Phoenix man suspected of political terror shapes controversial 2024 cycle

Shots were fired at an empty Democratic Party presidential campaign office. Booby-trapped political signs were built and placed nearby. The next afternoon, Jeffrey Kelly left his house without his cell phone. It was a sign, authorities said, that he did not want his location tracked.

The authorities took no chances when they stopped him. They used a device called a grappler that sent a mesh around the rear tire of his vehicle, immobilizing it. Cops and officers came towards him.

Authorities found an assortment of weapons in his SUV. It led them to believe, according to a court filing, that he was on his way to do something terrible. The court papers talked about an upcoming “mass casualty event.”

Kelly was arrested Wednesday and was ordered held at a A $1 million cash bond. He is facing multiple charges, including three offenses of making false terrorist threatsregarding the shootings and the signs intended to cut anyone who tried to remove them.

Kelly’s arrest came less than two weeks before the 2024 general election.

It happened during a month that began with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security circulating a bulletin to law enforcement agencies warning of potential domestic terrorists who harbor “election-related grievances, such as perceptions of election fraud or anger toward perceived political opponents.”

The arrest took place in a state that is among the few involved in the presidential race. The Phoenix area saw a parade of candidates and surrogates in October, including both presidential and vice-presidential candidates U.S. Senator J.D. Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

Vice President Kamala Harris was in Phoenix on October 11. Former President Donald Trump held a rally in Tempe on Thursday.

It came as authorities were still prosecuting cases related to the 2020 election. In October 2024, sentencings were completed for people convicted of sending online threats to election officials in Arizona during the previous US presidential election.

It came as millions of Phoenix-area residents prepared to send in their ballots early or made plans to vote in person. Those ballots would be recorded at an election headquarters south of downtown Phoenix, where security gates have been installed and dust on the fences prevents spectators from seeing the parking lot.

Wednesday at a news conference providing details of Kelly’s arrest, Tempe Police Chief Ken McCoy asked the public to remain vigilant. He expressed optimism that the elections would be held without violence.

“We hope that people can find civil ways to resolve their differences,” he said, “and that the days leading up to our elections and beyond will be peaceful.”

Detective: Kelly’s actions were intended to be highly visible and to instill fear

The field office for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign opened in July, but appeared designed not to attract attention. There was no sign that it was a Democratic Party operation. The door was under a sign advertising a barbershop in the same Tempe Square.

Peering through the window, you could see Harris’ campaign signs mounted on a wall. It’s unclear whether Jeffrey Kelly looked that closely before embarking on what authorities describe as a fear campaign.

Around midnight one night in September, police said, Kelly pointed a gun at the glass windows and door of his SUV and fired several times. Days later he would do it again. And then a third time.

The office was empty. Authorities said Kelly’s intent was not necessarily to hurt anyone, but to scare the Democrats working inside.

And in mid-October he came up with a new plan to do just that.

Kelly set up a makeshift advertising factory in his backyard, authorities say. There he created political signs, some designed to mimic the fonts and colors of those used in real campaigns.

He taped utility knives around some of the signs, authorities said. They did not explicitly state the reason in documents. But if someone tries to remove a plate and grabs it without seeing the blades, that person’s hands could be cut.

Bags of powder were placed on the backs of some signs, authorities said. Next to those bags were profane handwritten notes warning that the substance was a biohazard. It ended up being baking powder.

The intent was not to poison anyone, authorities said. But to scare people.

The actions were “strategically placed” to be highly visible, a detective wrote in a probable cause statement filed with the court. The document said it was clear that Kelly was “trying to sow fear around the upcoming election.”

At Kelly’s home, located in a well-manicured subdivision of Ahwatukee Foothills, federal agents found a stash of weapons. They started taking inventory of his open garage and carport Wednesday morning before loading them into a moving truck. According to court papers, they found 120 weapons of various types.

A lawyer for Kelly denied all allegations in court and described his client, a retired aerospace engineer, as a borderline genius who had never had any brushes with the law before.

“We all want to agree,” Kelly’s attorney Jason Squires said in court, that “we want a safe, legal and fair election. We don’t want any interference.” Squires said the charges against his client were exaggerated, and that the bond was based on the premise that authorities had stopped a “9/11 event in the making.”

Squires said the terrorism charges were the result of a simpler act: posting signs. “The allegations all relate to signals,” he said. “No one was hurt, thank God.”

Psychologist: ‘You don’t need many people to cause problems’

A clinical psychologist at the University of Michigan who has studied a link between gun purchases and individuals’ propensity for extreme thoughts, said Kelly seems to fit a pattern he’s seen in his research.

“There’s a group of right-wing people who are amassing guns and believing in these kinds of conspiracy theories about the government,” said researcher Brian Hicks, a professor in the department of psychiatry. “And we may have to take up arms against the government, depending on how the elections go.”

Hicks began his research on gun ownership, based primarily on national online surveys, after seeing armed protesters marching around the Michigan Capitol after the 2020 election. He said he noticed a significant increase in conspiracy beliefs among those purchasing guns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is not clear when Kelly, who according to his lawyer participated in shooting competitions and was a “sportsman,” amassed his arsenal.

Hicks said another characteristic of the population that bought guns during the pandemic era was high education and high income. “Guns are expensive,” Hicks said.

He said he was not worried about a “popular uprising” by armed citizens based on the election results, but he said a lone person could have a strong effect on the national psyche.

“You could get these types of people committing some kind of terrorist act,” Hicks said. “You don’t need a lot of people to cause these kinds of problems.”

Kelly seemed to be the kind of neighbor that most on his street avoided. One woman, who described herself as a friend of Kelly’s, declined to speak to Republic reporters. Others, who described him as someone somewhere between a quiet man and a strange recluse, did not want to be named.

Authorities released some of what they found during the search of his home in court documents. This is usually a preliminary file, where the judge receives just enough information to take a suspect into custody. In this case, that information resulted in two $500,000 cash bonds to be posted for Kelly’s release.

More evidence would come in future court filings. Just like Kelly’s lawyer who would argue his side of the story.

And by then, Arizona and the United States will have a very contentious presidential election and its aftermath to grapple with.

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