her name was on the list.
Speaker 2: Investigative journalist Jim Laporta has also posted that he received
Speaker 2: a similar visit in late twenty twenty. Physical surveillance conducted
Speaker 2: prior to these first arrests, along with the information they
Speaker 2: got back from the warrant for the iCloud accounts, did
Speaker 2: provide investigators with some idea that the group was considering
Speaker 2: using those guns they were making. Investigators noted that their
Speaker 2: observation of the recordings of the live fire drill the
Speaker 2: group got together for in July showed offensive tactics, so
Speaker 2: they're not just out there target shooting. They were drilling
Speaker 2: in the kinds of paramilitary tactics you would use to
Speaker 2: carry out an offensive attack. Liam Collins's younger brother, still
Speaker 2: in high school at the time, recorded a video of
Speaker 2: Black Lives Matter rally from a high vantage point. He
Speaker 2: sent the group a photo he took while surveilling the rally,
Speaker 2: superimposing a swastika over the picture and captioning it if
Speaker 2: only they knew. In late July, Paul Kreischuk was seen
Speaker 2: sitting in his car observing a Black Lives Matter rally
Speaker 2: at Boise State University, then slowly circling it several times
Speaker 2: before driving off. A month later, he was seen again
Speaker 2: sitting in his car across the street from a park
Speaker 2: in Boys where a rally was being held. Activists and
Speaker 2: Idaho were understandably outraged when they found out that the
Speaker 2: FBI had simply watched this man as he watched them,
Speaker 2: knowing he was considering opening fire on them. It seems
Speaker 2: the full extent of the plan was only really uncovered
Speaker 2: after the arrests in October. With the first three members
Speaker 2: of the cell and custody, they now had full access
Speaker 2: to the men's phones and computers. In early October, Duncan
Speaker 2: and Kryshuk discussed shooting members of the local Black Lives
Speaker 2: Matter chapter. Videos were also found on Joseph Marino's phone
Speaker 2: indicating that he had been surveilling Black Lives Matter rallies
Speaker 2: in his area that summer too. In one conversation that summer,
Speaker 2: the height of the uprising after George Floyd's murder, Paul
Speaker 2: Kryschuk texted the group a photo of a BLM flyer
Speaker 2: he'd torn down in Boise. He said they should come
Speaker 2: up with something else. To put up in its place.
Speaker 2: Joseph Morino replied, the lights will turn off, and so
Speaker 2: will you. It's a bit of a clunky slogan. I
Speaker 2: might have workshopped that a little bit. I was in
Speaker 2: charge of propaganda for the Nazi terror cell, but it
Speaker 2: describes the group's ultimate plan. They hoped to do something
Speaker 2: like the Metcalf sniper attack, and then, under cover of darkness,
Speaker 2: with emergency responders tied up with car accidents and medical
Speaker 2: emergencies that would ensue during a blackout, they would carry
Speaker 2: out a series of targeted assassinations. Searches of Kaishak's devices
Speaker 2: indicated he had already compiled information about the whereabouts of
Speaker 2: many of the names on his list. The group had
Speaker 2: discussed the most efficient ways of killing their targets, working
Speaker 2: out the logistics of placing car bombs. As Kraischuk wrote
Speaker 2: to other members of the group, the final frontier is
Speaker 2: real life violence. Liam Collins had been stealing military gear
Speaker 2: from Camp Lajune for years, so when the time came,
Speaker 2: they'd be outfitted in military grade body armour. It wasn't
Speaker 2: until August of twenty twenty one that the Department of
Speaker 2: Justice actually filed a charge against the men for this
Speaker 2: particular element of the plot. The first indictment in October
Speaker 2: twenty twenty charged Kaishak and Collins with a firearm trafficking.
