FBI Disrupts New Year’s Eve Terror Plot Targeting Los Angeles Businesses, Authorities Say

Federal authorities announced that the FBI successfully stopped a planned New Year’s Eve terrorist attack in Southern California, preventing what prosecutors described as a coordinated bombing campaign aimed at major commercial facilities in Los Angeles.

According to officials, the plot was orchestrated by a radical pro-Palestinian, left-wing, anti-government cell known as the Order of the Black Lotus, which investigators say is affiliated with the Turtle Island Liberation Front. Reporting from the Los Angeles Times characterized the group as explicitly “left-wing” and “anti-government.”

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli stated Monday that four individuals had engaged in planning an “organized, sophisticated, and extremely violent” terrorist operation intended to unfold during New Year’s Eve celebrations.

“We disrupted this terror plot before buildings were demolished or innocent people were killed,” he said. (2:50)

Details reported by Los Angeles magazine indicate that the suspects were apprehended on December 12 while assembling explosive devices in the Mojave Desert.

“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.

Prosecutors say the planned operation, referred to by the suspects as “Operation Midnight Sun,” relied on the chaos of New Year’s Eve fireworks “to mask the sounds” of planting backpacks filled with explosives inside five Los Angeles-area businesses, with detonations timed precisely for midnight.

While Essayli declined to publicly identify the targeted locations, he confirmed they were “logistic centers” comparable to those operated by Amazon.

Court filings further allege the suspects intended to carry out secondary attacks against federal immigration officers. According to the indictment, the objective was to “take some of them out and scare the rest of them.”

Authorities identified the group’s leader as Audrey Illeene Carroll, 30, a political activist with prior ties to Democratic organizations. Carroll previously served as an intern for Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, volunteered during the mayoral campaign of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and managed social media messaging for NEXT, a progressive activist group.

Her publicly available NEXT profile reportedly states that she was motivated by “my generation’s zero-tolerance policy for hatred and injustice.” However, investigators say Carroll’s private communications painted a far more radical picture. On social media, she identified herself as a “Hamas fan girl,” and FBI evidence shows she admitted in a text message that she keeps what she called “my terrorist diary.”

Another suspect, Zachary Page, reportedly identifies as a transgender woman and has a wife and a four-year-old son. Prosecutors say Page and Carroll shared intensely anti-Israel and anti-American views, including a text exchange in which Page wrote, “death to israel death to the usa death to colonizers death to settler-coloniasm [SIC].” Carroll responded, “Death to them all, burn it all down.”

A fifth individual, not directly charged in connection with the bombing plot, was also arrested after allegedly threatening FBI agents during the execution of a search warrant.

The case underscores growing concerns among law enforcement about domestic extremism tied to radical ideological movements and the increasing overlap between anti-government activism and violent terror planning inside the United States.