LIVE: Trump Rally Arrest Press Conference

Coming here today. I am Chad Bianco. I'm the sheriff of Riverside County and we are obviously here to talk about an incident that occurred yesterday at the rally that former President Trump had in Coachella. There has been a lot of media stir beginning last night with social media and further on today about the arrest and so I am here to give you as much information as I can. I will answer all of the questions that you have. Keep in mind that the information that I'm going to give you may not be all of the information that I have but because of what we're doing and because of the investigation that will obviously continue concerning this, there are some things that I cannot give you or that I will not give you but I will do everything I can to answer your questions. So to begin with, yesterday afternoon before former President Trump arrived to the rally, we made contact with an individual on the inner perimeter of our operation at the rally. As you can imagine, this was a very large event in regard to previous attempts on the president's life. This was not something that we were taking lightly. We had a very detailed plan in place on how we were going to keep not only the former president safe but all of the participants or the attendees of the rally safe. So in general terms, I will tell you that we had a larger outside perimeter and then an inside perimeter that was completely controlled by us, by Riverside County Sheriff's deputies and both of them served different purposes. We did not keep residents from their homes. We did not keep people that were traveling through the area from going through if they had a legitimate reason to go through. So the outside perimeter was basically to allow people in that we thought belonged there. The inside perimeter was to make sure and to make sure people were proceeding in the right direction. The way it worked yesterday is only people that were allowed inside the perimeter, the outside perimeter in a vehicle, was if you lived there or if you had documentation that said you were going to this rally in the form of an email with VIP credentials or press credentials. Those vehicles were allowed in, there were no other vehicles allowed. So that outside perimeter, I will give you his name, the name that we have, and I'm going to put an asterisk by it as I explain this later, but we have his name as Vem, V-E-M Miller, M-I-L-L-E-R, and his birth date is 10-26-1974. And the reason why I gave it to you like that is I will explain later. He approached the outside perimeter, gave all indications that he belonged there, that he was a participant that was allowed to get into VIP and a press corps, and so he was allowed through that outer perimeter. As he got to the inside perimeter where deputies were conducting obviously a more thorough evaluation of the vehicles that were coming in, there were many irregularities that popped up. The deputy noticed that the interior of the vehicle was in quite disarray. The vehicle had an obviously fake license plate, and that prompted further investigation from our deputy into why the person was there and what he was doing. During that investigation, the deputy eventually found multiple passports with multiple names, multiple driver's licenses with different names. The vehicle was unregistered, and the license plate was what we in law enforcement would recognize as one that is homemade and indicative of a group of individuals that claim to be sovereign citizens, and the deputy assumes that he was part of that identifying group. So during the investigation, obviously those identification documents were found in addition to a loaded handgun and a shotgun. Obviously this was before the former president arrived. The person was taken into custody. He was eventually booked into jail on those charges, and eventually he was released. He will have to further his court case in the future. Right now, we are actively engaged in working with Secret Service and the FBI to ensure that this person is followed up on and all of the information that they can gather. I can tell you that from my perspective, from a state law enforcement agency's perspective, the firearms charges is what we arrested him for and booked him on. Anything further will come from the federal government, and quite frankly, I don't know if we will be a part of that. We will certainly be a part of that investigation and cooperating with them, but those charges, if any, will come from them. or specifics that we learned or gained from our contact with him. Quite frankly, I'm not really concerned with the statement that he gave the media after he was released from custody because it's irrelevant to me. As far as I'm concerned, there were a minimum of 25,000 people that entered past those deputies into that location that had legitimate identification and weren't carrying guns. I will just go from there. Yes, ma'am. Basically, I will be honest with you. I don't remember saying that, but it certainly would be something I did say because it's something that in the last 12 hours we've talked about extensively of what happened. Thank God, and by an act of really what we did in the week leading up to keeping that place secure, I certainly wouldn't want to be saying after the fact that I wish we would have done something to prevent that shooting. There is absolutely no way that any of us are going to truly know what was in his head. I can tell you that none of the other probably 50,000 people that showed up yesterday for that event brought multiple passports with different names and guns. If there is any further statement about whether or not he belonged there, the statement of him saying that he was given credentials to be there by someone else, that's not up to me to decide. We didn't arrest him for going inside the facility. We arrested him for having illegal guns in his car. What his frame of mind was, really all we can do is speculate unless we truly just want to believe anything that he tells us. A dramatic statement for me to make? This is what I'm glad of. This is what I am very glad of. I know that the presence that we had at the rally with deputies, with snipers, with counter snipers, and secret service snipers and counter snipers, I am glad that we're not talking about this after we shot him. We get to talk about it before. No matter what, it's