White supremacist charged with swatting Cabinet official and journalists – CNN

John Cameron Denton, 26, of Montgomery, Texas, was apprehended for presumably making “knocking” calls targeting the individuals and the school, authorities said. Swatting is a harassment strategy in which a caller falsely reports to a dispatcher that an individual remains in “imminent risk of death or bodily harm,” causing the dispatcher to send authorities to a person’s address, district attorneys said.

Denton is a previous leader of the Atomwaffen Division, officials said, a neo-Nazi group with an existence in Texas.

< div class= "zn-body __paragraph” readability=” 25.038461538462″ > The arrest comes as federal authorities have been facing the increase of domestic risks, which usually include suspects involved in violence related to anti-government views, racial or spiritual bias, environmental extremism and abortion-related views.

District attorneys stated Denton confessed to his function in the calls during a sting operation last month in which he stated he utilized a voice changer throughout the calls and that other conspirators eavesdroped on them.

Denton “explained that he was able to see a few of the swatting events on street video cameras as the swattings unfolded,” district attorneys said, including that he stated during the sting operation that if he had been found as being associated with the ProPublica event it would be great for the Atomwaffen Division due to the fact that it “would be viewed as a top-tier criminal offense.”

According to court files, between November 2018 and April 2019, Denton and others made swatting calls targeting the unknown Cabinet official, who resides in Virginia and is under Secret Service security, in addition to a mainly African-American Baptist church in the state. Denton also allegedly made hire that time targeting the New York workplaces of ProPublica, an investigative journalism outlet, and a reporter who worked with the organization, in addition to Old Dominion University in Virginia.

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Court files stated the calls by Denton affected 134 different law enforcement agencies.

District attorneys said Denton, who was charged with conspiracy to devote an offense against the US, is set to appear in federal court in Texas on Wednesday. If founded guilty, he deals with an optimal sentence of five years in prison.

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