Rod, if you have a link to the full arrest warrant and affidavit for Jeremiah Ruffini, I would like to read the whole thing to be sure I understand what's going on. I read the American Greatness article, which is obviously sympathetic to the Ruffinis, but it does help paint a clearer picture of the situation through some of the smaller details that others might gloss over.
A few things to point out and clarify about the posted warrant and other things I've picked up from some of the other reporting on this story:
1. It does not appear that anyone is now facing or has ever faced Federal criminal charges for any of this. From the American Greatness story, that appears to have mostly been cobbled together from the family's account of events on GiveSendGo, and from an account at Catholic Vote, it seems that the boy was charged with something that eventually resulted in a misdemeanor conviction for "breach of peace."
2. It does not appear that the father, Jeremiah Ruffini, is facing any type of Federal or felony state charges for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. He and his brother, the actual owner of the firearms, appear to be facing state charges for allowing the boy to have access to the firearms and use them in a way that the state thinks is an offense. That's one reason I'd like to see the whole arrest warrant and affidavit, so I can see exactly what they're being charged with and what the elements are.
3. The affidavit was submitted and sworn to in state court by a Connecticut State Police detective named Sean Brennan assigned to the FBI as a Federal Task Force Officer (TFO) as part of the one of the myriad of Joint Terrorism Task Forces that absolutely every jurisdiction with a population of more people than livestock jumped on in the wake of 9/11. We're not chasing Muslim terrorists as much, so now they're chasing white supremacists. The only people who get more excited about playing Junior G- man than actual G-men do are police officers assigned as TFOs. (Full disclosure: Once upon a time, I was a TFO. I got over it.)
Here's what I think happened: Elements within the FBI/ CSP/ New Haven PD JTTF were, at a minimum, monitoring Telegram and other social media for "extremists." Whether or not they were actively participating in them is not known (although I personally suspect that they were) but, at a minimum they knew in April of 2023 that the boy was posting threatening content about attacking synagogues and the Freemasons...
And did nothing about it until May of 2023 when the principal of the high school called to report the suspicious person leaving the "It's OK to be White" flyer near the school. Now Somebody In The Community has a complaint and Something had to be done.
So, they took (finally) took action on a suspect that had made concerning statements at least weeks earlier. To a certain degree that's defensible as they now had something that suggested whoever they had been monitoring was doing a little more than just talking shit online. OTOH, Karen asked to see the manager over a note being found that DOES NOT MAKE ANY THREATS at all and suddenly everybody's working overtime.
They used a claim of exigency to get Telegram to release the information they needed about the suspect account without a warrant or a subpoena (although they should have filed for and submitted one after they got the return from Telegram) in order to get the information they needed from the suspect's internet service provider to identify the boy. Then they looked him up on Facebook or TikTok or whatever to get his pictures. (In paragraph 7, when he's talking about "reliable source revealing the identity of the subject" and how "FBI New Haven exploited this information" using "both closed source and open source databases," that's what he's talking about. I also suspect some of the information came from members of the JTTF actually working undercover in the Telegram chats themselves. Don't know that, but the argle- bargle in paragraph 7 is the kind of stuff you put in an affidavit to firm up your probable cause without admitting in a public document that you were doing undercover stuff.)
They did a background on the family, discovered dad was a convicted felon and uncle had a bunch of registered firearms, and decided to use CT's Red Flag law to get into the house. Once it was determined that the primary suspect was a juvenile, the actual FBI agents would have stood down in terms of being the primary investigators, although it appears that FBI assets were used to support what was at that point a State criminal investigation.
The boy was, I suspect, overcharged with a felony for terroristic threats or something, which up until the principal turned in the "OK to be white" note, no one was actually taking that seriously. (Go back and look at the timeline. Whoever was monitoring/ participating in the Telegram chats would have had the pictures and videos of the rifle and him walking around the school back in April. Nothing substantial was done until an uncontrollable member of the general public had a concern in May.)
That case ended up with a weak- ass plea to disturbing the peace because... that's all he really did. A lot of man hours and overtime has been expended with very little to show for it, so now Dad and Uncle have caught equally weak charges in order to get something on somebody to justify the expenditure.
TL/DR: The Ruffinis are not angels, but the apparatus of the state is being weaponized against them in pursuit of something that nobody was taking seriously until someone outside the silo complained. You don't have to buy their claims of being Trad Catholic Martyrs to think that the whole situation stinks and kick in a few bucks to help them out.
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