The New York City Police Department arrested a conspiracy theorist who issued death threats against former Vice President and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and allegedly travelled to the city carrying over a dozen knives, the Daily Beast reported. The suspect also live-streamed her own arrest on Facebook.
New York state has strict laws pertaining to knives, and the woman arrested, 37-year-old Jessica Prim, is facing 18 charges of criminal possession of a weapon and an additional marijuana possession charge. According to the New York Daily News, officers said that she drove her car down a service road on Pier 86 near the USS Intrepid on April 29 and began acting erratically enough that a security guard phoned the police. At that point, law enforcement said they learned the Secret Service was searching for her after she threatened Biden live on Facebook.
According to the Daily Beast, Prim’s Facebook page was chock full of references to QAnon, a ludicrous and labyrinthine conspiracy theory asserting that the so-called “deep state” (meaning both the massive military-intelligence complex known as the Blob and any number of other nefarious actors) and Democratic Party officials are satanic/Jewish/communist/Illuminati pedophiles (take your pick) who engage in the ritual sacrifice of children. QAnon is based around anonymous 4chan posts from a person or persons unknown who claim to be high-level government sources informed that Donald Trump is preparing to round them up and his other political enemies en masse in a crackdown called “the Storm.” This is supposedly a good thing.
Shortly before her arrest, the Daily Beast reported, Prim posted on Facebook saying “Hillary Clinton and her assistant, Joe Biden and Tony Podesta need to be taken out in the name of Babylon! I can’t be set free without them gone. Wake me up!!!!!”
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The site wrote that Prim appeared to be looking for the USNS Comfort, the Navy hospital ship dispatched to the city during the coronavirus pandemic and has been a particular focus for some right-wing extremists and other conspiracy theorists. (Some QAnon supporters believe that the ship is being used to hold children captured by pedophiles, while others think it’s a prison ship slated for use in Trump’s roundup.) A railroad engineer espousing his own conspiratorial beliefs was arrested in Los Angeles in late March after allegedly running a train off the rails in the general direction of the USNS Mercy, another Navy hospital ship docked at port on the opposite coast.
The USS Intrepid, near where she was arrested, is not the Comfort but a World War II-era aircraft carrier that has been converted to a museum. According to the Daily News, Prim live-streamed her arrest and was apparently under the impression she had arrived at the correct vessel.
“I’m so scared… I’m at the Comfort, you guys,” Prim told viewers. “I think I’m Babylon.”
Officers also said that Prim asked “Have you guys heard about the kids?” as well as stated, “I was watching the press conferences with Donald Trump on TV… I felt like he was talking to me.”
At least two prior murders have been linked to QAnon, including the execution of reputed Gambino crime family boss Francesco “Frankie Boy” Cali outside his home on Staten Island in March 2018 by a suspect who allegedly believed he was under the protection of Trump. Another QAnon devotee, Arizona man Matthew Wright, pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in February 2020 over a June 2018 incident in which he barricaded the Hoover Dam with an armoured truck with a rifle in hand.