A former Navy submarine technician was arrested after police said drove an SUV into FBI headquarters near Atlanta on Monday afternoon. It is still unclear why the suspect, Ervin Lee Bolling, attempted to force entry into the headquarters, but research by Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan nonprofit that conducts public interest research and shared exclusively with WIRED, has found that accounts believed to be linked to Bolling shared numerous conspiracy theories on social media platforms, including on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
Just after noon Monday, Bolling rammed his burnt orange SUV with South Carolina license plates into the final barrier of FBI Atlanta headquarters, Matthew Upshaw, an FBI agent assigned to the Atlanta office, wrote in an affidavit Tuesday. Upshaw added that after Bolling crashed the SUV, he left the car and tried to follow an FBI employee into the secure parking lot. When officers ordered Bolling to sit on a curb, he refused and attempted to reenter the building. The affidavit also stated that Bolling resisted arrest when officers subsequently tried to detain him.
Bolling was charged Tuesday with destruction of government property, according to court records reviewed by WIRED.
Researchers at Advance Democracy identified an account on The handle name is also similar to usernames on other platforms such as Telegram and Cash App, which bear similarities to a Facebook page with Bolling’s name. The profile photo used in the X account also resembles a photo of the same man that appears on Bolling’s public Facebook profile. The X account is currently set to private, but dozens of old messages from the account are still publicly visible via the Internet Archive.
In December 2020, the The X account associated with Bolling replied, “I’m awake. I’m just looking for a good militia to join.”
Around the same time, social media accounts apparently associated with Bolling repeatedly promoted QAnon content and interacted with QAnon promoters, including posting a link to a now-deleted QAnon-associated channel on YouTube alongside the comment: “Release the Kraken” – in direct reference to Sidney Powell’s failed legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
What is believed to be Bolling’s Facebook account also contained several posts related to anti-vaccine memes.
The accounts also posted in support of former President Donald Trump. In December 2020, “I love you” was posted in response to a post on X from former President Donald Trump falsely claiming the election was rigged by Democrats.
Courtney Bolling, identified on Facebook as the suspect’s wife, did not respond to requests for comment by phone or messages sent to her social media profiles. There is no legal advisor registered for Bolling.
It is as yet unclear how Bolling came to embrace these beliefs, but far-right groups and extremists have used social media platforms for decades as a way to spread conspiracies and radicalize new members. There have been numerous examples of this in recent years far-right groups that make claims or threats online which have been fast followed by violence in the real world.
