A 20-year-old man’s Twitter posts allegedly sympathizing with Muslim terrorists led to an undercover FBI operation and the man’s arrest on charges that he plotted to blow up the US Capitol and kill government officials, US officials and court documents said.
Christopher Lee Cornell, also known as Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah, told an FBI informant that they should “wage jihad,” and showed his plans for bombing the Capitol and shooting people, according to a criminal complaint filed in a US federal court in Ohio on Wednesday.
The FBI said Cornell expressed support for the Islamic State group.
Cornell’s arrest came just days after a grand jury indictment charged another Cincinnati-area resident with threatening to murder US House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner.
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in a statement on Wednesday: “Once again, the entire [US] Congress owes a debt of gratitude to the FBI and all those who keep us safe.”
The complaint against Cornell charges him with attempting to kill officers and employees of the US.
Cornell was arrested on Wednesday after buying two semi-automatic rifles and about 600 rounds of ammunition, authorities said.
The public was never in danger, said John Barrios, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Cincinnati division.
A telephone message and an e-mail were left on Wednesday for Karen Savir, a US federal public defender listed in court records as Cornell’s attorney. A working telephone number could not be found for Cornell’s family.
The complaint alleges that an FBI informant began supplying agents with information about Cornell last year. The informant and Cornell, who lives in Green Township, first began communicating through Twitter in August last year and then through an instant-messaging platform separate from Twitter, the complaint said.
“I believe we should meet up and make our own group in alliance with the Islamic State here and plan operations ourselves,” Cornell wrote in an instant message, the court document said.
The two met in October last year in Cincinnati and again in November, the complaint said.
Cornell told the informant at the November meeting that he considered members of the US Congress as enemies and that he intended to conduct an attack on the Capitol, according to the complaint.
The document said that Cornell discussed his plan for them to travel to Washington and conduct reconnaissance of the security of government buildings before executing “a plan of attack.”
Cornell planned for the two to detonate pipe bombs at and near the Capitol, and then shoot and kill employees and officials, and Cornell had saved money to fund the attack, the complaint said.
On Tuesday, authorities had disclosed that Cincinnati-area bartender Michael Hoyt, who has a history of mental illness, had been charged with threatening to kill Boehner at a country club near his home with a gun or a poisoned drink. A grand jury indictment against Hoyt was filed in US District Court in Ohio on Jan. 7.
Hoyt has told authorities that he had been fired from the West Chester, Ohio, country club where Boehner was a member and “did not have time to put something in John Boehner’s drink,” according to court documents made available on Tuesday. The documents also said Hoyt told authorities he was Jesus Christ and was going to kill Boehner because Boehner was mean to him at the club and was responsible for Ebola.
Hoyt, 44, is being held for mental evaluation and treatment at a US federal medical center.
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