UFC Plot Was Christian Extremism
The FBI missed the plot and now Kash Patel, Todd Blanche, and some media are Jesus-washing it
Becoming a paid subscriber supports my reporting and keeps it free for everyone. Thank you.
To hear FBI Director Kash Patel and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche tell it, the five men charged with plotting an attack on Sunday’s White House competitive fighting event were solely politically motivated.
National media have downplayed the plot itself or at least its Christian dimensions, even though messages referred to “factions” and “militias” on alert to join in, targeting a range of famous and political names.
One suspect’s mother said others used Christianity to manipulate him. The group used biblical phrases, “shepherd” and “lions den.” The government, some believed, included demon worshipers who sacrifice children.
The most prominent and explicit references to Christianity and religious beliefs appear in filings by experienced law enforcement. These references fade until disappearing in the public statements of agency leaders.
The plot was to set off explosives at the White House event so that drones and snipers could pick off wealthy and powerful targets as they fled.
The role of Christianity in this plan isn’t to be found in any one document from the Justice Department or the FBI. But across the federal criminal complaints and affidavits, enough details appear to show that the scheme was not only planned, allegedly, by Christians, it was motivated at least in part by their Christianity and religious beliefs.
Some apparently used Christianity to motivate co-conspirators. The first filings in the case are specific and clear about Christianity’s role.
The case started with a tip in Ohio. Nineteen-year-old Tycen Proper’s family was worried about him and called local police on June 10. The FBI were notified the next day.
Chris Betts is a Columbus, OH, police detective also assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. He’s got a master’s degree in counterterrorism, has given talks on nihilistic violent extremism, and has been a cop for more than ten years. Betts spoke with Proper’s mother on June 11 and his affidavit detailed Christian elements of the group now charged with the plot.
The Shepherd and the Demon
According to Betts, communications in the group began in March. Much of his affidavit is based on his conversations with Proper’s mother.
Subsequent reporting has portrayed her as a religious Christian. According to the Daily Wire, a right-wing outlet co-founded by Tucker Carlson, Proper’s mother has posted two Christian messages online since her son’s arrest.
Even in her eyes, an extreme and manipulative form of Christianity led her son to this moment. Here’s some of Betts’s affidavit:
“She detailed that PROPER had recently begun interacting with a group online that was comprised of individuals who claimed to be ex-military and Christian-based. She didn’t know the name of the group, but they expressed ultra-religious and anti-government sentiments…
“PROPER’S mother detailed that talking with these individuals online has caused PROPER to lean heavily into his religion, and she believed that those individuals were using religion to manipulate and influence her son.”
Proper’s alleged political views echoed far-right Christian views. Betts wrote about Proper “making sympathetic comments about Adolf Hitler and posting anti-Semitic comments on Facebook.”
That said, to identify its targets, the group allegedly turned to a left-wing website called TrackAIPAC that lists politicians supported by the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Proper allegedly told his group, “I got a possible target Marsha Blackburn is senator for Tennessee … She’s taken money from the Israel pro Israel lobby and supports them.”
The same day Betts spoke with Proper’s mother, so did FBI Special Agent Mercedes Smith. She joined the FBI in July 2024 and used the same language Betts did to describe the Christian nature of the group and the use of Christianity to manipulate Proper.
Smith’s affidavit was filed to support the criminal complaint against Abraham Alvarez, a 31-year-old identified by the Homeland Security Department as an undocumented immigrant. Alvarez arrived in the U.S. 25 years ago, suggesting he came to his beliefs here.
Smith added details about the plot’s religious nature and Alvarez’s alleged role.
The defendants used biblically resonant phrases as labels. Alvarez allegedly called himself “Shepherd.” “Lions Den” was a group chat.
The “fall back location” was “an old church.” Smith wrote that Alvarez, as “Shepherd,” shared an image of the church with others in a chat:
A third affidavit detailed what law enforcement claim they found in Proper’s journal. Including a demon.
FBI Special Agent Andrew Brown has been with the bureau for more than nine years. In his affidavit regarding a third defendant, Brown said the FBI and local police on June 11 executed a search warrant that yielded Proper’s journal.
