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

CNN The Justice Department on Monday disclosed 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 assurance 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 mentioned 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 declared in a comment 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 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 located at the co-conspirators campsite the FBI Bomb Technician determined that the components could likely be used to build both improvised explosive devices and Molotov cocktail devices and that the components were readily assemblable the complaint says