A Customs and Border Protection officer said to be a believer in the QAnon conspiracy theory allegedly threatened a superior by claiming he would bring ‘Donald Trump and the US military’ to get him for his involvement in a child sex trafficking ring.
Alberto Almeida was indicted by federal prosecutors in New Jersey last week for sending threatening text messages and social media posts to Edward Fox, CBP’s assistant port director for Newark, The Daily Beast reported.
Almeida is alleged to have sent several menacing messages to Fox over a nine-month period.
The threats accused Fox of all sorts of bizarre crimes that are in line with the far-right conspiracy theory that has often been repeated online by supporters of President Trump and some Republican politicians.
Followers of QAnon believe that Trump is secretly waging a war to dismantle a Satan-worshipping cabal of pedophiles in the government, the business world, and the media.
A Customs and Border Protection officer has been indicted in federal court in New Jersey after allegedly sending QAnon-themed texts and social media posts to a superior
The theory holds that Trump will finally emerge victorious on a day of reckoning known as ‘The Storm’, when thousands of people said to belong to this pedophile ring, including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and George Soros, will be arrested and executed.
According to the court filing, Almeida accuses Fox of being involved in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
‘Attention CBP Assistant Port Director Ed Fox in Newark,’ Almeida allegedly wrote on his Facebook page.
‘The next time I come to Newark Airport I am bringing Donald Trump and the U.S. Military down on your f****** head for your involvement in Hillary/Maxwell/Epstein’s child trafficking ring and 9/11.
‘You f****** treasonous pedophile.’
The post continued: ‘Trump takes down Hillary, JFK JR (US MILITARY) takes down the Mossad, and I take you down b****, that’s how this worked. Tick Tock. #WWG1WGA’
The hashtag is the acronym for the phrase ‘Where we go one, we go all’ – a common slogan used by QAnon supporters.
‘Epstein’ and ‘Maxwell’ are references to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Maxwell, 58, is currently in federal custody awaiting trial on charges that she recruited underage girls as part of a sex trafficking ring that was run by Epstein, a well-connected financier. She has pleaded not guilty.
Her trial is scheduled for next July. Epstein killed himself at age 66 in August 2019 at a federal jail in Manhattan while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
QAnon followers also believe that the late John F. Kennedy, Jr, who died in a small plane crash alongside his wife and sister-in-law in 1999, is actually alive and hiding out in Pennsylvania.
According to the theory, JFK Jr is due to emerge at any moment to be Trump’s running mate in the 2020 elections.
Alberto Almeida was named in the indictment filed last week in federal court in Newark
Almeida is alleged to have sent several menacing messages to Edward Fox, CBP’s assistant port director for Newark, over a nine-month period
Mossad is the Israeli intelligence agency, though what role it plays in the QAnon conspiracy theory is unclear.
Almeida is believed to be the first CBP officer to be charged with a QAnon-related offense.
‘U.S. Customs and Border Protection takes all allegations of employee misconduct seriously, but none more so than alleged threats to members of the public or other CBP employees,’ a CBP spokesperson told The Daily Beast.
‘As shown in the criminal complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, the allegations against CBP [officer] Almeida are being investigated by the CBP Office of Professional Responsibility.
‘CBP does not comment on ongoing investigations or pending litigation.’
Observers have grown alarmed at how QAnon has slowly seeped into mainstream thinking among Republicans.
It gained wider attention after Marjorie Taylor Greene won the Republican primary for a U.S. House seat in a heavily GOP Georgia district last month. Greene was invited to the White House for Trump’s acceptance speech during the Republican National Convention.
Suzanne Sharer, a Republican legislative candidate in the Phoenix area, has posted QAnon videos and messages more than a dozen times in recent months.
She is running in a suburban district that once was solidly Republican but has been trending Democratic.
In April, she wrote: ‘Q has been quiet. Is this 10 days of darkness?’
Julie Buria, a Republican running in a northern Minnesota legislative district that Trump carried by nearly 3 percentage points in 2016, retweeted at least four posts in April and May that seemed to support QAnon.
In one she wrote: ‘Link to new Q drop’ with a link to a QAnon site. The tweet also used several hashtags common to the conspiracy’s followers.
But in an interview, Buria insisted she was not very familiar with QAnon.
‘Have I looked at it? Yes. Do I believe all of it? No. I’m not really sure what to think about all that,’ she said.
Trump has said he knows little about the movement but has spoken favorably of its followers. Vice President Mike Pence has dismissed it.
Meanwhile, Facebook announced this week that it will ban groups that openly support QAnon.
Last month, FBI Director Chrisopher Wray testified that QAnon is a ‘complex set of conspiracy theories.’
In August of last year, an FBI document warned that those motivated by homegrown conspiracy theories posed a domestic terrorist threat, Yahoo! News reported.
WHAT IS QANON?
Origins: Q Anon started on fringe website 4chan, where a poster calling themselves Q left messages claiming to be a senior federal official and purporting to reveal a ‘deep state’ cabal intent on bringing down Donald Trump. Q grew out of the discredited Pizzagate conspiracy that top Democrats were involved in pedophilia and cannibalism from the basement of a Washington D.C. restaurant, but quickly picked up steam with ‘Q’ leaving ‘clues’ and claims that Trump was going to bring down the deep state. Whenever the conspiracies turn out to not be true, followers rationalize that the inaccuracies are part of Q’s larger plan.
Who is Q?: There may now be multiple people posing as Q on the anonymous 4chan boards
A QAnon believer blocked the bridge near Hoover Dam with a homemade armored tank in the name of the movement, and later pleaded guilty to terrorism
Hoover Dam: In June 2019, 32-year-old Matthew Wright, a QAnon supporter, blocked the bridge near Hoover Dam in Arizona with a homemade armored vehicle in a 90-minute stand-off. He pleaded guilty to terrorism charges and has written two letters to Donald Trump from jail, which include the sign-off, which has become the QAnon motto: “For where we go one, we go all.”
Michael Flynn: Trump’s former national security adviser became a martyr figure for QAnon believers after he took a plea deal from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, admitting he lied about his Russia contacts. QAnon conspiracy have spun Flynn pleading guilty into him being a persecuted victim of the deep state – and some even claim he is ‘Q.’
Many believers put three star emojis next to their Twitter handles. But the retired three-star general has denounced any connections to the group and pulled out of participating in an event after finding out it was hosted by a QAnon believer.
QAnon believers make former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn out to be a martyr after taking a plea deal with Robert Mueller
QAnon Political Candidates: Jo Rae Perkins, 64, won the Republican primary in Oregon in May to run for a Senate seat against incumbent Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley. “I stand with Q and the team,” she said when asked about her interest in the group. She insisted she goes to QAnon message boards as a “source of information” and claims media focuses too much on the group. Perkins won 49 per cent of the vote against three other Republicans.
Marjorie Taylor Greene came in first place in the Republican primary in a deep-red Georgia district, and will enter an August runoff. She has admitted to believing in several QAnon conspiracy theories.