Hi there,

In this chaotic news cycle it may be tempting to tune out, but we hope you won’t—only an informed and engaged public can defend democracy. In these times of deep political polarization we need news that goes beyond play-by-play headlines, news that goes to the heart of each story by asking people to tell their own stories of abuses of power and injustice in their own words. If our journalism is important to you, please donate today. Every dollar makes a difference. Thank you so much.

Democracy Now!
Amy Goodman

Non-commercial news needs your support.

We rely on contributions from you, our viewers and listeners to do our work. If you visit us daily or weekly or even just once a month, now is a great time to make your monthly contribution.

Please do your part today.

Donate

Armed Trump Supporter Shot Dead in Ohio After Attempting to Breach FBI Field Office

HeadlineAug 12, 2022

In Ohio, a man wearing body armor and armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle fired a nail gun into an FBI field office in Cincinnati on Thursday, prompting a gun battle, chase and armed standoff that ended hours later when the gunman was shot dead by police in a cornfield. Officials identified the man as 42-year-old Ricky Shiffer, a supporter of Donald Trump and the far-right Proud Boys movement. Two days before Thursday’s attack on the FBI, Shiffer posted on Trump’s “Truth Social” online forum, calling on allies to “kill the F.B.I. on sight.” Shiffer also appears in a video posted to Facebook on January 5, 2021, showing him at a pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C., the night before the assault on the Capitol, and he boasted online that he was at the insurrection.

The FBI’s execution of a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago this week has spawned extremely violent rhetoric among Trump’s supporters. The pro-trump Gateway Pundit website declared, “This. Means. War.” — a message echoed by Trump’s former top political adviser, Steve Bannon, who declared, “The FBI is the Gestapo.”

Today is the fifth anniversary of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a self-described neo-Nazi slammed his car into a crowd of antiracist counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens of others.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top