A man was arrested Saturday outside former President Trump’s rally in Riverside County on suspicion of illegal possession of a shotgun, handgun and high-capacity magazine, sheriff’s officials said.
Vem Miller, 49, of Las Vegas was booked at the John J. Benoit Detention Center in Indio on charges of possessing loaded firearms, Riverside County sheriff’s officials said. He has since been released on bail pending a court appearance.
Deputies found the guns after searching Miller’s black SUV at a checkpoint at Avenue 52 and Celebration Drive in Coachella about 5 p.m. Saturday, authorities said.
At a news conference Sunday, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said his deputies had likely thwarted an assassination attempt, although he acknowledged “there is absolutely no way any of us are going to truly know what’s in [the suspect’s] head.”
According to Bianco, Miller had driven his SUV through an outer perimeter maintained by sheriff’s deputies before he was questioned at a checkpoint closer to the rally entrance. Miller claimed to have credentials to attend the rally both as a journalist and VIP guest, but couldn’t produce any documents.
The deputy questioning Miller noticed what Bianco called “many irregularities” with his SUV: The license plate was phony, the vehicle was unregistered and the interior was “in disarray,” the sheriff said.
A search of the SUV turned up fake passports and driver’s licenses with different names, guns and ammunition, Bianco said.
Bianco said he was identifying the suspect as Miller “with an asterisk” because he possessed identification with multiple names. The suspect stated his name was Vem Miller, according to the sheriff.
The homemade license plate was “indicative of individuals claiming to be sovereign citizens,” Bianco said, referring to an ideology whose followers do not consider government authorities to be legitimate. Bianco called it irrelevant that most sovereign citizens subscribe to far-right beliefs.
“He was a lunatic,” the sheriff said.
Asked whether he was speculating by branding Miller a would-be assassin, Bianco said it was “common sense” to suspect that someone carrying guns and fake identification to a political rally intended to hurt people.
“We know that we prevented something bad from happening,” said the sheriff, who attended Trump’s rally himself. “It’s irrelevant what that bad was going to be.”
Bianco said the investigation into Miller’s intentions would be handled by the U.S. Secret Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation. In a statement Sunday afternoon, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles said prosecutors and agents of the Secret Service and FBI were investigating.
Trump narrowly avoided an assassination attempt in July at a rally in Butler, Pa. A bullet grazed his ear before snipers assigned to his Secret Service detail killed the gunman, Thomas Crooks, who had opened fire from the roof of a nearby building. A rally attendee, Corey Comperatore, was killed shielding his family from the gunfire.
In September, police arrested a man near Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla. They suspect that Ryan Routh intended to shoot the former president with an SKS rifle while hiding in the shrubbery lining the golf club.
Prosecutors say Routh possessed a handwritten list of dates and venues where Trump was expected to appear.
Routh is charged with attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate, possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, assaulting a federal officer, possessing a firearm and ammunition as a felon and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
Trump wasn’t in danger from armed man at California rally, officials say
A Las Vegas man was charged with possession of a loaded firearm and a high-capacity magazine on Saturday after deputies assigned to a rally by former President Donald Trump in southern California’s Coachella Valley stopped him at a checkpoint.
Federal law enforcement said Trump was not in danger.
The suspect, 49-year-old Vem Miller of Las Vegas, was stopped by deputies at 4:59 p.m. in a black SUV at the intersection of Avenue 52 and Celebration Drive, according to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office.
Miller was found illegally possessing a shotgun, a loaded handgun and a high-capacity magazine, local authorities said. He was arrested and booked at the John J. Benoit Detention Center in Indio.
Miller was released on $5,000 bail and awaits a court hearing. A federal investigation is ongoing.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said that Miller approached the perimeter of the rally before the event started and falsely claimed to have VIP access as member of the press corps, which he was not. Deputies spotted a number of “irregularities” including a fake license plate, Bianco said, prompting additional investigation.
In addition to the firearms, deputies found multiple passports with multiples names in Miller’s vehicle in addition to multiple drivers licenses with different names, according to Bianco. He said the vehicle was not registered and the license plate appeared to be homemade, resembling those often used by members of anti-government “sovereign citizens” groups.
“We thank law enforcement for securing the rally site and helping ensure the safety of President Trump,” Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said in a statement to USA TODAY. “We are aware of news reports about the arrest and are currently monitoring the situation and gathering more information.”
Will Vem Miller face additional charges?
It was unclear if Miller will face federal charges related to an attempted assassination of a political candidate, which would come from the Justice Department.
“The U.S. Attorney’s Office, U.S. Secret Service and FBI are aware of the Riverside Sheriff’s County Office’s arrest on Saturday,” the three federal agencies said in a joint statement statement. “The U.S. Secret Service assesses that the incident did not impact protective operations and former President Trump was not in any danger. While no federal arrest was made at this time, the investigation is ongoing.”
