Welcome to it could happen here a show. I've had a bunch of ship actually, but but our our core is collapse and UH, political violence in the United States. That's that's where we got our bones. And today we're getting back to basics. We're we're going into the roots. UM. Those of you who live in New Mexico are probably broadly familiar with the kind of basics of this story. UM. Many of you probably will have heard aspects of this.
But there have been a series of shootings that took place in December of last year in January of this year, UM at the homes of to state legislators and two county commissioners. No one was injured, thankfully, UM. But this was obviously something that was scaring the hell out of a lot of people, UM, liberals and people on the left in New Mexico over the last several weeks because
they were clearly politically motivated. UM. New Mexico has had shootings at protests and it's its share of the political violence that has swept a large chunk of the country. And this seemed like a real scary years of lead style escalation. UM. Very recently within the last couple of days of US recording this, it was announced that the police had brought in the guy who was responsible for organizing this. Um. He did not carry out the shootings himself.
His name is Solomon Penia UM and he was a former Republican candidate for local office who hired foreman Um in order to shoot at the homes of elected Democrats. Um. Those are the basics of it. Uh. The arrest Warren affidavit says that Penia intended to cause serious harm or cause death to the occupants inside their homes, which seems
pretty credible based on what we know objectively about what happened. Um. It's also worth noting that Penia had donated repeatedly in the past to Lyndon LaRouche, which I'm sure we'll it into a little bit later. But I want to introduce my guest for this episode who knows the story much better than I do, a local, uh New Mexico based activist, Lucas Herndon. Lucas, how are you doing today, buddy? I'm doing good man. Glad to be back, sort of really
glad to have you back. You've been on the show before. I'm just gonna kind of let you take it from here now that I've sort of laid out the bones of it. Yeah, thanks, And just a couple of clarifying points, um, which only because things have been moving very quickly today. Um, this is the day after he was arrested. There is actually now evidence put out from the A p D that um Penya himself uh was in the car and
attempted to fire at least one of the targets. Apparently he had an A R fifteen that quote unquote jammed. It didn't stop that shooting from occurring. His accomplice, who is unnamed at this time, at least to our knowledge, UH, did fire a glock out of the car during that That I mean, so that there was still a shooting that happened. Yes, but it is worth noting that he was not just the mastermind, but also an active participant,
at least according to what we know today. Yeah, it looks like the weapon that was used was a tan and black block with a drum magazine. UM or at
least the drum was seized at the thing doesn't really matter. Um. But yeah, So I'm interested kind of first in if you want to walk us through how you became aware that these shootings had happened, and how you would kind of characterize the impact it had on on the community around you, because this obviously is is intensely frightening and is the kind of thing most of us have been paying attention, have been worried about happening for for quite
a while, right exactly that. Yeah, so, UM, you know, in in the in the political nonprofit world, which which I work in professionally, UM, it's not uncommon for the whole movement sort of takes the last part of December off for the holidays. UM. So unfortunately, there was sort of not a lot of eyes on stuff in the latter part of December. But as soon as we got back to work on the third of January, a series of events happened where there was a realization that there
were shootings that happened at different elected officials houses. Right, and UM, it turns out or it looks like that the cops were just starting to put it together themselves. But it came from, um, the fact that the first two targets were at the time ceded county commissioners in
berno Leo County. UM. Just for extra added confusion, UM, one of those targets was she finished her term at the end of the year, so she's now she's not technically sitting as a commissioner anymore, just just for clarity UM. But then over the course of of you know, those weeks that we were all out, there were also then shootings at UM one of the state senators homes, and then in January there was also shootings at the campaign office of who the gentleman who is now our state
attorney general. Within our sort of movement of people that work on you know, political things, we were all gearing up for the session are in New Mexico. Our legislative session kicks off a sixty day term actually started today on January, and it became clear to all of us that this was happening, and we started, you know, talking amongst ourselves, and we really we did find out that at that point the cops had started piecing it together.
