buzzz worthy. . .
CINCINNATI
(AP) — A man who plotted to attack the U.S. Capitol and kill government
officials inside it and spoke of his desire to support the Islamic
State militant group was arrested on Wednesday, the FBI said.
A
criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Ohio charges
Christopher Lee Cornell with attempting to kill officers and employees
of the United States. Just a day earlier, authorities revealed another
Ohio man had been charged with threatening to kill House Speaker John
Boehner.
Cornell,
also known as Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah, was arrested as he took control of
a firearm during an undercover FBI operation in southwestern Ohio, the
FBI said. The public was never in danger in the investigation, said John
Barrios, acting special agent in charge of the FBI's Cincinnati
division.
A
phone message and an email were left Wednesday for attorney Karen
Savir, a federal public defender listed in court records as Cornell's
attorney. A working phone number could not be found for Cornell's family
members.
The
complaint alleges that an FBI informant began supplying agents with
information about Cornell last year. The informant and Cornell, who's 20
and lives in Green Township, first began communicating through Twitter
in August and then through an instant messaging platform separate from
Twitter, according to the complaint.
"I
believe we should meet up and make our own group in alliance with the
Islamic State here and plan operations ourselves," Cornell wrote in an
instant message, according to the court document.
The
Islamic State militant organization, which broke with the al-Qaida
network and took control of large parts of Iraq and Syria, has drawn
jihadi fighters from across the Muslim world and Europe. It has been
blamed for violence such as the beheadings of foreign captives including
a former U.S. soldier turned aid worker and two American journalists.
Cornell
and the informant met in person in October in Cincinnati and again in
November, the complaint states. Cornell told the informant at the
November meeting that he considered the members of Congress as enemies
and that he intended to conduct an attack on the Capitol, according to
the complaint. The document says Cornell discussed his plan for them to
travel to Washington and conduct reconnaissance of the security of
government buildings including the Capitol before executing "a plan of
attack."
Cornell
planned for the two to detonate pipe bombs at and near the Capitol and
then shoot and kill employees and officials, and Cornell had saved money
to fund the attack, according to the complaint.
Cornell was arrested after buying two semi-automatic rifles and about 600 rounds of ammunition, authorities said.
On
Tuesday, authorities disclosed a Cincinnati-area bartender had been
charged with threatening to kill Boehner at a country club near his home
with a gun or a poisoned drink. Boehner, a Republican, returned to the
Capitol on Wednesday without commenting to reporters. But a Boehner
spokesman, Michael Steel, said, "Once again, the entire Congress owes a
debt of gratitude to the FBI and all those who keep us safe."