FBI arrests four people it says were planning to detonate pipe bombs on New Year’s Eve in California

By Casey Gannon, CNN

(CNN) — The Justice Department on Monday said it has arrested four people in the Los Angeles area for allegedly working together on a bomb plot that was set to take place around the city on New Year’s Eve.

The four people arrested – Audrey Ilene Carroll, Dante Garfield, Zachary Aaron Page, and Tina Lai – were identified as members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front, which according to the Justice Department and FBI, has an anti-government ideology.

A federal court complaint alleges that three members would plant “backpacks with ieds at different points along their assigned buildings,” adding that the “ieds” would be “complex pipe bombs.”

The plan also had outlined all of the security precautions the members should take while executing the plan, including using burner phones, de-clothing locations, and setting up long movies to stream at home to serve as an alibi, DOJ said. The documents also allegedly included a step-by-step process for crafting a pipe bomb.

“The subjects self-identified as members of a radical offshoot of the Turtle Island Liberation Front (TILF), an extremist group motivated by pro-Palestinian, anti-law-enforcement, and anti-government ideology. They were allegedly planning coordinated IED bombing attacks on New Year’s Eve, targeting five separate locations across Los Angeles,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement on X.

The members planning to carry out the attack were using the encrypted messaging platform, Signal, the FBI alleges in the complaint. Carroll, the document says, “provided a list that identified components, chemicals, and tools along with prices which would be required to create the pipe bombs needed to go through with the planned attack.”

The Signal group chat was titled “Order of the Black Lotus,” according to the Justice Department.

On December 12, the group allegedly went to the Mojave Desert to construct and test the explosive devices.

“Based on an FBI Bomb Technician’s review of the materials found at the co-conspirators’ campsite, the FBI Bomb Technician determined that the components could likely be used to build both (1) improvised explosive devices and (2) Molotov cocktail devices, and that the components were readily assemblable,” the complaint says.

First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli tied the arrests to a push by the Trump administration “to extinguishing the far-left-terror threats,” in the US.

“This case is another reminder about the dangers that radicalized Antifa-like groups pose to people public safety and the rule of law,” Essayli said during a press conference. The complaint against the group does not name Antifa specifically.

Essayli said that the group was targeting “US companies” with their bombs, but he did not elaborate on the companies they were targeting. The bombs were set to blow up at the same time on New Year’s Eve.

The complaint also alleges that the four involved in the plot were not attempting to kill people, and if they saw anyone in the area of their bombs, they would try and warn them.

The four defendants are expected to make their initial appearance in federal court Monday afternoon in Los Angeles.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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