Plot to Blow Up Democratic Headquarters Exposed California Extremists Hiding in Plain Sight

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups throughout the country, has identified 45 currently active anti-government groups in California, including four militias.

In the past, chapters of other groups – including III% United Patriots, III% Defense Militia, California Three Percenters, the original Three Percenters, Oath Keepers and West Coast Patriots – have all been active in California, according to the nonprofit.

Rogers and Copeland joined one of those, according to court records and screenshots obtained by KQED.

At the time of his arrest, Rogers told law enforcement he was a member of a “prepper group” called 3UP, a California offshoot of the Three Percenters, court filings show. Detectives also found a bumper sticker on one of Rogers’ vehicles of the III% symbol: three lines encircled by 13 stars.

The Three Percenters, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, are a sub-ideology of the broader anti-government militia movement, and some California members were charged for participating in the January 6 insurrection. Three Percenters believe the unproven assertion that just three percent of colonists defeated the English during the American Revolution.

3UP claimed to be a social club not affiliated with any militia, according to Facebook screenshots. When a reporter reached one member in Milpitas by phone, he said “no comment” and hung up the phone. Calls to a number of other members were not immediately returned.

Copeland was also a member of 3UP, according to prosecutors. Screenshots of a now defunct private Facebook group for Bay Area members showed Copeland as a member. A photograph posted to the page on Aug. 9, 2020, showed Rogers and Copeland with their wives at a barbecue that other members of 3UP attended, according to a screenshot shared with a KQED reporter.

But there’s nothing illegal about socializing with members of a so-called “prepper group,” purchasing tactical equipment and believing the government should be overthrown.

While the FBI’s strategy for combatting terrorism focuses on thwarting attacks before they happen — a concept the agency refers to as “left of boom” — the agency cannot interfere with people exercising their constitutional rights to voice their anger at elected officials and political parties.

And, Blair said, the agency does not investigate groups — only individuals who break the law.

“We don’t care what you believe, because we’re not allowed to care what you believe, no matter how reprehensible those beliefs may be,” said Blair. “It’s only if your beliefs or your ideology are motivating you to commit an act of violence — that’s when you would suddenly become of concern to us.”

Blair said the FBI relies on tips to identify potential threats. He thinks more people are reporting extreme rhetoric.

“There are people who are looking left and right and realizing that this is not necessarily the world we want to live in,” Blair surmised. “I think we are getting more reports from individuals who happen to be near people who are spewing the ideology and taking steps towards those violent acts, saying, ‘No, not here, not on my turf, not around me.’”

An anonymous tipster urged the FBI to look into Rogers’ behavior.

A KQED reporter was able to contact the individual who reported Rogers and confirm that the two had once been friends. According to the tipster, they shared a love for exotic cars and guns and had both voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

But, in 2019, Rogers began to threaten violence, often seething with rage and lashing out at people around him, he said.

The informer began documenting Rogers’ behavior. In September of 2020, he mailed an envelope to the San Francisco field office of the FBI. Inside was an SD card with screenshots of Rogers’ social media posts and a video of Rogers firing an AK-47 at a shooting range previously owned by Craig Bock, a prominent member of the Three Percenter movement, according to a lawsuit filed by Bock’s family after county officials revoked their lease for the shooting range and reporting by the Vallejo Sun.

The tipster also emailed the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, warning that Rogers was “deranged” and “a one-man militia.”

The following excerpt from the tipster’s email was contained in a Napa County Superior Court filing:

The Napa County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI jointly investigated Rogers, according to a declaration by a county detective filed as part of a motion opposing Rogers’ bail. In November of 2020, authorities learned that Rogers sold his home in American Canyon, a city about 10 miles south of Napa, and was flush with cash, according to the motion.

On Jan. 15, just nine days after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, sheriff’s deputies detained Rogers at a traffic stop in downtown Napa and served him with search warrants for his home and auto repair shop, according to court papers.

Inside a safe in Rogers’ office, law enforcement discovered five brick-sized pipe bombs, along with raw materials “that could be used to manufacture destructive devices, including black powder, pipes, endcaps,” according to a federal criminal complaint. There was “a Nazi flag and a Nazi dagger with markings from the Elite SS in Hitler’s army,” according to a separate court filing. The safe also contained a “White Privilege Card,” according to an FBI affidavit and the federal complaint against Rogers.

