Ricky Shiffer’s profile picture on Twitter. (Photo: Twitter)
The gunman killed after attempting to breach the FBI’s Cincinnati office Thursday made previous threats against the agency, pleaded terrorism online and may have been in Washington, DC, before the Capitol uprising.
Ricky Shiffer, 42, attempted to enter the local field office Thursday morning while carrying an AR-15 rifle and a nail gun. When that plan failed, he fled in his car and was later shot dead after an hours-long standoff and gunfight with police.
Now authorities are investigating the threats he made on social media against the FBI, his self-proclaimed presence in the January 6, 2021 uprising, and his ties to the extremist Proud Boys gang that are at the center of the investigation.
Multiple social media profiles that appear to belong to Shiffer — including Twitter and the Donald Trump-owned Truth Social — are brimming with violent statements, including a “call to arms” against the FBI, apparently in response to the agency’s raid. at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday.
“Violence is not (all) terrorism,” an account bearing his name wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. “Kill the FBI on sight and be ready to take down other active enemies of the people.”
Shortly after Shiffer’s attempt to break into the FBI office, the same account posted a confession:
“Well, I thought I could go through bulletproof glass, but I couldn’t. If you don’t hear from me, it’s true I tried to attack the FBI, and it will mean I’ve either been taken off the Internet, or the FBI got me.”
On Facebook, Shiffer reportedly appeared in a video of a pro-Trump demonstration in Washington’s Black Lives Matter Square on Jan. 5, according to The New York Times. He claimed on Twitter in May that he was “there” for the January 6 attack, in response to a photo of rioters climbing the walls of the Capitol.
In another May Twitter post, Shiffer responded to a message from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, calling the election “fixed.”
“Congressman Greene, they got away with keeping elections in sight,” he wrote, according to NBC News. “It’s over. The next step is the one we used in 1775.”
He also made a public call for users to arm themselves and contact the Proud Boys.
“Save ammunition, contact the Proud Boys and learn how they did it in the Revolutionary War, because submission to tyranny while lawfully protesting was never the American way.”
The extent of his ties to the political street gang was not immediately apparent. But the Justice Department says in criminal files that the Proud Boys played an excessive role in planning and carrying out the January 6 attack. A handful of the gang’s leaders are now facing incendiary conspiracy charges over the plot.
Shiffer’s attempted attack on Thursday exposes the thinning barrier between violent rhetoric from Trump supporters online and violence in the real world. Trump himself joined the right-wing media this week to protest the FBI and Justice Department following the search of his estate, and a torrent of violent threats from the former president’s supporters followed. The threats were serious enough that FBI Director Chris Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland denounced them both publicly.
“I will not stand by when their integrity is unjustly attacked,” Garland said Thursday.
Andy Campbell is the author of “We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism,” which will hit bookstores September 20.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
