EXCLUSIVE: As federal agents raced to dismantle an alleged plot targeting President Donald Trump’s UFC Freedom 250 event, investigators were simultaneously making another critical determination: whether the White House event itself could safely go forward.
In a Monday interview with Fox News Digital, FBI Deputy Director Chris Raia said investigators believed they had sufficiently disrupted the alleged conspiracy before the event took place, arguing that agents were monitoring suspects and knew none were in the Washington area when the UFC event was held.
“We absolutely felt very comfortable moving (the UFC event) forward,” Raia said. “We were confident that we had disrupted that main plot.”
The FBI initially arrested five people accused of participating in the plot to kill lawmakers and attendees at the June 14 event. Since then, prosecutors have publicly identified two additional defendants, raising questions about why the event was allowed to proceed while investigators continued pursuing other alleged participants.
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Raia said the additional defendants were “followers” rather than leaders of the conspiracy.
“We were confident that we had the leaders, the main plotters of that, so the rest of the folks were more of the followers that you’re seeing now.”
“There was a lot of security there,” Vice President JD Vance said during a June 16 appearance on Fox News’ “The Five.” “And it turns out the plot was like, not that advanced. They weren’t in town.”
The issue reportedly sparked tensions between federal agencies.
Two senior U.S. officials previously told Fox News that Secret Service leadership wanted to delay publicly disclosing the investigation until additional arrests could be made, fearing that revealing the probe could alert other subjects and complicate the ongoing case.
Raia said the FBI did not share those concerns, arguing that investigators were already monitoring both the alleged ringleaders and other suspected participants.
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“We had that contained or what I would call mitigated very early on even though we didn’t do the arrests,” he said. “We were watching the folks that were planning it. We had them under surveillance. And so we knew that nobody was even close to the DC area at the time that was happening.”
Despite reported disagreements over when to publicly disclose the investigation, Raia emphasized that the FBI and Secret Service worked closely throughout the case.
“That was a joint case with us and the Secret Service,” Raia said.
The agencies jointly assessed the threat before deciding the event could proceed, according to Raia.
“We all talked about that as a group and made that decision to move forward with the UFC 250 event,” he told Fox News Digital.
Deputy Secret Service Director Matthew Quinn, responding to questions about the case at an unrelated event, emphasized that the Secret Service had “led that investigation from the beginning” and suggested investigators intentionally avoided public disclosure while the case remained active.
“In order to maintain the integrity of the investigation and the security plan we chose not to leak it,” Quinn said during a June 16 press conference.
Raia, a career FBI agent and former head of the bureau’s New York Field Office, was appointed FBI co-deputy director in January after the departure of former Deputy Director Dan Bongino. Before leading the New York office, Raia served as one of the FBI’s top counterterrorism officials and has been with the bureau since 2003.
According to court records, the alleged conspirators first connected through a TikTok community known as “Vanguard of the Old” before moving their discussions to encrypted messaging platforms including Signal, Telegram and SimpleX. Investigators say members organized themselves into tiered roles that included frontline operators, drone operators, recruiters, logistics personnel and technical support.
Court records indicate the network extended well beyond the suspects initially charged. After obtaining a warrant for the phone of Ohio defendant Tycen Proper, investigators allegedly discovered a primary Signal chat containing approximately 19 participants, along with smaller operational chats organized by role and location.
Raia said the case is far from closed: 14 to 15 FBI field offices are assisting in the investigation.
“We’re going to continue to work that case aggressively,” he said. “You uncover one layer, and you see four more layers.”
The case also underscored one of the FBI’s biggest investigative challenges: encrypted communications platforms.
“That is a gap for us in encrypted communications platforms,” Raia said.
Raia said investigators attempt to penetrate those networks through confidential human sources, undercover employees and other lawful investigative techniques.
“We try to infiltrate, obviously, with CHSs, UCEs, again, inside the bounds of the Constitution,” he said, referring to “confidential human sources” and “undercover employees.”
But Raia acknowledged the FBI does not have visibility into every encrypted chat where criminal activity may be occurring.
In the UFC case, he pointed to Proper’s mother as the catalyst who helped investigators uncover the alleged conspiracy before it could advance further.
“We had a concerned parent that really launched this entire UFC 250 case off,” Raia said. “Concerned parent called in on her son.”
The tip ultimately led investigators to Proper’s phone and the alleged network of encrypted chats that prosecutors say contained discussions about drones, sniper positions, escape routes and attack planning. Without that initial call, Raia suggested, the alleged plot may have remained hidden inside encrypted platforms that continue to challenge law enforcement visibility.
The UFC case also reflects what FBI officials say is a broader shift in the threat landscape. Rather than large, hierarchical terrorist organizations, investigators are increasingly concerned about lone actors and small groups that can organize online, acquire commercially available technology and develop attack plans with little outside support.
“I’m less concerned about a mass 9/11 style attack than I am a lone single person, a single attacker,” he said.
While discussing security preparations for the FIFA World Cup, he described drone-based attacks as one of the FBI’s top concerns and warned that tactics seen on battlefields overseas could eventually migrate to the United States.
Investigators say they saw signs that the alleged network may have been considering targets beyond the White House UFC event.
In a newly unsealed court filing, an FBI agent said he believed messages exchanged among alleged conspirators referenced a potential attack on a FIFA World Cup match scheduled for July 3 in Kansas City, Missouri.
“I think that is a threat that is emerging,” Raia said. “We have seen that overseas, and it’s only a matter of time for somebody brings that type of attack, that threat vector here to the United States.”
The alleged UFC plot illustrates many of those concerns. Prosecutors say the group allegedly used encrypted communications, divided members into specialized roles, discussed drone operations and coordinated activity across multiple states without relying on a traditional terrorist organization or foreign network.
This story is part of Fox News Digital’s exclusive interview with FBI Deputy Director Chris Raia. Additional reporting from the interview will be published in the coming days.
Fox News’ Mike Ruiz contributed to this report.