In a storage closet, deputies found, according to records, “numerous rifles, including some that were fully automatic and some that had been modified to operate as machine guns.”

They also found seven manuals on bomb making and survival tactics, including one called “The Anarchist Cookbook” and another titled “How to Make Homemade C-4,” an explosive material; approximately 15,000 rounds of ammunition; a homemade silencer; and “go bags” with body armor and bullet-proof face shields.

Dozens more guns were found, unsecured, inside his home and RV. All told, officers collected 54 guns — including eight assault weapons considered illegal in California, according to the Napa County District Attorney. Rogers was arrested.

Rogers’ friends and family said he liked to pump iron, shoot semi-automatic rifles and drive fast cars. They also commented that he had used steroids to bulk up his 5’11” frame to 200 pounds in recent years.

In one Facebook photo that went viral after his arrest, Rogers sits at the wheel of his DeLorean, the gull-wing door raised, his muscular arms bulging under a cutoff T-shirt.

Rogers has a tattoo on his upper left arm of an eagle that resembles the Nazi Eagle, which he made no effort to hide. He is wearing camouflage fatigues and his hair is cropped.

Rogers learned how to fix cars in his father’s repair shop in Sonoma County when he was young. In 2005, he and his first wife, Julie Crisci, opened British Auto Repair in Napa. Rogers catered to wine country residents of diverse ethnic backgrounds who praised his mechanical skills and professionalism in dozens of online reviews.

But two witnesses told KQED they heard Rogers use racial slurs to refer to clients. Those individuals said he expressed rage towards people of other races.

A longtime Napa resident, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, described one of Rogers’ tirades: “He was just stomping around, you know, ‘these mother ****ing’— you know dropping N-bombs — ‘with their stupid’ — just like like flexing, just flipping out. Other times you just hear him screaming about whatever — the Jews or, you know, Nancy Pelosi.”

He also said Rogers told people he named his German Shepherd “Fritz” after Hitler’s personal dog handler, Fritz Tornow. Rogers also built a working MG 42, a machine gun Allied troops nicknamed “Hitler’s Buzzsaw” because of the noise it made spewing 1,200-1,500 rounds of ammunition per minute.

“He’s a bad dude,” the Napa resident said. “He’s going to get what he deserves, hopefully. But, he’ll also be some sort of martyr for extremists.”

Rogers also used racial slurs to describe his former Asian American neighbors in text messages to Crisci that were included in court filings. On Sept. 16, 2019, he wrote:

“I hate this town I’ll be happier away from the [N-word]. I’m sick of my stupid [racial slur for people of Korean descent] neighbors. I can’t forgive them for calling the cops on my numerous times over bullshit. Neighbors should have your back and they are backstabbers. Typical Asian assholes, they only care about themselvs and they’re families. I hate Asians they are rude and dishonest.”

A business acquaintance of Rogers said he never heard him use racist language. Cliff Marden, who sold auto repair tools to Rogers for over a decade, described his client as opinionated, but not violent.

“Ian is not a terrorist by any means, he’s not a threat to the public,” Marden said when reached by phone. “He was a businessman and he was an outstanding person and individual of the community.”

Marden said Rogers got in trouble because he said the wrong things at the wrong time, but never would have acted on those threats.

“He had too much to lose to do something like that,” Marden said.

Rogers has a young son from his first marriage, and had recently remarried.

A woman who answered the door at Rogers’ last known address confirmed she had married him a year and a half earlier. Yuliia Rogers said she met her husband online and that he came to see her in her native Ukraine three times before they married.

“It was very wonderful,” she said, smiling as she reminisced.

Yuliia Rogers said she now reminds her husband of that time with a photograph “to keep him positive” while he’s incarcerated. She said her husband had been collecting guns for 20 years and that it was his “passion.”

She did not believe he was capable of violence and never feared for her own safety, she said.

“He never was mean or trying to do something bad to another person,” she said.

She said her husband was probably drinking when he wrote those texts to Copeland and was just venting his frustration over the presidential election.

“He never was going to do it,” Yuliia Rogers said. “It was maybe like little boys like, ‘I will,’ ‘I can do this,’ or ‘we can do this.’ But it was just like playing.”