The Justice Department has charged an Idaho man and a California woman with leading a white nationalist online platform and terrorist group to direct followers to kill government officials, immigrants, Black and Jewish people around the world in an effort to ignite a race war.
The 15-count federal indictment released Sept. 9 in the Eastern District of California charges Matthew Robert Allison, 37, of Boise, Idaho, and Dallas Erin Humber, 34, of Elk Grove, California, with soliciting hate crimes, soliciting murder of federal officials, and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.
Allison and Humber, arrested last week, were leaders in the Terrorgram Collective, a transnational terrorism group that operates a network of channels and group chats on the digital messaging platform Telegram, where it promotes “white supremacist accelerationism: an ideology centered on the belief that the white race is superior; that society is irreparably corrupt and cannot be saved by political action, and that violence and terrorism are necessary to ignite a race war and accelerate the collapse of the government and the rise of a white ethnostate,” according to a press release from the Justice Department.
Terrorgram solicited users to commit bias-motivated attacks against groups it deemed to be enemies of the white race, including Black, immigrant, LGBTQ and Jewish people; attacks on government infrastructure; and attacks on “high-value targets,” including politicians and government officials, the indictment said.
Humber and Allison, who became leaders of the group in 2022 after a previous leader was arrested and charged with terrorism offenses, used the platform to publish a list of targets they wanted their followers to assassinate.
Their hit list includes the target’s name, home address and photograph, and sometimes a photo of the target’s residence. People named in the list were targeted because of race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
A U.S. senator was targeted for being an “Anti-White, Anti-gun, Jewish Senator,” while a federal district court judge was described on the list as “an invader” from a foreign country who had ruled on an immigration issue in an objectionable way. A U.S. attorney was described with a racial slur.
Prosecutors say Allison and Humber provided instructions and guidance to equip Terrorgram users to carry out those attacks, including manuals, videos and audiobooks on how to make bombs and explosives, including Napalm, chlorine gas, pipe bombs and letter bombs; how to attack critical infrastructure such as government buildings and energy facilities; how to run a terror cell, how to write a manifesto; and how to select, promote and celebrate attacks on targets.
The indictment details how they incited and encouraged followers to commit violent acts, such as during protests and riots in France in July of 2023, following the fatal police shooting during a traffic stop of Nahel Merzouk, a French teen of Moroccan and Algerian descent.
Humber posted a photo of a sniper aiming a rifle, with the caption: “A MESSAGE TO ARMED AND POTENTIALLY LETHAL FRENCH BROS: Don’t cower in your rooms, waiting for the ni–er riots to stop. Instead, load your magazines and get cozy. You know what to do … Don’t second-guess your Racial Duty. Don’t breathe a word of what you’re planning to anyone, and make every shot count.”
When they were arrested, the pair were in the process of creating “The Saint Encyclopedia,” a Terrorgram publication that celebrates white supremacist attackers in history, many of them mass murderers, as heroes of the white race — “Saints” — and urges users to follow their path to “Sainthood” by committing attacks in the name of Terrorgram.
A graphic they posted in July of 2022 describing “Sainthood Criteria” said Saints must “Be White … Obviously”; plan and execute an attack for racial, political or religious reasons; kill at least one person (“injuries are cool and all, but there’s a 1 kill minimum”); and “be pro-White and share the values of Our Struggle.”
Allison and Humber reportedly encouraged followers to be mentally tough and not lose their nerve at the last moment. “By choosing the path of Holy Terror, you are making the ultimate sacrifice — whether you are captured or killed, life as you know it is over. But you stand to gain so much more — immortality, Sainthood, your place in history,” they posted, according to the indictment.
Their terroristic plots weren’t all talk.
“Guided by Terrorgram posts, publications, videos, and instruction manuals, and inspired by Terrorgram’s Saint culture,” the Justice Department said, several Terrorgram users have carried out attacks or were planning to do so before they were stopped by law enforcement.
Among them was an attack by a 19-year-old man from Slovakia, who, in October 2022, shot three people, killing two, at an LGBTQ bar in Bratislava, then sent his manifesto to Allison and killed himself. In the year leading up to his attack, the man was active on Terrogram and frequently conversed with Allison, Humber and other members of the Terrorgram Collective, the indictment says.
On Aug. 12, an 18-year-old man from Turkey live-streamed himself stabbing five people outside of a mosque after posting in a Telegram group chat, “Come see how many humans I can cleanse.”
Last July, an 18-year-old from the U.S. was arrested for plotting an attack on an energy facility in New Jersey. The indictment says the man and an undercover FBI special agent drove to two different electrical substations in North Brunswick and New Brunswick, where the suspected terrorist solicited the agent to conduct attacks and advised him on how to do so using tactics and instructions from Terrorgram that detailed how to short-circuit a transformer using Mylar balloons.
The FBI’s Sacramento and Salt Lake City field offices investigated the case, with assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Idaho and a variety of foreign and domestic law enforcement agencies. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, National Security Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California are prosecuting the case.
The indictment charges Humber and Allison with a total of 15 counts, including one count of conspiracy, four counts of soliciting hate crimes, three counts of soliciting the murder of federal officials, three counts of doxing federal officials, one count of threatening communications, two counts of distributing bombmaking instructions, and one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.
They each face up to 220 years in prison if convicted on all charges.
“Today’s arrests are a warning that committing hate-fueled crimes in the darkest corners of the internet will not hide you, and soliciting terrorist attacks from behind a screen will not protect you,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland last Friday.
Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told reporters that the indictment is the department’s response to “the new technological face of White supremacist violence,” the Washington Post reported. “Technology evolves, and we keep up.”
In a statement, she said, “Make no mistake, as hate groups turn to these online platforms, the federal government is adapting and responding to protect vulnerable communities. The Justice Department is committed to protecting the civil rights of all Americans, and we will resolutely strive to bring to justice those who seek to threaten, undermine, or extinguish it.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray said, “Whether motivated by racial bias or antagonism toward government and societal norms, such behavior will not be tolerated. Terrorism is still the FBI’s number one priority, and working with our partners, we are committed to investigating and holding accountable those who break the laws and assist violent actors in lethal plots.”
Telegram has been the locus of other alleged crimes in the past. Founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested and charged in Paris last month by French authorities for allowing the platform to be used for drug trafficking, money laundering, child pornography and other offenses.
Commenting on his Telegram account, Durov called it “a misguided approach” to charge him with crimes committed by third parties, reported the Los Angeles Times, adding that he cited “growing pains” on Telegram, which he said has 950 million users, as having made it easier for criminals to abuse the platform. He promised the platform would do better at screening out banned content.
