‘Terrorgram’ Charges Show US Has Had Tools to Crack Down on Far-Right Terrorism All Along

Allison’s commitment to neofascism and white supremacy appears to have run deep—“I won’t quit til I’m dead. my only goal in life is to fucking destroy the enemy,” Allison declared in a Telegram post cited by federal prosecutors. Both he and Humber, according to a government detention motion, sought to identify the informant in Brandon Russell’s criminal case. Allison advocated adding the suspected snitch to “The List” (a collection of federal officials, journalists, businessmen, and other perceived enemies circulated by the Terrorgram Collective as potential assassination targets), while Humber allegedly told Russell in a recorded jailhouse call in August 2023 that she had photographs of the suspected informant and was running them through facial recognition software.

When Allison was arrested last week, authorities say, he had a backpack loaded with what appeared to be a “bug-out kit” comprised of zip ties, a gun, duct tape, ammunition, a knife, lockpicking tools, two phones, and a thumb drive. When law enforcement searched his apartment, they turned up an assault rifle, two laptops, an external hard drive, and another “go bag” containing $1,500 in cash, clothes, a passport, ziplock bags full of pills, ammunition, a skull mask balaclava, sim cards, and a birth certificate.

In a videotaped interview following his arrest, Allison allegedly confessed to his participation in the Terrorgram Collective and “engaging in acts alleged in the General Allegations of the Indictment.”

Law enforcement consider Humber and Allison threats to their community, and to authorities as well: Humber allegedly worked with Russell to try to identify a suspected government witness in the Atomwaffen Division founder’s current criminal case in Baltimore, according to recorded jailhouse phone calls. Witnesses in Russell’s upcoming trial this November will testify in a closed courtroom to avoid being identified, a highly unusual precaution. In a sealing motion, prosecutors state that not only are additional arrests of Terrogram Collective members likely, but the group’s membership poses a severe danger to law enforcement and cooperating witnesses alike: “Defendants’ many associates, both in the United States and internationally, may seek to harm perceived law enforcement or law enforcement cooperators in retribution for their role in this investigation.”

Allison is currently detained without bail and is set to appear in federal court in Boise on September 18 for a detention hearing.

The volume of evidence laid out against Humber and Allison in both the indictment and detention motion, says Hughes, shows the feds have significantly altered their approach to both far-right terrorism and particularly “lone wolf” accelerationists who have perpetrated massacres ranging from Christchurch in 2019 to Buffalo in 2022.

“When they go further than they have in the past to lay out the transnational connections and overlay a material support charge, it shows that either the feds are trying to make a point, or they were very concerned about these particular actors,” Hughes says.

Senior attorneys from the DOJ’s Civil Rights and National Security divisions are listed on the court filings in this matter, another indication that the top ranks of the Biden administration’s Justice Department called the shots on the Terrorgram Collective investigation.

“To build a case in this fashion is a decision that gets made at Main Justice,” Hughes says. “Someone high up decided to sign off on this.”