Brown characterized the contents of the journal, saying that Proper “wrote that the government wants to control people and that a larger group worships a demonic figure and sacrifices children to it.”
That’s a common refrain among the right-wing QAnon movement.
Mainstream Republican religious views showed up, too, Brown wrote. He said that a third defendant, Daniel Eskridge, told a group chat on May 22 that “our rights are unalienable God given rights not government permitted, controlled or regulated and not to be infringed upon.”
This is doctrine among Republicans; diminishing government by claiming rights were created magically by divine, anthropomorphic intent. (The founders wrote that rights are inherent and humanity arose from some form of supernatural agency not defined in founding documents and, to Deist founders, not Christian.)
I checked what appears to be Eskridge’s X (Twitter) account. He apparently followed a mix of mainstream and even leftie figures, but also theocratic Christian political leaders and commentators. Those included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
But Christianity gets short shrift in a fourth affidavit, submitted by FBI Special Agent Mark Prator. Unlike the officers who wrote the other affidavits, Prator joined during Pres. Donald Trump’s second term, last June. His affidavit covered two California-based defendants.
Jesus-Washing
Prator makes one reference to another agent’s report on Proper’s mother, but softens the language about Christianity used by both agents who spoke with her directly.
Both Betts and Smith wrote that the group was “comprised of individuals who claimed to be ex-military and Christian-based … [and] expressed ultra-religious and anti-government sentiments.”
But Prator characterized their account by saying the mother described group members “that may share some Christian-based ideology.” Not that the individuals claimed to be “Christian-based.”
Discussing the group’s motives on his own, Prator erased the religious dimension.
“[T]he co-conspirators’ murder plot appears to have been motivated by their anti-government ideology,” he wrote. He referred to them as an “anti-government group” with an “anti-government ideology” or “violent anti-government ideology.”
Prator does cite the journal reference to worship of a demonic figure. But describing his own interview with a California defendant, there’s no mention of a demon being worshipped or having children sacrificed to them. Either it didn’t come up, or Prator didn’t include it.
Instead, Prator wrote that the defendant “believes that the U.S. government is run by an elite group of individuals who sacrifice and consume infants who also were deeply involved with Jeffery [sic] Epstein and are now protected by President Donald Trump.”
Prator writes that the defendant places blame for government corruption “with Jewish people and blames them and Israel for the current war with Iran.” He doesn’t mention antisemitism.
Despite Christian elements throughout the filings, Justice Department officials have made no reference to them. Chrisianity isn’t mentioned in the press release, or in Blanche’s statement.
First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli implies the plot’s solely political: “There is no place in our country for political violence.”
Patel’s Tweet revealing arrests in the plot didn’t mention Christianity.
None of this, however, should be read to mean this right-wing Christian administration is covering up the right-wing Christian aspects of a terrorist plot.
They might well be trying to sanitize the Christian aspects, but it’s not clear whether those aspects are actually right wing. The alleged plot doesn’t easily conform to recognizable partisan or political lines.
The targets were Republican. But so was much of the conspiracy thinking.
Hostility toward Israel, including genuine antisemitism, can be found across the political spectrum. (The leader of the National Prayer Breakfast famously admired Hitler’s organizational skills. The Trump White House shrugged at the antisemitic Bible study sponsored by cabinet members.)
And it’s the left that’s targeted AIPAC. It’s leftie buzzwords that showed up in Smith’s affidavit: “Proper’s associates also noted hating ‘billionaires’ and ‘capitalist elites.’”
Eskridge allegedly said the group should target someone “that both Democrats and Republicans would unite over,” as Brown put it in his affidavit. Eskridge allegedly wrote, “[W]e need to make sure it’s someone that can’t be easily turned into a right vs left thing we want someone both sides would celebrate.”
This administration has explicitly singled out Christianity as a victim of persecution in this country. So it’s not surprising that the official response isn’t addressing Christianity’s role the way it surely would spotlight Islam’s.
But some media, too, are downplaying Christianity.
