‘A LITTLE EXPERIMENT’

Texas Man Who Boasted About Being at Capitol Riot Plotted to Blow Up Amazon Data Centers: Feds

Seth Aaron Pendley allegedly said he wanted explosives to “kill off about 70% of the internet” and overthrow the “oligarchy.”

A Texas man who boasted about being at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 has been charged for plotting to bomb data centers in Virginia in hopes of destroying “about 70% of the internet,” federal prosecutors said Friday. The feds were first tipped off to Seth Aaron Pendley’s alleged plans when a “concerned citizen” reached out about disturbing posts on MyMilitia.com in which a user named “Dionysus” said he was going to “conduct a little experiment” that he hoped would lead to “death.” That user was ultimately traced to Pendley, who allegedly told friends in January that he didn’t break into the Capitol during the insurrection but did take a piece of broken glass from a “platform” and “interacted with police” that day.

In late March, Pendley told an undercover FBI employee posing as an explosives supplier that he intended to blow up Amazon servers that “he believed provided services to the FBI, CIA, and other federal agencies.” His ultimate goal was to destroy “the oligarchy” in power, the feds said. On April 8, Pendley picked up the explosives, which were actually fake, and was arrested.