Speaker 2: Duncan was arrested at the same time in charge with
Speaker 2: a conspiracy. The week of those arrests, they tried to
Speaker 2: speak with Joseph Marino and he was arrested on state
Speaker 2: level charges in New Jersey for having an unseerialized lower
Speaker 2: receiver that's the part of the gun that makes it
Speaker 2: legally a gun. According to the government, I don't know,
Speaker 2: not a gun guy, and they interviewed Justin Hermanson. According
Speaker 2: to Joseph Marino's attorney, Herminson was offered an out by
Speaker 2: the agents who spoke to him in October. They told him, hey,
Speaker 2: you've got a chance to help yourself out here, and
Speaker 2: that may have been true. A lot of the men
Speaker 2: involved in this plot never got charged. People who made
Speaker 2: purchases or picked up a package. Maxwell Womack who bought
Speaker 2: the Tannerite, A lot of men who cooperated and weren't
Speaker 2: central to the plot did not get charged. And again,
Speaker 2: according to Marino's lawyer, Herminson did talk to the agents
Speaker 2: at that time specifically about how involved Marino had been
Speaker 2: in these crimes. But either Herminson wasn't that helpful or
Speaker 2: the agents just didn't realize the time in October the
Speaker 2: extent to which he'd been involved in the gun running scheme,
Speaker 2: because a month later, in November of twenty twenty, there's
Speaker 2: a second indictment, the first superseding indictment. The term superseding
Speaker 2: indictment will be familiar to you if you have any
Speaker 2: involvement with the courts or if you've just been following
Speaker 2: the Trump criminal cases closely, but it just means they
Speaker 2: got the grand jury back together to issue a new
Speaker 2: indictment in a case based on some new information. It
Speaker 2: could involve adding new charges or new defendants, and in
Speaker 2: this case we got both. So in this second indictment,
Speaker 2: we've got way more details about the specific transactions, the
Speaker 2: money transfers and the gun shipments. And now in addition
Speaker 2: to Kryshak and Collins, Jordan Duncan and Justin Hermanson are charged.
Speaker 2: But we're still just talking about firearm trafficking. And there's
Speaker 2: this conspiracy element now making a new allegation that they're
Speaker 2: engaged in this conspiracy to traffic these guns for a
Speaker 2: criminal purpose, with the intent being to provoke civil disorder.
Speaker 2: And here's where we finally get the government talking about
Speaker 2: them stalking the blm rallies and talking privately about shooting protesters.
Speaker 2: The following year, in June of twenty twenty one, a
Speaker 2: second superseding indictment comes down, and now all five of
Speaker 2: these men have been charged, Paul Kreischuk, Liam Collins, Justin Hermanson,
Speaker 2: Jordan Duncan, and now Joseph Marino. And they've known all
Speaker 2: along that Marino went to Boise in July twenty twenty
Speaker 2: to participate in the training drill. And they've known all
Speaker 2: along that Marino was recruited to the group by Kraishuk
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen, and that he transferred money to Kraishuk
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: It's unclear exactly when.
Speaker 2: They determined that Marino had been as Collins was engaging
Speaker 2: in a little bit of his own deal making, selling
Speaker 2: guns to people, getting their money and then sending that
Speaker 2: money and the order to Kryshuk to fulfill. But that's
Speaker 2: what's newly alleged in this second superseding indictment. So now
Speaker 2: they're all charged for this conspiracy to manufacture and ship
Speaker 2: firearms with the intent to cause civil disorder. And then finally,
Speaker 2: in August of twenty twenty one, the third superseding indictment
Speaker 2: charges four of them Rreisch, Collins, Marino, and Duncan, but
Speaker 2: not Hermitsen, with conspiracy to damage an energy facility.
Speaker 1: And I guess they.
Speaker 2: Should explain a little bit about the idea that taking
Speaker 2: out a power grid is a rational first step for
Speaker 2: starting a race war. It's maybe not something that makes
Speaker 2: perfect intuitive sense to someone who doesn't have a dozen
Speaker 2: manifestos about it on.
Speaker 1: Their hard drive.
Speaker 2: FBI, if you were listening, these are research materials. I
Speaker 2: actually really hate it when the power goes out, but
Speaker 2: it's an incredibly common belief.
Speaker 1: At least in certain circles.
Speaker 2: The general idea for many of them is that a
Speaker 2: massive blackout would cause chaos. That's reasonable enough, perhaps, And
Speaker 2: most people who think that this is a good idea
Speaker 2: are accelerationists, people who believe that society is already unstable,
Speaker 2: and instead of trying to fix it or realize their
Speaker 2: vision of what it could look like within the current structure,
Speaker 2: they believe that the best course of action is to
Speaker 2: force it to collapse. You accelerate the destabilization of society,
Speaker 2: you push it over the brink and into complete collapse
Speaker 2: so you can rebuild it from the rubble. And their
Speaker 2: vision of what is to be built from the ashes
Speaker 2: is usually pretty bad spoiler alert, A lot of us
Speaker 2: are not alive in it. The general idea is actually
Speaker 2: predicated on a false assumption that in a blackout, when
Speaker 2: resources are restricted and there is confusion and chaos and
Speaker 2: we can't get what we need, that will turn on
Speaker 2: each other immediately, that we will turn to violence immediately,
Speaker 2: that we will riot and steal and kill because we've
Speaker 2: been inconvenienced. But a lot of the documentation we have
Speaker 2: from real natural disasters shows us evidence to the contrary.