Bianco speculated that Miller’s intention was to assassinate the former president.
“If you’re asking me right now, I probably did have deputies that prevented the third assassination attempt,” said Bianco, who is a staunch Trump supporter and endorsed the Republican nominee’s presidential bid this summer.
Trump spoke Saturday night to a crowd of several thousand people at the Calhoun Ranch in Riverside County, just outside Coachella, around 5:30 p.m. − about half an hour after his remarks were scheduled to begin.
Miller’s arrest comes after Trump has been the target of two recent assassination scares during the 2024 presidential campaign.
The most recent came in September when an armed man was found along a fence at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, while the former president played a round of golf. The first occurred in Butler, Pennsylvania in July, when a gunman fired at the president from atop a nearby building, striking Trump in the ear and killing one spectator.
Crowd members hold up white supremacist group’s slogan at Trump/Vance event
At a campaign event last week for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, attendees waved placards emblazoned with a slogan that is also used by a notorious white supremacist group. Meanwhile, anti-drag and anti-LGBTQ hate sees a resurgence this week, and a new report shows extremists and conspiracy theorists spinning up lies in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
It’s the week in extremism, from USA TODAY.
White supremacist slogan at Trump campaign event
At a Trump/Vance campaign rally in Saginaw, Michigan, late last week, attendees held up placards bearing the slogan “Reclaim America.” That’s the main slogan of the Texas-headquartered white supremacist hate group Patriot Front, which took to social media to question whether the signs were a tacit endorsement.
- Video from the event shows Trump supporters waving placards with the “Reclaim America” slogan behind the speakers.
- Patriot Front, which specializes in spreading white supremacist propaganda and holding events where chino-clad masked men march around chanting and waving flags, portrays itself as a protector of “European heritage.” Leaks and infiltration of the group have revealed it is a hardcore racist neo–Nazi organization.
- Members of Patriot Front have been charged with conspiracy to riot and the organization is being sued in at least two high-profile cases.
- This week, the official Patriot Front Telegram channel proudly announced the Trump campaign had “adopted” the reclaim America slogan, posting: “The phrase “Reclaim America” is a well-known slogan of Patriot Front. It remains unclear whether the Trump campaign is aware of this connection and PF’s use of the phrase, especially since a simple Google search of the slogan will return a plethora of results featuring the organization.”
- The Trump/Vance campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Anti-drag, anti-LGBTQ+ hate rises again
America’s far-right spent much of 2022 and 2023 uniting in opposition to the LGBTQ+ community, particularly by targeting drag shows and the people who attend and perform in them. This trend had shown signs of easing off in 2024, but new incidents show far-right extremists have not given up on this line of attack.
- K. Wayne, An English teacher at Peninsula High School in Seattle left their job after an online bullying campaign targeted them for their extracurricular performances as a drag king. The alternative newspaper The Stranger tells their story.
- “My drag persona is a form of creative expression, completely separate from my role as an educator. Drag is not a crime, and I stand by my art and my right to express myself,” K. Wayne told USA TODAY in a statement. “This must stop. people must be able to exist without being doxxed, without being bullied and without fear of living private and personal lives.”
- Meanwhile, across the country in Somerville, MA, a scheduled drag queen story hour at a library was canceled following a bomb threat that forced an evacuation. The event had been targeted by a small protest.
- Throughout the last two years, dozens of drag events have been similarly disrupted by threats. USA TODAY outlined how drag became a major focus of the far-right in this story from the last day of 2022.
Report: Hurricane brings a storm of disinformation
Social media has been inundated with conspiracy theories and disinformation about the major hurricanes that hit Florida recently. Much of that disinformation has been spread by extremists, according to a new report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
- ISD researchers identified at least 31 false and antisemitic narratives surrounding Hurricane Helene accusing Jewish officials of sabotaging recovery efforts and endangering the public.
- Analysts found that 33 posts on X, containing claims debunked by FEMA and the White House, had generated more than 160 million views.
- From the report: “Falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible threats and incitement to violence directed at the federal government – this includes calls to send militias to face down FEMA for the perceived denial of aid, and that individuals would ‘shoot’ FEMA officials and the agency’s emergency responders.”
Statistic of the week: 46,000
That’s how many instances of online hate against South-Asians were identified by researchers from Moonshot, a research group that monitors extremist activity, in August on websites frequented by domestic violent extremists.
That’s double the amount from January 2023, according to a report from Moonshot and the organization Stop AAPI Hate.
The analysis notes that anti-South Asian slurs spiked in August 2024 amid the political ascendance of two South Asian political figures: Kamala Harris (the 2024 Democratic nominee for U.S. President) and Usha Vance (the wife of J.D. Vance, the 2024 Republican nominee for Vice President).
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