QAnon, Militias, And Pick-up Artists: A Look At NY & NJ's Alleged Capitol Insurrectionists

Two weeks after armed insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol, a picture is emerging about the extremist ideologies that motivated the attackers charged with federal crimes, including nearly two dozen from New York and New Jersey. 

While this may be a blue part of the country, the indictments show that the cornucopia of the far-right is present here. They are MAGA in miniature—a coalition of adherents of a variety of extremist ideologies, often radicalized online, and always aligned in support of former President Donald Trump. They don’t fit any caricature of the far-right: Those arrested included city employees and an art student; people of varying incomes, religions, and neighborhoods.

While FBI charging documents and social media histories give a sense of their views, there are no hard lines separating the accused. Adherents of the QAnon conspiracy mix with anti-Semitic white nationalists on far-right social media platforms, allowing for a cross-pollinating of extremist ideas. 

The accused face charges ranging from disorderly conduct to assaulting police officers, and could go to prison for as long as a decade. Regardless of the fact that they documented their alleged crimes in real time and afterwards in videos and photos, all are innocent until proven guilty.

Here are some of the categories the accused fall into from our area:

White Supremacists

The crowd that stormed the Capitol was overwhelmingly white, and known white supremacists were well represented. 

Timothy Louis Hale-Cusanelli, an Army reservist from Colts Neck, NJ, is an “avowed white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer” known for racist postings on YouTube, according to the FBI. He is also a contractor at Naval Weapons Station Earle in Colts Neck, where the FBI said he has a “secret” security clearance and access to munitions. A confidential FBI source recorded a conversation with Hale-Cusanelli in which he says he actually ordered the rioters to “advance” inside the Capitol, as if he was leading a military charge. 

Court documents indicate that Hale-Cusanelli was still in custody on Tuesday and it is not clear if he has an attorney. 

An NPR analysis found that nearly 1 in 5 people charged in the attack appear to have a military history.

Misogynists

A new breed of misogynistic anti-feminists have risen in prominence during the Trump era through podcasts and traditional conservative media. Two of those arrested in the attempted insurrection who appear to fit in that category are self-described “pick-up artists.”

Samuel Fisher of the Upper East Side ran a YouTube page that he said was dedicated to “helping men get high value girls.” He was also apparently a recent QAnon convert, and had dabbled in anti-Semitic conspiracies online, according to his website.

Patrick Stedman, who lives with his wife and baby in his parents’ house in Haddonfield, NJ, works as a “dating and relationship strategist” and is a self-described expert on sex and female psychology, according to his Twitter profile. He caught the attention of authorities by tweeting that he broke down the doors of the Capitol and got into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Former classmates from high school and college reported Stedman to the FBI.

COVID Denialists 

Several people known for taking to the streets to oppose COVID restrictions in New York and New Jersey were arrested for being down at the Capitol. Nicolas Moncada, a former student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, had recorded himself at an anti-lockdown protest at Mac’s Public House, the bar on Staten Island that defied Governor Cuomo’s shutdown orders.

Across the river, Scott Fairlamb, a former MMA fighter known as “Wildman,” had  reopened the gym he owns in Pompton Lakes, NJ, in defiance of Governor Phil Murphy’s stay-at-home orders. He’s accused of punching a police officer in the head at the Capitol. The Huffington Post reported that Fairlamb recently got into QAnon and other conspiracy theories. 

Other QAnon Adherents

Followers of QAnon discussed the January 6th “Stop the Steal” rally for weeks before the event. The conspiracy hinges on Trump retaining power in order to defeat a pedophilic, Democratic cabal that is controlling the world, so the election certification process was akin to their D-Day.

Dominic Madden, a New York City sanitation worker, was seen on video sporting a blue Q sweatshirt and waving an American flag. Online posts linked to Madden show he previously attended pro-police demonstrations in Marine Park while wearing separate Q attire.

Militia Members

Anti-government militias, often made up of former military members and sometimes associated with white supremacist ideas, have proliferated in recent years. Leonard Guthrie Jr. of Cape May County, NJ, is a member of the Light Foot Militia, which he had described online as being about training in bushcraft, firearms, and hand-to-hand combat. He spoke to The Washington Post after he was arrested: “We’ve been silenced for so long. For years, because I voted for Trump, I’m called a racist, a Nazi, a bigot and all that stuff, and it’s not right.”

Rasha Abual-Ragheb, also known as Rasha Abu, is a member of the New Jersey chapter of the American Patriot 3%, known as the Three Percenters, according to the FBI. She had already been on the FBI’s radar after attending online meetings of the militia on Facebook and Telegram. She allegedly wrote: “The revolution will start not by standing by but by standing up.”

Abual-Ragheb had also attended a rally against New Jersey’s Covid restrictions, and NJ Advance Media interviewed her at a pro-Trump rally in Bedminster back in November. A call to her attorney wasn’t returned.

Matt Katz reports on air at WNYC about immigration, refugees, hate, and national security. You can follow him on Twitter at @mattkatz00.

This story has been updated to reflect that Nicolas Moncada is not currently a student at FIT.