Speaker 2: When disaster strikes, we don't turn on each other. Psychologists
Speaker 2: and sociologists have terms like catastrophe compassion, and disaster collectivism
Speaker 2: to describe the phenomenon, and research shows that this conventional
Speaker 2: wisdom that people turn on each other in a crisis
Speaker 2: is just not true, at least in the short term.
Speaker 2: Disasters actually bring us together. But I suppose if you're
Speaker 2: an aspiring neo Nazi terrorist, you don't have the same
Speaker 2: understanding of love and human compassion as your neighbors do,
Speaker 2: so the plan maybe makes sense to you. Attacks or
Speaker 2: attempted ones anyway on electrical infrastructure are alarmingly common in
Speaker 2: right wing extremism. In early twenty twenty two, the Department
Speaker 2: of Homeland Security shared an intelligence bulletin with law enforcement
Speaker 2: agencies and utility operators that there had been a marked
Speaker 2: uptick in attacks on electrical infrastructure since twenty twenty, writing
Speaker 2: domestic violent extremists have developed credible, specific plans to attack
Speaker 2: electricity infrastructure since at least twenty twenty, identifying the electric
Speaker 2: grid as a particularly attractive target given its interdependency with
Speaker 2: other infrastructure sectors. Several news outlets lengthy uptick and the
Speaker 2: resulting bulletins, specifically to a fourteen page zene styled document
Speaker 2: circulating on Telegram, a messaging platform favored by extremists, And honestly,
Speaker 2: I've got a copy of that one, I know, which
Speaker 2: when they're talking about it doesn't really provide any actionable
Speaker 2: instructions you couldn't come up with on your own. It
Speaker 2: doesn't map out a specific attack. It just sort of
Speaker 2: advances the idea that attacks like this are good. It's flashy, though,
Speaker 2: I'll give it that. It's got a lot of colors
Speaker 2: and fonts. Terrible fonts, really bad use of fonts. Honestly,
Speaker 2: one page is just a diagram of the wound patterns
Speaker 2: from Sharon Tate's autopsy that does actually make a certain
Speaker 2: kind of sense. But I fear we'll have to save
Speaker 2: the pen pal relationship between Charles Manson and neo Nazi
Speaker 2: James Mason for another episode. But this document, cited by
Speaker 2: DHS officials as part of their concern of the rising
Speaker 2: threats to the grid, tells the reader to be a
Speaker 2: man of action to topple this anti white system through
Speaker 2: a variety of means, including attacking the power grid.
Speaker 1: The pamphlet writes, but with.
Speaker 4: The power off, when the lights don't come back on,
Speaker 4: all hell will break loose, making conditions desirable for our
Speaker 4: race to once again take back what is ours.
Speaker 2: While these attacks can end up costing millions of dollars, and,
Speaker 2: according to experts, could theoretically in certain circumstances, trigger catastrophic
Speaker 2: cascading grid failures that would take months to repair, they've
Speaker 2: never actually cost a race war. In nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: three members of the San Joaquin Militia, an anti government
Speaker 2: extremist group, plotted to blow up a pair of tanks,
Speaker 2: each holding twelve million gallons of propane because they thought
Speaker 2: the ensuing chaos would force the government to declare martial law,
Speaker 2: which I guess in their minds would inspire more people
Speaker 2: to join the militia movement to then fight the government.
Speaker 2: So these militia groups are terrified that the government would
Speaker 2: declare martial law, and so in order to prove to
Speaker 2: people that the government could do that, they're going to
Speaker 2: make them do that. I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 2: what it's going on in their minds. That same year,
Speaker 2: Donald Beauregard, the leader of a militia group called the
Speaker 2: Southeastern States Alliance, was arrested for a plan to steal
Speaker 2: explosives from National Guard armory to blow up power transmission
Speaker 2: stations in Florida. He too, hoped a government crackdown in
Speaker 2: response to the disaster would inspire a popular uprising and
Speaker 2: subsequent violent revolution. And remember Brandon Russell, the Iron March
Speaker 2: poster who founded Adam Offfen when his roommate Devon Arthur's
Speaker 2: murdered the other two men they lived with in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Arthur's told the police that Russell had plans to take
Speaker 2: out critical infrastructure. Tampa police searched the apartment mainly because
Speaker 2: there were two dead guys inside from the double murder,
Speaker 2: and they found a cooler full of a white cake
Speaker 2: like substance that FBI technicians on scene recognized as hexamethylene
Speaker 2: triperoxide diamine or HMTD, an explosive compound, and they found
Speaker 2: other precursor materials for making explosives and homemade detonators, radioactive materials,
Speaker 2: a framed photo of Timothy McVeigh on Russell's dresser, and
Speaker 2: assorted neo Nazi propaganda materials.