Spectrum’s local coverage, to its credit, included a Proper family friend describing them as “such a good Christian family.” Likewise, CBS’s local station put the Christian angle as high up as the second paragraph of its writeup.
But the Christianity is tougher to find nationally, in more politicized media. It’s absent in the national CBS article.
And the implications go beyond concerns about journalism.
Consistent neglect of Christianity’s dangers by top officials and national media threatens to obscure how Christian extremism can scramble familiar political vectors.
Like other religions, Christianity when mixed with politics can become outlets for free-floating aggression. “PROPER had been thinking about joining the military or police force with the goal of being able to kill people,” local police wrote.
Despite the dangers, the government for decades has been reluctant to confront Christian extremism.
Quarters of the military have been allowed to become breeding grounds. Under Trump, federal law enforcement has resisted and reduced efforts to track or surveil or investigate Christian extremism. Then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) opposed focusing on Christianity in the report on the Jan. 6, 2021, white Christian nationalist assault on the Capitol.
In this case, too, top officials don’t seem to be grappling with the full scope of Christianity or the plot itself.
“Every State”
NBC reported that Patel’s post worried and “shocked” law enforcement who were still tracking down some of 26 user names in various chats. Only 14 had been identified, of which five were in custody.
And the law-enforcement filings suggest a far larger, like-minded network potentially willing and able to participate if called on.
In one message, Alvarez allegedly suggested the first attack wouldn’t be the last, and that the scope could include a lot more than the 19 that officials say may have been involved:
“Several factions and militia have been notified. They will be the teeth and the Shepherds. I also sent out a mass call to action to all protest groups, that will bring numbers. (working on arming them). They will engage when they see the signal. Told them they know will know when they see it.”
This message alone raises issues. Which “factions and militia” were notified? Did they, too, share the Christian sentiments of the defendants? Is federal law enforcement tracking them down?
Eskridge allegedly said there was no need to wait for supply lines and other prerequisites for revolution. “That’s what every other group in this movement is working on.” There’s no indication law enforcement was aware of groups working on the infrastructure for revolution.
In one message Eskridge allegedly claimed robbing ammunition might be possible because “I know we have some people in Kansas.” In fact, he allegedly posted that “we have groups in every state.”
Then there’s the issue of whether a degraded federal focus on right-wing or Christian extremism led law enforcement to miss things. If a “mass call” did go out, it seems to have gone undetected, as the plot was thwarted by Proper’s parents reporting him.
In other words, federal law enforcement found out about the plan for June 14 only three days before, only because a 19-year-old shared details with his parents, and only because they called police.
And yet, Alvarez is said to have been recruiting on TikTok. “[M]embers of this group were primarily recruited through TikTok,” Brown wrote. “Once an individual had proven himself to be an established member of the group on TikTok, they were then transitioned to a vetted (and more secure) Signal chat.” Did law enforcement spot this recruiting?
Allegedly, in May the group started sharing a link for a new chat with anyone who might “make a productive addition to the group.” There’s no indication U.S. law enforcement or surveillance picked up this sharing.
Federal records show that Proper bought a gun on June 5, which even a 19-year-old can do without a waiting period or assessment of social media or other telltales.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was still in effect until June 12, but the affidavits contain no hint of FISA power directed at any of the people involved in these chats.
If anything, Trump and some in his cabinet are fertilizing the soil for more of this kind of thing — free-floating hostility harnessed by religion more than by coherent political ideology into politically oriented violence.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in particular has endorsed Christian extremism in the military, one of the most fertile areas for its growth. Nor is this likely to go away even with political change in the near future.
Some Democrats are sympathetic to inculcating politics with religion. But neither party’s leadership has indicated a willingness to address the dangers of doing so.
I’m an independent journalist whose reporting is made possible by reader support. As a former executive producer at MSNBC, I helped create Up w/ Chris Hayes and previously was a senior producer on Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann. Your paid subscription helps me keep reporting.
Tell me again how Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism differ? Aside from different, make-believe sky gods.
“Religion is the opium of the people. It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions.” -Marx