Justin Olsen created a Discord server for his iFunny subscribers where he allegedly threatened to kill federal officers.
An 18-year-old Ohio man charged Monday with threatening a federal officer allegedly posted extensively online about mass shootings, specifically targeting Planned Parenthood.
According to an affidavit, the bulk of Justin Olsen’s radicalized content was posted under the name ArmyOfChrist on meme-hosting app iFunny.
Federal agents seized 15 rifles, 10 semiautomatic pistols, and 10,000 rounds of ammunition during the arrest earlier this month.
Investigators said Olsen admitted that he was posting on iFunny under the name ArmyOfChrist and told the FBI during his arrest that his posts were supposed to be a joke.
He described his posts about shooting federal agents as “a hyperbolic conclusion based on the results of the Waco siege.”
The FBI began investigating the iFunny account in February. As it gained more subscribers, Olsen created a Discord server to privately interact with his followers, a common phenomenon in radicalized online spaces. It was there that he allegedly threatened federal officers.
In a post on his iFunny account, Olsen wrote, "A few people have requested this recently, and I think it will allow for a better dialogue, so I have created a Discord server."
The ArmyOfChrist iFunny account has over 5,000 subscribers and is still up, but several of the posts on the account advertising Olsen's Discord server were taken down on Tuesday.
The ArmyOfChrist server had around 40 users. It appears it was taken down after inquires from BuzzFeed News.
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, a spokesperson for iFunny said directing users from an iFunny account to a Discord server could be against user guidelines, depending on how it's done.
"iFunny is the most influential mobile app among young adults in the US," the spokesperson said. "We have over 10 million unique US users in app per month. It's approximately equal to 25% of the young adults population of the US (from 43 million young adults as per government stats). We assume that percent of the potential criminals among them has 100% correlation with the percent of the potential criminals among the whole society."