Speaker 1: The Tampa police spoke to Brandon Russell.
Speaker 2: He told them, yes, I'm a Nazi, Yes I'm a
Speaker 2: member of Adam Offfen, but no, no, that cooler full
Speaker 2: of HMTD is actually for model rocketry. The Tampa police
Speaker 2: let him go, but the FBI immediately contacted the ATF
Speaker 2: with the details of the materials they'd found in the apartment,
Speaker 2: and the ATF said, yeah, that's that's bombs. You let
Speaker 2: the bomb Nazi go, So they immediately issued a federal
Speaker 2: warrant for Russell the following day. He ultimately pled guilty
Speaker 2: to possessing an unregistered explosive device and was sentenced to
Speaker 2: five years. He was out barely a year before he
Speaker 2: started conspiring to blow up critical infrastructure in Baltimore, so
Speaker 2: he is back in federal prison now well. He allegedly
Speaker 2: conspired to take out the power in Baltimore. I guess
Speaker 2: he hasn't been tried yet. Christopher Cook and Jonathan Frost
Speaker 2: were sentence last for a plot to attack the power
Speaker 2: grid in multiple US cities. They too, believed the ensuing
Speaker 2: chaos would spark the race war and that society could
Speaker 2: be rebuilt by and four white men. And there have
Speaker 2: been at least four unsolved attacks on electrical infrastructure in
Speaker 2: North Carolina in the last two years, including a November
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two incident that left thousands without power in
Speaker 2: Jones County, not far from Camp La June. A month later,
Speaker 2: in December of twenty twenty two, a woman died as
Speaker 2: a result of the power outage in Moore County. Because
Speaker 2: her death was a direct result of the attack on
Speaker 2: the infrastructure, her death has been ruled a homicide, so
Speaker 2: if they ever do charge someone for the attack on
Speaker 2: that substation, they'll probably catch that murder charge too. In
Speaker 2: February of twenty twenty two, Paul Kreishak pled guilty to
Speaker 2: conspiracy to destroy an energy facility. His plea agreement dropped
Speaker 2: all the other charges, even though, if you've been able
Speaker 2: to follow along this convoluted mess of a story, he's
Speaker 2: actually the one who made and mailed all of those guns.
Speaker 2: He was sentenced last month to six years and six months.
Speaker 2: Justin Hermanson was the next to plead, taking an agreement
Speaker 2: in March twenty twenty two, and was sentenced last month
Speaker 2: to one year and nine months for conspiracy to manufacture
Speaker 2: firearms and ship interstate. Joseph Marino took a plea deal
Speaker 2: a month later, in April twenty twenty two, pleading guilty
Speaker 2: to the same charge, a single count of conspiracy to
Speaker 2: manufacture firearms and ship interstate. Oddly, he doesn't have a
Speaker 2: sentencing date that I can find. He's been out on
Speaker 2: bond since that August twenty twenty one indictment, and after
Speaker 2: he pled guilty, they set a sentencing date for July
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, but it was postponed indefinitely after a
Speaker 2: sealed motion was filed. It's possible they needed his cooperation
Speaker 2: in the cases against his co defendants, and pending that cooperation,
Speaker 2: they postponed sentencing so they could consider that help in
Speaker 2: deciding his punishment. I should stop trying to guess why
Speaker 2: the Department of Justice times their paperwork the way they do.
Speaker 2: It's too hard, usually fruitless, and even if I'm ridal
Speaker 2: never know, I just can't help it, I guess. Liam
Speaker 2: Collins was the fourth to plead guilty. In October twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, he pled guilty to one count of aiding
Speaker 2: and a betting the interstate transportation of unregistered firearms. He
Speaker 2: was sentenced last month to ten years. Then finally, in
Speaker 2: June twenty twenty four, Jordan Duncan pled guilty to one
Speaker 2: count of aiding and a betting the manufacturing of a firearm.
Speaker 2: He scheduled to be sentenced in September and could face
Speaker 2: up to ten years. You have to wonder about the
Speaker 2: charges everyone ended.
Speaker 1: Up pleading to.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, the guy who made
Speaker 2: all of the guns didn't get convicted of a gun crime.