all going to be speculation about what his intentions were getting there. What we do know is he showed up with multiple passports with different names, an unregistered vehicle with fake license plate, and loaded firearms. If you're asking me right now, I probably did have deputies that prevented the third assassination attempt. If we are that politically lost, that we have lost sight of common sense and reality and reason, that we can't say that, holy crap, what did he show up with all of that stuff for and loaded guns, and I'm going to be accused of being dramatic? We have a serious, serious problem in this country, because this is common sense and reason. I saw some of you there yesterday. You didn't have guns and fake IDs. I don't know how else to explain it. If you went there, the credentials come out at the very last minute, and they are very, very vague. There's actually three different points of contact and entry. We had an outer perimeter, an inner perimeter, and then you still have to go through secret service metal detectors and final big screening to actually get inside the facility. That is where they would verify whether those were real. To be honest with you, that thing that you have on your phone, it's all whether or not they have you on a list. It's not just showing up with a piece of paper and saying, I'm in. It's whether or not you really did apply through that website to get in. Secret Service does an extremely good job of trying to pre-vet people that are trying to get those tickets to get inside the... No, no. Then one thing about the... I will confirm, just because it was said of what him saying that someone else gave him a pass, well, you don't get to give away passes to go to a rally of a former president or even the vice president going to her rallies. We don't get to share those things. I can't share it with my spouse, let alone with friends. All of those things are red flags for us going in. None of those things made sense. It wasn't that we could verify individual documents that we had because there really isn't those things. That would have been done at the final checkpoint going through that is completely run by Secret Service. I'll take the last one first. We certainly are still in contact with Secret Service and the FBI because this is obviously something that occurred that will be continuing to go until we get to the bottom of it, until there's a resolution to the entire thing. The second and third thing, I knew this was going to happen. I couldn't care less what political party he belongs to. Honestly, I think that's the stupidest thing in the world that we have to label something and we're labeling this as politics. He was a lunatic. From my perspective in law enforcement, it's that group. If in fact it turns out that he is part of the sovereign citizens group, they are certainly considered a far right group. In my own personal belief, I wouldn't say it's a militant group. It's just a group that doesn't believe in government and government control. They don't believe that the government and laws apply to them. I think it's fringe one way or the other. I couldn't care less. It's people trying to do harm. Thank God we prevented it. Yes. Wow. I'm sure there were multiple cars that drew attention. Every single vehicle that made it into the actual event, every single vehicle was checked. He did not make it into the event. He made it to our interior perimeter that was maybe 100, 200 yards away from the actual interior perimeter. He didn't get to the point where Secret Service would find him. We identified him, detained him, and eventually arrested him before he got to the actual event entrance. Please don't quote me on that, but yes. I think it's roughly, as I'm trying to imagine the entrance and where he was, I think it's about a quarter of a mile, 250 yards maybe. I'm not 100% sure. I did have my family members there, and we were lucky enough and gracious enough to have VIP seating, so we were relatively close. How far away was I from him? 40 yards. I will tell you as the Sheriff of Riverside County, and knowing what we know going into this event, that there had been two attempts on our former president's life and the amount of people that were going to be coming to this in such a short notice, what my team was able to do and what we did for the goers to this event, for the attendees, I was completely confident that there was absolutely nothing going to happen inside that facility or inside that venue. I am extremely proud of what the deputies did and the buy-in, the personal buy-in that they took upon themselves to ensure the safety of our former president and the attendees of that rally. I was not concerned for myself at any point. It was our intent to make sure that there was an outside perimeter and an inside perimeter that no one that did not belong there, that intended to do him harm or anyone else harm would be allowed inside that event. And we did exactly what we had hoped for. And in hindsight, looking back, the planning that my team did and the actions of my deputies into this is exactly what we had hoped for. And we know that we prevented something bad from happening and it's irrelevant what that bad was going to be. No, I will tell you that when I was told that we had made an arrest and the brief particulars of what the arrest was, what it involved, my first thought was we did everything right. It worked. I was told where it was. I knew it was an outside perimeter and I was not concerned at all. I was not concerned for anyone else's safety. I knew that the precautions that we put in, the measures that we put in did exactly what they were supposed to do. The other part of your question, the aftermath, the people leaving, I cannot tell you. I've been told way too many times today and in the middle of the night that it didn't go very smoothly. There was a lot of people trying to leave at the same time. And logistically, it wasn't conducive to going smoothly. And as far as we know, there were no injuries. There were no incidents. There was no neighbors called to complain or anything like that. And as far as I know, everyone made it home safely. So two different questions there are parts to it. But we did not do anything different. I will say, I take that back. We did. There were a lot of people that have complained or that have said or wondered why there are deputies