A 19-year-old from Missouri rammed a U-Haul into security barriers near the White House overnight, and made threatening statements about President Joe Biden.
When investigators searched the truck, they found a large swastika flag inside.
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Police have since identified the driver as Sai Varshith Kandula from Chesterfield, a St. Louis suburb.
A LinkedIn page appearing to belong to Kandula shows that he graduated from high school last year, and was hoping to pursue a career in coding or data analytics.
Investigators believe that Kandula “intentionally” rammed his vehicle into the bollards by the White House, and he’s since been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, threatening to kill, kidnap or inflict harm on the president, vice president or a family member, and reckless operation of a motor vehicle and trespassing.
Anthony Guglielmi, the Secret Service’s chief of communications, said in a statement that the “preliminary investigation reveals the driver may have intentionally struck the security barriers.”
No one was injured.
The incident has already set off a firestorm of conspiracy theories, with many of the usual online personalities making baseless declarations that it was a “false flag.”
Those conspiracies are getting a major boost in terms of visibility as many of the people spreading them are now verified Twitter blue subscribers, which means their posts feature prominently under news stories about the crash.
Some conspiracy theorists are even trying to weave together several recent disparate news stories — last night’s U-Haul crash, the missing 30-ton shipment of fertilizer that can be used as explosive material, and the hundreds of members of Patriot Front, a white nationalist group, recently marching on DC. All this, according to galaxy-brained internet commentators, suggests that the government is laying the groundwork for a coming “false flag” attack that they can blame on white supremacists.