Speaker 2: Some of them are guilty of helping make the guns.
Speaker 2: Some are just guilty of being part of the process
Speaker 2: of getting those guns across state lines. Marino isn't actually
Speaker 2: guilty of either, just of being part of a conspiracy
Speaker 2: to do it. And nobody's guilty of fantasizing about starting
Speaker 2: a race war because I guess technically that's legal, although
Speaker 2: not in Virginia. Actually, Section eighteen point two Dash four
Speaker 2: eighty five, conspiring to incite one race to insurrection against
Speaker 2: another race makes it a class for felony here in
Speaker 2: the Commonwealth of Virginia to conspire with another to incite
Speaker 2: the population of one race to acts of violence and
Speaker 2: war against the population of another race. But I don't
Speaker 2: think anybody's ever actually been charged with that. And these
Speaker 2: guys were trying to start the race war in Idaho anyway.
Speaker 2: They aren't the first weird guys to try to start
Speaker 2: the race war from Idaho, and they definitely will not
Speaker 2: be the last.
Speaker 1: But today I will.
Speaker 2: Leave you with this the best thing I have ever
Speaker 2: and probably will ever read. In a federal court transcript
Speaker 2: at in August twenty twenty one hearing to determine if
Speaker 2: Joseph Marino would be held in pre trial custody, the
Speaker 2: prosecutor was trying to present evidence that the defendant was
Speaker 2: armed and dangerous. That's her job at that stage, right
Speaker 2: to say that this guy is dangerous for these specific
Speaker 2: reasons and you shouldn't let him out, and that didn't
Speaker 2: have to be so hard given what we know about
Speaker 2: the full situation. But she misunderstood something she read in
Speaker 2: the chat logs that she'd entered in evidence. Ncis agent
Speaker 2: John Little reading from the government's exhibit a chat that
Speaker 2: Marino had sent about procuring guns and ammunition for a
Speaker 2: trip to West Virginia to shoot guns and hang out
Speaker 2: with his extremist pals. So he reads aloud to the court,
Speaker 2: Mister Marino states, he's got seven Mac elevens, about eight
Speaker 2: thirty eight's and nine nines. It appears to be he's
Speaker 2: referring to firearms. These types of firearms were never recovered.
Speaker 2: These firearms would have different calibers. It appears they're trying
Speaker 2: to figure out what calibers they need to purchase. If
Speaker 2: you already know how the sends, I think you're already laughing.
Speaker 2: And the judge ruled that day that Marino would be
Speaker 2: held without bond, citing his apparent leadership role in the group,
Speaker 2: his violent beliefs, the training he'd engaged in in furtherance
Speaker 2: of them, the surveillance he'd been conducting of these plm rallies,
Speaker 2: and these mysterious missing guns. Shortly after that hearing, the
Speaker 2: last supersed the indictment was filed, so Marino was back
Speaker 2: in court in front of the same judge, and now
Speaker 2: that he'd had a few days to mull it over,
Speaker 2: Judge Richard E. Myers interjects, just as the government is
Speaker 2: finishing up their questioning of that NCIS agent, he says,
Speaker 2: I've got a follow up question about the Biggie Small's lyric,
Speaker 2: and the federal Prosecutor's confused the what, And the judge
Speaker 2: says again about the Biggie Smalls lyrics, I've got seven
Speaker 2: macalleven's about eight thirty eights and nine nines. That's a
Speaker 2: Biggie Small lyric. Are we looking for those firearms? The
Speaker 2: federal prosecutor remains perplexed. Judge Meyer says the court is
Speaker 2: independently aware of the Biggie Small lyrics. He's taking judicial
Speaker 2: notice of the lyrics to come on a track on
Speaker 2: the nineteen ninety nine album Born Again from the notorious big.
Speaker 2: The witness and the federal prosecutor are baffled, like the
Speaker 2: judges started speaking a foreign language to them, and so
Speaker 2: he says again that list of guns is just Biggie lyrics,
Speaker 2: and a prosecutor at a loss says, I am still
Speaker 2: not understanding the word. I apologize, and the judge looks
Speaker 2: at her and says, Biggie Smalls, Biggie Smalls is a
Speaker 2: dead wrapper. So five members of a neo Nazi paramilitary
Speaker 2: group are heading off to federal prison for assorted gun crimes.
Speaker 2: Nazis everywhere desperately want to shoot holes in electrical transformers.
Speaker 1: No one shot.
Speaker 2: The governor of Oregon and a federal judge in North
Speaker 2: Carolina took judicial notice of Biggie Smalls.
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