Attempted FBI Shooter Ricky Shiffer Updated His Truth Social Account Mid-Shootout

By Nate Parker | Politics | August 12, 2022 |

By Nate Parker | Politics | August 12, 2022 |

The New York Times identified the attempted Ohio FBI shooter as a man named Ricky Shiffer. Ricky participated in the January 6 insurrection extravaganza at the Capitol. Ricky, a frequent Truth Social poster, was so outraged by the FBI seeking classified materials with a search warrant after his favorite former president refused to abide by the subpoena and return them that he called for an armed uprising. Ricky thought a logical response to the actions of a Florida FBI team was to kill agents in Ohio. So Ricky grabbed his AR-15 and a nail gun before proceeding to the Cincinnati FBI building. Ricky thought a nail gun would break through the bulletproof glass separating him from the agents. Ricky was wrong, and after fleeing alerted his fellow patriots to the fatal flaw in his otherwise perfect plan with a mid-rampage social media update.

If this is indeed his account, it seems he stopped mid standoff to post on Trump’s social media site! Wild shit https://t.co/WGky744DG4 pic.twitter.com/DUaabm9qdl

— Jared Holt (@jaredlholt) August 11, 2022

Ricky Shiffer was subsequently shot to death by Ohio State Patrol officers during a standoff. I assume he found suicide-by-cop preferable to death-from-embarrassment.

This moment was inevitable. A terminal case of brain worms caused by Fox News, by NewsMax, by OAN and by the former president’s own lies on his own social media platform led directly to an unstable young man launching an attack on federal law enforcement. His incompetence meant no one else died, this time. Next time? Who knows. What we can say is Shiffer won’t be the last, any more than Ashli Babbitt. The incoherent anger that subsidizes MAGA media means they can only ever escalate. It’s why all but a few of the Republican establishment and anonymous Trump allies went whole-hog on the corrupt FBI theory. It won’t matter to the Right that the same agency they lauded for going through Hillary Clinton’s email server with a fine-tooth comb was looking for — and by all accounts found — state secrets in Mar-a-Lago. While every other major news network this morning runs the news that the Mar-a-Lago search warrant was procured because Trump brought home nuclear documents like they were a set of shop keys, Fox News doesn’t mention “nuclear” on its home page in any context but Ukraine. None of its articles state what agents were looking for, nor that Trump was subpoenaed prior to the search. You can be sure that if Fox isn’t talking about it, none of its fringe competition is either. There’s no reason to think that had Ricky Shiffer postponed his attack by a single day that last night’s news would have changed his actions. It’s possible he wouldn’t have even known.

A twitter profile that appears to belong to alleged Ohio FBI attacker Ricky Shiffer shows a reply guy seemingly radicalized by far right political figures like Andy Ngo, Dinesh D'Souza, and Josh Hawley. pic.twitter.com/c3EL2ANyDh

— The Sparrow Project (@sparrowmedia) August 11, 2022

Ricky Shiffer’s suicide-by-cop is more of the embarrassing tragicomedy synonymous with our current era. I want to feel bad for him. It’s not entirely Ricky’s fault he was an idiot. We don’t need a yarn wall to trace his motives. We only need to take a look at his social media history to see he was lied to, again and again, by the usual suspects. He responded to calls for resistance and violence from the likes of Don Jr. and Marjorie Taylor Greene. He retweeted Trump’s lies about the Mar-a-Lago “raid” and appears to have fully believed in the twice-impeached reality star’s fantasy world. He was programmed as thoroughly as a Mike Lindell OAN appearance. As FBI Director Christopher Wray put it in a Thursday statement:

“Unfounded attacks on the integrity of the FBI erode respect for the rule of law and are a grave disservice to the men and women who sacrifice so much to protect others. Violence and threats against law enforcement, including the FBI, are dangerous and should be deeply concerning to all Americans,”

We all know who he was talking about. Far be it from me to stand up for law enforcement by default, but we can be pretty sure the Cincinnati FBI office had nothing to do with the Mar-a-Lago raid. But Ricky was brainwashed into thinking his attack would still have a result.

On the other hand, again like Ashli Babbitt, Ricky ultimately made his own decisions. Deluded by his political heroes into believing Trump’s lies and by YouTube into thinking a nail gun could defeat bulletproof glass, Ricky armed himself and attacked an office over 1000 miles from Mar-a-Lago. He was so addicted to the right-wing social media sphere that he took time from his terrorist attack to post about it! Only being shot while posting could make Ricky more of a caricature.

The “saddest” part, to use the term very loosely, is that Shiffer is already a footnote as well as a joke. His fellow “patriots” have already swept him under the rug, no doubt grateful for the distractions caused by Merrick Garland’s press conference and the leaked report that the FBI was searching for genuine state secrets at Mar-a-Lago. Far from the martyr he wanted to be, Ricky became a brief chuckle in the unending torrent of political news. Truth Social has since deleted his account, of course. They can’t just leave evidence they enabled violence lying around for anyone to see. But the internet is forever, even if Ricky Shiffer was not, and we have receipts.

Ricky Walter Shiffer, the suspect in the attack on the FBI office in Cincinnati, was very active on Truth Social in the days after the Mar-a-Lago search.

“I’ll probably be one of the first ones dead,” Shiffer wrote in one of his posts. (h/t @whitoferin) pic.twitter.com/YJnc320lhk

— The Recount (@therecount) August 12, 2022