Two suspects in a far-left “anti-capitalist, anti-government” extremist group have been charged with plotting to detonate weapons of mass destruction in and around Los Angeles in a bombshell grand jury indictment.
Their alleged attack was designed to “completely pulverize” tech companies and logistics firms, prosecutors announced Tuesday.
A federal grand jury slapped four members of the radical “Turtle Island Liberation Front” with terrorism charges, including conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, providing material support to terrorists and possession of unregistered firearms.
Zachary Aaron Page, a 32-year-old trans woman, and Audrey Illeene Carroll, a 30-year-old who goes by the nickname “Black Moon,” were both charged with one count of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.
All four defendants — Page, Caroll and Dante James Anthony-Gaffield, 24, and Tina Lai, 41 — are being held without bond. Page was denied a request to transfer to a women’s prison in a hearing last week. Micah James Legnon, a 29-year-old transgender Marine vet, was also arrested in Louisiana in connection with the alleged plot.
The Turtle Island Liberation Front is an anti-capitalist and anti-government group, according to prosecutors. The four defendants are also members of what Carroll called a “radical” TILF faction that communicated via an encrypted messaging group called “Order of the Black Lotus.”
Prosecutors say the group spent early December procuring bomb-making materials to build and test explosive devices in the Mojave Desert, including bomb-making materials such as potassium nitrate, sulfur, charcoal, and pipes.
After bombings on New Year’s Eve, the group planned to target Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and vehicles with firearms and pipe bombs.
On Dec. 12, all four defendants traveled to the Mojave Desert with the bombmaking materials and bottles for Molotov cocktails. Carroll allegedly told Lai en route: “What we’re doing will be considered a terrorist act.”
A confidential source tipped off the FBI about Caroll and “four comrades’” plans to test bombs in the desert, according to the indictment. The agency used an undercover agent to infiltrate the group, authorities said, and the FBI’s hostage rescue team arrested the four defendants.
Prosecutors laid out damning communications Tuesday in which some of the defendants allegedly admitted they were committing terrorist acts and gloated about the death and destruction they intended to cause.
Carroll penned a handwritten eight-page manifesto titled “Operation Midnight Sun” because she didn’t want digital traces. She told co-conspirators, “What we’re about to do, that’s gonna, uh, be like a Luigi level situation,” apparently referencing Luigi Mangione, who is on trial for allegedly executing a healthcare executive before setting off a manhunt.
Other disturbing communications includes Page writing in a chat, “death to israel death to the usa death to colonizers death to settler-coloniasm [sic].”
Carroll responded: “Death to them all, burn it all down” with three burning heart emojis. She also wrote in one message, “I identify as a terrorist” and “I am a Hamas fangirl”
In another message, Page described the plan to ambush ICE agents by writing, “we shoot first, we ask questions later. That’s the policy.” The overall goal was to “take some of them out and scare the rest of them.”
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