Jeffrey Clark, who has publicly called himself a Nazi, is a Bloomingdale resident.

Miki Jourdan / Flickr

A 30-year-old Bloomingdale resident was arrested late last week on gun charges, and he made his first U.S. District Court appearance on Tuesday. Jeffrey Clark’s arrest came after family members reported him to the FBI because he told them he fantasized about murdering “Jews and blacks” and said online that the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting was “a dry run for things to come,” according to court documents. Clark referred to himself as a Nazi in a video taken during a rally in front of the White House in April 2017, first flagged by the Huffington Post.

The affidavit of his arrest contains extensive details about Clark’s alleged activities around D.C. and online. Here are some of the major takeaways:

  • Clark lived with his father, sister, and younger brother in a Bloomingdale rowhouse. His 23-year-old brother, Edward “Teddy” Clark, committed suicide at Theodore Roosevelt Island using a Beretta pistol on October 27, shortly after the Tree of Life massacre, per court documents, which also note that the younger Clark brother was found with two additional magazines of ammunition, both of which contained 20 additional rounds of ammunition, as well as eight remaining rounds in the pistol. Family members told police they “did not know why Edward Clark had so many bullets with him, but they believed that he may have been planning to commit an act of violence the day that he died.”
  • After Teddy Clark’s death, a D.C. homicide detective visited the Clark home, per the court documents. Both brothers had registered two guns in D.C., including the Beretta, though police did not ask Clark about his two firearms, according to the affidavit. Family members ultimately sought to confiscate the firearms and Clark gave them four boxes, which contained parts to weapons that were not registered to either Clark brother, per court documents. When inspected by FBI agents, the boxes contained items used to modify AR-15 assault rifles, according to the affidavit, which notes that agents also recovered two boxes of AR-15 rifle conversion kits and four high-capacity AR-15 magazines.
  • The Clark brothers “openly discussed killing Jews and black people, and admired Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, and Charles Manson. According to [family members], Jeffrey and Edward Clark believed that there would be a race revolution, and they wanted to expedite it,” according to court documents, and they attended the fatal “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. HuffPost reports that one Bloomingdale neighbor suspects the brothers of distributing white supremacist flyers left on area cars in June 2017. Those anti-immigration and white supremacist flyers were associated with the group Vanguard America, which advocates for an exclusively white America (similar ones also appeared on the University of Maryland campus). Family members showed law enforcement a photo of the Clark brothers holding a Vanguard America flag, per the court documents.
  • The Clark brothers were also hired by Jack Posobiec, a right-wing media figure who has pushed the discredited “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, to contribute to Posobiec’s documentary about Seth Rich, HuffPost reports. Rich was a 27-year-old Democratic National Committee staffer murdered in Bloomingdale whose death has become the subject of multiple far right conspiracy theories. But for the most part, per court documents, the brothers “would stay at home a lot, smoke marijuana, and play video games such as ‘Ethnic Cleansing.'” The affidavit also presents evidence that Clark smoked methamphetamine.
  • On November 2, family members contacted the FBI, saying that Clark had “become more outspoken about his radical views” after his brother’s death, according to court documents, which added that he defended the actions of Robert Bowers, the man who killed 11 people worshipping at the Tree of Life Synagogue. He said the victims deserved it and believe that “a homosexual Jewish couple was having an adopted baby circumcised that week, and that justified Bowers’ actions,” the documents state. Family called the FBI because Clark was “really riled up” and “agitated,” per the affidavit, and they feared he could be a danger to himself or others.
  • Clark was active on Gab, the social network popular with white supremacists. Gab has received renewed scrutiny following the massacre at Tree of Life because Bowers announced his intended actions on the site shortly before he entered the synagogue. Clark and Bowers were friends on Gab, the FBI determined. Clark’s Gab username was “DC Bowl Gang,” an apparent reference to the haircut of Dylann Roof, the man convicted of killing nine African American worshippers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. Clark’s profile page describes him thusly: “Aka DC Stormer (RIP), “Meth-Smoking, Pipe Bomb making, mailman-murding,#Fed,#DemoKKKrat, Che Guevara of the altright, Glenn beck, Not a NEET – just bathing in White priviledge, Bowlcut Nationalism is the only way forward. . .” According to the court documents, he wrote that the “fucking kikes that got shot by the hero #RobertBowers were all active supporters of pedophilia… and every last one of them deserved exactly what happened to them and so much worse.”
  • Clark was no stranger to local antifascist groups or to reporters who cover white supremacist movements.

MacAuley, a local antifascist organizer, says that, after she took those photos, Clark sent her a death threat. He also told a HuffPost reporter this April that they would be going “feet first into a woodchipper,” the outlet reports, adding that the reporter told the police about this threat in August, though no action was taken by law enforcement at the time.

Clark’s case was transferred to U.S. District Court, where he was ordered held until Friday, the Washington Post reports.

When D.C. officials were preparing for an influx of white supremacists for the Unite the Right 2 rally, Mayor Muriel Bowser said that they were readying themselves for people who would arrive in the region “with the sole purpose of spewing hate.” But, as these court documents indicate, some of the people who hold these beliefs are already here.

Filed Under: