A New Year’s Eve terror plot by a pro-Palestinian, left-wing, anti-government group that was intent on bombing businesses in Los Angeles was foiled by the FBI.
The group, Order of the Black Lotus, is “a radical faction of the Turtle Island Liberation Front,” or TILF, according to the Los Angeles Times. The group is also “left-wing” and “anti-government.”
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli announced on Monday that the group of four was guilty of planning an “organized, sophisticated, and extremely violent” New Year’s Eve attack involving bombs.
“We disrupted this terror plot before buildings were demolished or innocent people were killed,” he said. (2:50)
🚨🚨🚨BREAKING: Asst. US Attorney Bill Essayli in Los Angeles announces 4 arrests in New Year’s terror plot and gives details of their alleged plans to bomb 5 locations in LA & Orange Counties. They allegedly belong to terror group Order of the Black Lotus: pic.twitter.com/CvJ7NwetWV
— Plein Crazy (@PleinCrazy) December 15, 2025
According to Los Angeles magazine, the group was busted as they met in the Mohave Desert on Dec. 12 to build the bombs.
“Card tables trekked into the desert were crowded with the materials they needed, pistol primers, shoelaces, PVC pipes, plastic tubs of potassium nitrate, all shielded from the sun by an overhead tent, along with stickers that read ‘Free Palestine,’” the outlet reported.
The goal of the campaign, known as “Operation Midnight Sun,” was to use “the cover of New Year’s Eve firework celebrations … to mask the sounds” as the group planted backpacks with explosives inside five local businesses and then detonated them right at midnight.
While Essayli wouldn’t identify the specific businesses, he said that they were “logistic centers” similar to the type maintained by Amazon.
The plot also called for follow-up attacks on federal immigration agents that would, according to the indictment against the four suspects, “take some of them out and scare the rest of them.”
BREAKING: FBI foils terror attack plot in LA for New Year’s by the far-left militia Turtle Island Liberation Front pic.twitter.com/V1URMNDJc1
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 15, 2025
The group’s leader was Audrey Illeene Carroll, a 30-year-old who’d previously worked as an intern for Illinois Rep. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat.
Carroll had also played a volunteer role in the mayoral campaign of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, another Democrat, and run the social media attacks of NEXT, a social justice group.
Her NEXT profile reportedly says that she was inspired to activism by “my generation’s zero-tolerance policy for hatred and injustice.”
In her social media profiles meanwhile, she identified herself as a “Hamas fan girl.” And according to the FBI, she once admitted in a text message that she keeps what she calls “my terrorist diary.”
The four defendants arrested in the Turtle Island Liberation Front (TILF) case made their initial appearances today. All four defendants remain in federal custody and will be arraigned in early January 2026. pic.twitter.com/J42usFFGuM
— US Attorney L.A. (@USAO_LosAngeles) December 16, 2025
Another suspect, Zachary Page, is a man who identifies as a so-called transgender woman yet has a wife and four-year-old son.
Both Page and Carroll were virulently anti-Israeli. They once exchanged text messages in which Page wrote “death to israel death to the usa death to colonizers death to settler-coloniasm [SIC].” In response, Carroll wrote back, “Death to them all, burn it all down.”
A fifth suspect not directly tied to the plot was arrested when they threatened FBI agents while they were executing a search warrant.
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