in riot gear. We had deputies that were off-site that were ready for something to respond to something should something happen. And they were never intended to come inside the facility unless that happened. Afterward, when everything was over and there, it was obvious there were problems with people leaving, with people trying to get over fences and those types of issues. We did bring those deputies in just as extra help in funneling people out. There was never any, the only odd part about that was they were prepared all day in their riot gear, if you want to call it that. And that's how they showed up. It was, I mean, we got them there as quick as they could. There was never any, we certainly didn't treat it like a riot situation. It wasn't, everyone was very orderly in their, in their efforts to leave. And we just ensured that no one got hurt or everyone stayed out of the street, stay on the sides and, and everything was orderly. But other than that, everything was fine. And, and as we went throughout the day yesterday, we didn't change anything. There were two guns and multiple boxes of ammunition for both. There was a handgun and a shotgun. And he was cited for the gun with, they were unregistered firearms. So he was cited for the unregistered loaded firearms in a vehicle. And he was, those are state crimes and he was released on those crimes. He was booked into jail and released with a promise to appear at a future date in court. And, and I'm sorry, I don't know what that date is. I'm sure on our, on our Jim's information, it will show when his next court date is. It's semantically, there's, I can't comment on whether or not there is an actual physical fake pass. He claimed to be a journalist and he claimed to have VIP status at the event that got him into the perimeter. And then when that was, when that, when that investigation was continued by the deputy, I, I, that, that didn't necessarily materialize. So other than his words of saying he was a journalist and that he was there as a media, I, I, I can't tell you that there was, that he gave us a document that said, As of yet, I have not, I know they're working on it and, and someone may have tried to tell me, but I didn't bring my phone and that's how they would have notified me. I know we're actively trying to track that down as well as secret service and the FBI, but our investigation is relatively done. The, the continuation will be a cooperation between us, the secret service and the FBI, more than likely federal charges like that would be headed by the FBI. I can't say that for sure. But it's, it's a combination of all three. And I, and I will say the, the working relationship and the, the effort that we all, the federal agencies and the sheriff's office put into this going in was seamless. We, the, the communication is great. I have no It's certainly by me telling you that someone else's investigation, that's just the nature of a federal crime. If they are ever able to prove that it was assassination attempt, and I'm not saying they're going to be able to, but anything like that would be federal. The state crimes are the weapons charges that we arrested him for. No, I do not. I have, I have absolutely no idea. So the, yes. And I, maybe I just didn't emphasize that enough at the end. So the name that he has given us is Vem Miller. That's what he was booked under, but the, he had multiple passports and IDs with different names. We don't have a total yet. There are two different numbers though, because of the amount of people that were actually made it inside the venue. And then the way it works is once the, once the former president takes the stage, nothing else moves. So if you weren't in by then, you did not get in. And the, we do know that there were plenty of pre-screenings that had happened at parking lots before. And we know that there were multiple thousands of people that, that did not get in based on timing. So we have an idea of how many people were inside and outside, and we don't have an exact number, but that's, that's the reason why I would have said two different things. Sovereign citizens. It's, it's a, I don't, I don't know any in a law enforcement world. That's what we, that's what we call them. That's what they call themselves sovereign citizens. And it's just a, it's a, a political belief, if you will, that the government rules and laws and everything else that goes along with it, doesn't apply to them. I won't say they have a lot law enforcement across the country. We train on how to deal with them just because of the verbiage that they use when they interact with us. They believe that they don't have, they're not necessarily toward us violent or, or confrontational, but we, it's obvious they don't ever want to answer our questions. They don't believe they need driver's licenses. They don't believe, you know, this, and this vehicle goes along with it. They don't register their vehicles. This was an unregistered car that we had to go through VIN number and manufacturer process to, to verify that it was a legitimate car. It actually did belong to him. It's just, we know it was sold to him. It just was not ever registered. Sometimes they do, but I wouldn't say, I can't say as an organization as, as a whole, but obviously like a lot of different groups, bad apples give a group a bad name. And there, there certainly are people that are, but I am not going to say that that group as a whole is a violent group. I need to thank that deputy for doing his job. That was the first thing that went through my mind. And it was like, I probably said to somebody or around somebody that's been either printed or reprinted in social media that I truly do believe that we prevented another assassination attempt. And it was, it was solely by our effort of keeping those type of people out. It was for the handgun. The high capacity magazine was for the handgun. Yes. I won't, I won't get into specifics, but it was both of the question that you're asking. Uh, we know that there were no, not linked to an individual or specifics that I can give you. Uh, we are aware of our dogs and, and federal dogs that, that hit on people or, um, things that, that we ended up not letting in. But I don't, uh, I, I don't have any specifics on anything like that. There was nothing that came, nothing that rose to this level. Anything else? Okay. Thank you for coming.