As soon as Anthony Quinn Warner was named a person of interest in an apparent suicide bombing on Christmas Day in Nashville, Tennessee, conspiracy circles began to cast doubt on his identity or to applaud his actions.
Warner, 63, is accused of detonating a bomb in downtown Nashville early on Christmas morning, damaging more than 40 companies, killing himself and injuring several others. Investigators have yet to identify the reason for the attack. However, a certain pro-Trump segment appears to have taken the suicide bomber’s side, with another Tennessee man allegedly attempting a similar threat – albeit without any real explosives – on Sunday.
Authorities have not announced Warner’s possible motives, or whether the incident is being treated as an act of terror. Early reports suggest that the FBI is investigating whether Warner (which police say had blown a recreational vehicle bomb outside an AT&T building) was influenced by conspiracy theories about 5G technology. A real estate agent who worked with Warner, who was questioned by the FBI, told the Nashville WSMV that agents asked about Warner’s interest in the technology, but did not know whether he had such beliefs.
Even before these potential reasons came to light, however, some conspiracy movements were already seeking to exonerate Warner. Moments after his name came up in connection with the case, subscribers to the far-right QAnon conspiracy movement began to flood Twitter with absurd ideas, falsely claiming that Warner was an actor, partly because another Anthony Quinn was a Hollywood star before he died in 2001. Other followers of QAnon broke his name to associate his initials with invented clues or to dissect parts of his name to display “Q WARN”.
Theorizing has not stopped at anonymous Twitter accounts. Lin Wood, a lawyer trying to annul the election in favor of President Donald Trump, seems to cast doubts about the attack in several tweets. In one, he included Warner’s name in a tweet about false accusations. In another, he tweeted photos of a crumbling stretch of downtown Nashville, noting that “that trailer certainly had a powerful impact. Or not? “
Wood did not return a request for clarification on the tweets.
In turn, Trump, who was previously enraged at acts of property damage, accusing leftists of terror, was remarkably silenced in the bombing.
“President Trump has been informed of the explosion in Nashville, Tennessee, and will continue to receive regular updates,” White House spokesman Judd Deere told the Washington Post in a statement on Friday. “The president is grateful for the incredible first aid and prays for those who were injured.”
Trump has not yet tweeted about the attack. Asked if Trump had made or was planning a comment, Deere told The Daily Beast: “I am his spokesman and I have, so yes, he did.”
While supporters of QAnon debated Warner’s innocence, the pro-terror channels on the Telegram messaging platform openly embraced their tactics. Some of these channels, which call for civil war and violent attacks, encourage the possibility that Warner may have been a terrorist not influenced by the QA – or, at the origin of these groups who pray for the violence of former conspiracy theorists, a “boomer bomber. “
On Sunday, another Tenneseean reportedly mimicked Warner’s bomb threat, albeit without the bomb. James Turgeon, 33, is accused of driving a truck through Rutherford County, adjacent to Nashville, while broadcasting a warning similar to what Warner gave in his trailer before the bomb exploded. Although Turgeon played similar audio, officials said Turgeon and Warner seemed disconnected.
Turgeon’s motives are also unknown, although his digital footprint is greater than that of Warner, who did not appear to have public social media under his own name. On Facebook, Turgeon shared several memes about staying with Trump on November 7, after President-elect Joe Biden’s victory became apparent.
Turgeon, who is on $ 500,000 bail, has been charged with two criminal charges of submitting a false report and one of tampering with evidence. It was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer.
David Rausch, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, told the media on Monday that Turgeon appeared to have grafted the Warner bombing.
“There is no connection other than the individual taking advantage of the situation,” said Rausch on Monday.