FBI agents arrest right-wing radical
Prosecutors want to hold convicted felon in jail pending trial; detention hearing on Friday
A squad of armored FBI agents converged on a quiet neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale this week, arresting an avowed right-wing radical known for boasting about weapons and threatening violence.
The arrest came after Paul Miller, 32, had been indicted by a federal grand jury for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.
His social media accounts espouse hatred of Jews and a yearning for armed conflict. But a federal indictment makes no mention of Miller’s right-wing activity. It accuses him only of possessing a gun on Jan, 17, 2018, in Broward County as a convicted felon.
The FBI provided no information about why it arrested Miller on Tuesday, more than three years later. Agents arrived at Miller’s home with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, which combats both domestic and international terrorism.
On Wednesday, Miller made a brief appearance in federal magistrate court. There, prosecutors said they intended to try hold Miller in jail pending trial, an unusual move given the charge that he faces.
Miller told magistrate Judge Lurana Snow that he was in the process of trying to hire a lawyer. The judge agreed to hold his detention hearing at 10 a.m. Friday.
Videos posted by Miller to Bitchute, an online video platform, show him brandishing and discussing several weapons.
“I am armed to the teeth tonight. ... I have two new guns,” Miller said before displaying a pistol on a video uploaded to his Bitchute account on Dec. 2, 2020.
In that same video, Miller expressed his hatred for Jews and an apparent desire to organize violence.
“I hate the Jews. I want to gas ‘em,” he said. When another person on the video stream asked, “You gotta army?” he replied, “I’m trying to build one.”
Other videos uploaded by Miller show him heckling strangers while Nazi flags hang in the background. In one video, he described the story of his “radicalization,” which he says began after a violent altercation with anti-fascists in New York in October 2018.
NBC News and Newsweek both wrote about Miller’s participation in the altercation, which also involved the Proud Boys extremist group. After the struggle, he was interviewed on air by One America News network, a far right channel.
“I had gotten into an argument or a fight ... with some leader of antifa,” a far-left-leaning militant group, Miller said on the video.
On Tuesday, neighbors who saw FBI agents carrying evidence from Miller’s residence in the 1300 block of Southwest Sixth Street said they saw what looked like long guns.
“One box definitely looked like (there was) either a shotgun on the front or an AK,” next door neighbor Chase Robison told WTVJ-NBC Miami.
“I heard the cops talk about a 1911, which is a pistol,” Robison told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Robison, 29, and his fiancee were awakened early Tuesday morning to the sound of flash bangs and FBI agents on loud speakers telling Miller to come outside with his hands up, he said.
“So we were freaking out,” he said. Robison said he peeked his head outside and saw SWAT agents near an armored vehicle and then saw agents leading Miller out of the house toward FBI cars parked outside.
After the raid, Robison said he got Miller’s name from news reports and looked him up online. What he found seemed “pretty aggressive,” which he said seems to track with his perception of the reclusive man who moved in next door at the beginning of February.
“Every time we spoke to him it was like, ‘Hey, how’re you doing, we’re the neighbors,’ and he would just be like ‘hey’ and then go inside. He was really standoffish,” Robison said. “The yard workers here, I was talking to them and they were saying he didn’t want them near the house, in the yard, and was being really standoffish to them.”
An Anti-Defamation League blog post in November called Miller “a Florida-based white supremacist from New Jersey.” According to that organization, Miller had amassed a sizable online following while regularly making anti-Semitic and white supremacist statements while dressed up as the joker from Batman.
Miller’s online following at the time included 3,000 followers on Bitchute and 13,000 followers on Telegram, a messaging app, the Anti-Defamation League said.
According to New Jersey criminal records, he was arrested in 2006 at age 18 and charged with aggravated assault. He pled guilty and was not sentenced to prison time. Details about the case were not available. In 2007, he was charged with possession of drugs and intent to sell. He spent 180 days in prison and four years of probation.
Miller is set to appear before a federal magistrate judge in Fort Lauderdale tomorrow. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of ten years in prison.