Extremists posing as aid workers urge NC locals to tear down cell towers and hit military
A group of anti-government extremists who showed up in western North Carolina promising to provide disaster relief after Hurricane Helene is now threatening to destroy cell-phone towers and sabotage military vehicles.
The group, Veterans on Patrol, attracted attention by setting up a disaster relief staging area in the parking lot of the Ingles grocery store in Lake Lure, about 50 miles from Asheville.
But locals, including some who initially cooperated with the group, began to complain about threats and harassment.
Over the past three weeks, members of the group, which falsely claims that Helene was caused by a “weather weapon,” have been making conspiracy-driven claims that the U.S. military is attempting to kill U.S. citizens with “directed energy weapons.”
Veterans on Patrol’s channel on the encrypted social-media platform Telegram posted a message on Thursday displaying photos of what appears to be a cell tower on a mountaintop. The message asserted that locals “are in Live Exercises where the United States Military is permitted to destroy your homes, bodies and minds,” while suggesting that equipment on the tower “is solely for providing the U.S. military the means to murder Americans.”
“Focus on tearing down their weapons,” the message reads. It continues, “All it takes is one weapon tower being toppled with the stated reason spoken boldly.”
Another message posted in the group’s Telegram channel appears to advocate for sabotaging military vehicles and assets.
“Simple acts of pouring sugar into fuel tanks of military equipment, backup power systems, and personal vehicles of military personnel can wreak havoc on those who murdered all these people out here,” reads the message, which was posted on Wednesday.
Soldiers from Fort Liberty and Fort Campbell have deployed to western North Carolina to assist in the disaster response, along with National Guard members from nine states.
Veterans on Patrol is led by Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, who has a long history of anti-government extremism, dating back at least 10 years. Meyer, according to the extremism watchdog group Southern Poverty Law Center, is not a veteran.
Reached by phone on Friday, Meyer doubled down on the threats.
“Jesus used bullwhips and flipped tables,” he told Raw Story. “We’re going to use our bullwhips and topple towers.”
At first during the interview, Meyer argued that the Telegram messages weren’t advocating for targeting cell towers, saying instead that the group would “surgically” remove the supposed “directed energy weapons." He went on to say that they would provide Appalachian residents with generators and Starlink boxes so they could maintain power and communication links.
Asked about the message referencing “pouring sugar into fuel tanks,” Meyer told Raw Story: “We’re going to destroy your tanks…. You want to get dirty? That’s what we should be doing.”
Veterans on Patrol has promoted multiple conspiracy theories based on false claims since arriving in western North Carolina.
One message posted on Telegram on Oct. 22 claimed that “Helene was a Weather Weapon steered to destroy the area, while also claiming that the investment fund BlackRock is attempting a “land grab” and describing the storm and its aftermath as “an act of war perpetrated against the People.”
As the final day of voting in the presidential election approaches, posts on the group’s Telegram channel have taken on an increasingly urgent tone.
The Oct. 22 post claimed that “stolen elections” are a real phenomenon, along with “weather weapons,” “Satanic pedophiles” and “adrenochrome," which refers to a QAnon conspiracy theory that a cabal of elites tortures children to extract a chemical from their bodies which is then used as a recreational drug.
In another post last week, a Veterans on Patrol member nicknamed “Shepherd” claimed that the U.S. Air Force command is instructing pilots “to deploy additional weather weapons.” The post goes on to say, “These people don’t have 2 weeks to wait for vote and 3 months to hopefully wait for a Regime change.”
Another message on the group channel that was published on Wednesday suggests without basis that Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is the beneficiary of BlackRock’s supposed landgrab.
Speaking to Raw Story, Meyer seemed to all but dare law enforcement to intervene.
“For people to go and do something to prevent weapons from being deployed — that’s not a crime,” he said. “If they want to bring this to court and charge us with conspiracy, then let’s go.”
The FBI did not respond to an inquiry about Veterans on Patrol's activities, but Meyer told Raw Story in an email that he "would imagine the FBI knows full well what we are attempting through Operation Leaning Tower."
Meyer told Raw Story that he notified the office of Gov. Roy Cooper about his "operation." Cooper's office did not immediately respond to a voicemail message from Raw Story.
Phone calls from Raw Story for this story to officials in Lake Lure and Rutherford County, which surrounds the town, went unreturned.
Meyer’s history of extremism dates back to the Bundy Ranch standoff, when armed militants faced down the FBI and other federal agencies in 2014 during a dispute over rancher Cliven Bundy’s refusal to pay grazing fees. Meyer’s involvement in the Bundy Ranch standoff came to light later, when the Oregonian reported that he and a group of friends got into a brawl with other anti-government extremists during the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which Bundy and a group of armed supporters had occupied.
Meyer founded Veterans on Patrol in Arizona in 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Prior to presenting itself as a disaster response group in the aftermath of Helene, Veterans on Patrol has claimed its efforts were directed towards rescuing children from sex trafficking, addressing veteran suicide and dubious claims that the military is maliciously harming civilians. Meyer’s activities have frequently landed him in trouble with law enforcement.
Meyer was arrested twice in 2015 after emergency responders talked him down from a light pole in Surprise, Ariz. in 2015.
In 2018, was arrested by the police in Tucson, Ariz. for trespassing and an outstanding warrant for an assault charge, after occupying a tower on an industrial property. A press release from the Tucson Police Department claimed that Meyer “found an abandoned homeless encampment” on the property, “and fictitiously declared, without evidence or corroboration, that the area was the site of a sex-trafficking ring.”
The Tucson police said they received complaints from Tucson residents that Meyer and his followers had threatened and intimidated them, and Meyer made “multiple threatening and hostile remarks directed towards various elected and appointed officials” through social media.
In the summer of 2024, before Hurricane Helene, Veterans on Patrol was active in Spokane, Wash. In Telegram message from July 2, 2024, Veterans on Patrol announced to the police that it “would no longer be safe” for one of its officers “to work his beat.” The channel also posted the home addresses of city council members.