An armed man who tried to storm the FBI’s Cincinnati office on Thursday and has been identified by law enforcement as Ricky Shiffer, is being linked to a Truth Social account that made a call to be “ready for combat” and “kill the FBI on sight.”
The suspect was shot dead by officers at the end of a six-hour standoff on a highway.
The Truth Social account is in the name of a Ricky Shiffer, who made a call to arms after the FBI searched former US president Donald Trump’s Florida mansion Mar-a-Lago on Monday.
“People, this is it,” said a post on the account just two days before the attempted breach. “I hope a call to arms comes from someone better qualified, but if not, this is your call to arms from me. Leave work tomorrow as soon as the gun shop/Army-Navy store/pawn shop opens, get whatever you need to be ready for combat. We must not tolerate this one.”
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The post on the account called on followers to “kill the F.B.I. on sight” after Trump’s Florida home was searched. In the bio on TruthSocial, Shiffer identified himself as an electrician based in Columbus, Ohio.
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“Well, I thought I had a way through bullet proof glass, and I didn’t. If you don’t hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I., and it’ll mean either I was taken off the internet, the F.B.I. got me, or they sent the regular cops while,” another post shared read.
A user reportedly asked Shiffer if he was “proposing terrorism?” to which Shiffer’s account replied, “No, I am proposing war.”
“Be ready to kill the enemy, not mass shootings where leftists go, not lighting busses on fire with transexuals in them, not finding people with lefist [sic] signs in their yards and beating them up,” the post said. “Violence is not (all) terrorism. Kill the F.B.I. on sight, and be ready to take down other active enemies of the people and those who try to prevent you from doing it.”
It cannot be independently confirmed if the account belonged to the suspect in the Cincinnati incident.