An eighth suspect has been arrested and charged in the investigation into the planned attack on President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday at the White House and the mixed martial arts (MMA) fights organized for the occasion, the US Department of Justice announced Thursday.
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This 21-year-old man, called Chandler D. Scaggs and living in West Virginia, according to the department, was arrested “this week” in this state in the eastern United States. He “would have been designated to be one of the snipers during the planned attack,” he wrote in a statement.
The ministry specifies that the eight men arrested so far are now charged together in the same case, investigated in Ohio. They are accused of “planning the assassination of the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, other federal officials, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “Elon Musk and ‘other high-level targets’.”
The Department of Justice announced on June 16 the arrest and indictment, in the days preceding the event, of five men aged 19 to 32 in several states (California, Nebraska, Missouri).
The arrests prevented the suspects from carrying out their plan to launch explosive-laden drones into the vicinity of the MMA show to trigger an evacuation and allow snipers to shoot down senior officials attending the event, according to the prosecution.
Two other men were then arrested at the end of June by the FBI, the federal police, one in Washington state (northwest) and the other in Missouri (center).
The American president celebrated his 80th birthday on June 14 by transforming the lawn of the White House into an arena for MMA athletes, in a spectacle with a strong political accent. More than 4,000 hand-picked guests were seated around the cage.
In its press release Thursday, the department details that, according to an affidavit, the youngest of the accused, Tycen J Proper, had planned to find Chandler D. Scaggs to bring him to Washington. But he and the other defendants “lost contact with Proper after his arrest.”
Mr. Scaggs then allegedly “indicated to the group that he still intended to participate in the attack and put in place new plans for another accomplice to bring him” to the event, called “UFC Freedom 250”.
