A Wisconsin cultist targeted President Donald Trump in a deadly plot with inspiration from mysterious online figures who have remained in the shadows since.
Nikita Casap received life sentences in March for killing his parents after the FBI uncovered his plans to take their money, obtain weaponry needed to kill Trump and flee to Ukraine with help from unnamed contacts, some based in Europe. One contact expressed concern in private messages to an undercover researcher about the FBI hunting down another possible accomplice, though only one has been captured to date, documents reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation show.
Casap supported the fringe Satanic group Order of Nine Angles and embedded himself in foreign neo-Nazi chat rooms, the FBI said in a March 2025 affidavit. His internet friends gave him detailed tips for hiding the dead bodies, crafting a “manifesto,” escaping Wisconsin and buying a weaponized drone before law enforcement apprehended him in Kansas in February 2025, according to court records.
The 18-year-old’s case highlights a disturbing trend of anonymous online actors steering young people toward violent crimes only to fade into obscurity after the fact.
The FBI tied Casap to “Nihilistic Violent Extremists,” criminals who want to collapse all current political systems. Killing Trump and other terroristic actions would cause “Jewish occupied governments” to fall, Casap’s manifesto obtained by the FBI says.
“Russia will be blamed for it, this is the goal,” an unidentified person told Casap on the messaging app Telegram regarding Trump’s would-be murder, according to the FBI. The person then told Casap to write his manifesto on paper “and take a picture of it” so it could be properly distributed.
“The truth is I became obsessed with hateful thoughts and feelings,” Casap, originally from war-torn Moldova, said at his televised sentencing hearing on March 5. “I felt like the world was a sick, evil place, and my extreme actions to try to change it were justified. I thought I was part of a revolution, part of a war. And I told myself that bad things have to happen in war.”
‘Dangerous Questions’
After gunning down his mother and stepfather in their Waukesha home, Casap lived with their bodies for around two weeks, investigators found. Meanwhile, a person messaging Casap in Russian told him to reply to family members’ texts from one of the victims’ devices and “say [you] got sick.”
“Take [drag] them to the basement,” the person told Casap, according to the FBI.
It is unclear how exactly Casap intended to kill Trump, though his texts mentioned being in contact with two people about purchasing a drone “with a dropping mechanism” from them. Another individual, “Forest,” instructed Casap to get a new license plate for his parents’ car and follow a detailed route to California before traveling to Ukraine.
Casap’s network convinced him to send money for a drone and explosives, the FBI found. In Casap’s sentencing hearing, Republican Waukesha County District Attorney Lesli Boese and a defense lawyer floated the idea that those offering assistance were merely scamming Casap for money.
Becca Spinks, who leads a research team reporting online criminal networks to authorities, told the DCNF she doubts that theory based on her own investigation.
“These guys are heavy-hitting Nazis,” she said.
Casap was in chats affiliated with National Socialism/White Power, a Russian group that the nation labels a terrorist organization, and followed the Order of Nine Angles cult’s “teachings,” according to his online discussions. The FBI has linked the cult’s adherents to violent, Satanist beliefs and child sexual exploitation, the DCNF previously reported.
After Casap’s arrest, one of Spinks’ partners tried to question a Telegram user mentioned in the FBI’s affidavit, a self-described Ukrainian who goes by the username “asellfuck,” messages obtained by the DCNF show. The FBI said that user offered to help Casap obtain the drone.
“So why are you studying this?” the individual asked Spinks’ partner. “Do you want to commit a terrorist attack?”
“Asellfuck” also assured the researcher that a Ukraine-based contact named in the FBI document “was warned” about the agency pursuing him.
“You’re asking too dangerous questions, I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to answer such questions for free,” the Telegram user said.
The FBI initially investigated Casap on federal charges for the assassination plot, suggesting that others were also culpable, the affidavit shows. “Other parties … appear to have been aware of his plan and actions and to have provided assistance to Casap in carrying them out,” the FBI wrote.
However, the Department of Justice (DOJ) agreed not to use Casap’s in-custody statements to law enforcement in any federal case, District Attorney Boese said in his sentencing hearing. Authorities have not said whether there is an ongoing probe of people involved in the anti-Trump plot.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Taibleson, who approved the Casap deal, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the DCNF. The FBI’s Milwaukee office declined to comment.
Waukesha County Sheriff Eric Severson, the district attorney’s media team and Casap’s lawyer also did not respond to multiple inquiries.
Immersion in dark online communities is increasingly tied to violent plots by young people in the U.S. They include a teenage gunman who attacked her Wisconsin school in December 2024 and another teenager convicted of plotting an Indiana school shooting before her February 2025 arrest, according to multiple reports and court records. A DCNF investigation also found ties between a January 2025 school shooting in Tennessee and Satanist groups that appeared to influence the perpetrator.
‘How Do We Get Justice’
California woman Dallas Humber, who formerly led the designated foreign terrorist group “Terrorgram Collective,” is the only other known example of someone punished for inspiring Casap’s violence.
Humber, who is in her 30s, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a terrorism offense and soliciting hate crimes and murder after the DOJ indicted her in 2024. The DOJ later traced her to Casap in an August 2025 plea agreement, describing how her group inspired someone called “N.C.” to kill two people in Wisconsin “in furtherance of his plot to assassinate a federal official.” Casap’s manifesto also praised a Terrorgram publication that calls for a race war, according to the FBI.
It is “hard to say” whether anyone other than Casap and Humber can be locked up for the deadly plan, Spinks told the DCNF. “I mean, how do we get justice on a Russian white nationalist cell?”
“He self-radicalized in these online spaces, and made himself an easy target for foreign actors who tried to goad him to take it to the next level,” Spinks said. “If he had taken it there and taken a shot at Trump then I would hope more scrutiny would be applied” to Casap’s online acquaintances, she added.
Just before receiving life sentences without parole eligibility, Casap took full blame for killing his parents in remarks to a judge. Boese concurred that when it came to killing Trump, Casap “brought that plan” to those he chatted with.
“Looking back, I wish I had stepped away from the hate-filled content instead of intentionally seeking it out,” Casap said in between sobs. “I wish I had the wisdom to at least question the extremists that I was listening to.”
I cannot blame the videos, propaganda, and people that inspired my actions because I had the ability to choose right instead of wrong,” he said. “To the other young people that they are targeting right now, that would be my message: You have the ability to choose right instead of wrong.”
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