They were piecing together pieces of information. It turns out that after the shooting on the third, UM the only other named accomplice so far, this guy, Jose Trahio, was arrested forty minutes after the shooting, UM a p D because of ongoing issues with UM crime in the in the city of Albuquerque has like a quick response like system set up that like tracks gunfire and yeah, so
they were they were able to track this guy down. Um. He was driving a car that was registered to Penya Um and uh, there was other connections obviously that the you know, cops put things together and then yeah, and they executed the search warrant yesterday. There was a swat situation. It sounds like it was um preventative more than anything, but it But but some of the stories that have come out is that he was reluctant to leave at first,
but there wasn't actually any overt threats of violence. But you know, the cops did respond was swat when they arrested him. Yeah, I mean, given the fact that he had carried out a series of shootings. Uh, not surprised to hear that. Now, I'm I'm kind of curious. Was there a commune ay response prior to sort of Pinia being exposed and arrested. Was their community response kind of reacting to the fact that there were was an escalating
series of shootings targeting local elected leaders. Yeah. So the company I worked for, Progress Now New Mexico, we put out a series of tweets. UM. Basically as soon as we had started putting two and two together. UM, you know, we we were careful to say that this appears politically motivated. We don't have hard evidence, but it's hard to not
put those two things together. We at progress now and and me specifically, having worked here for a very long time, UM, I have been tracking political violence here in the state, UM for for a while, and and i've i've i've been part of it in the sense that I was threatened and docked in as were some of my other colleagues, and so you know, these things hit close to home, right and on the and on the one hand, it's it's tough to see these things as anything but political
violence for for those of us like you, Robert, that like we see it all the time because we're paying attention to it. On the other hand, there is unfortunately a lot of gun violence in Albuquerque, and you know, so there were there were some pushback. People thought, oh, I know, this is just you know, there's just that much gun violence quote unquote, but that's you know, that was a silly premise. Honestly, this was very clearly politically motivated.
And now that we have a person to attach this to, and we can look at his social media history and and you know, stuff we've found in telegram, stuff on his Twitter. It's so clear. I mean he we just actually even today, right before we got on here, we just published another telegram piece that we found on our Twitter that he threatened the Secretary of State after he lost his election, UM telling saying that he she should
quote unquote hang until she's dead. So yeah, I mean, he's this has been an ongoing part of his UM ideology for a while. You know, he has a lot of pro maga posts UM, a lot of big lie you know, teainted election, you know, uh rhetoric all over his social media such as it exists anyway, Now, have this altered it all um or had an impact on
your thinking of UM. You know, when when you have attacks or a series of attacks like this, as you said, it's impossible to say prior to kind of knowing who did it, that like this is certainly politically motivated, But at a certain point it becomes kind of reasonable and and safe to make that assumption. And I think also necessary when you're trying to two protect a community and get people prepared for the likelihood that they're going to
encounter of violence. UM. We've also had those cases where like it, it is impossible to know. You know, we had a series of attacks on power plants last year. We still don't know who did the ones in North Carolina or who did the one it's in Portland. But it turned out that the folks who did that Christmas Day attack UM on power substation in um Washington State were um uh just robbing a place right effectively non political.
So it is kind of impossible to get Has this altered it all your kind of feelings on when and at what sort of point do we start raising the alarm? Yeah, you know, I mean I think that progress now you know, my my, my organization that I work with, we as soon as we heard something was afoot, we put out the word for us. It was for us it was a matter of safety, as as as people who have lived through it ourselves. UM, this was a time that the community needed to be aware of these things and
be thinking about it. Um and and to be honest at you know, our our group discussion about it was it was better to be safe than sorry. If if somehow this wasn't political, or if it was maybe personalized or something like that um at you know, at the legislators and lawmakers, rather than it being overtly just political ideology. You know, that would be we could walk it back. But again it was for us we made the decision
that no, this information needs to be out there. Um. We have, especially as we were gearing up for the session, there was just there's too much on the line. Um. You know, up until a couple of years ago, at our state legislature, which we call the Roundhouse because it's a big round building. Um. Up at the Roundhouse, you could carry firearms into the building. Um. It was just a sort of a remnant of New Mexico's sort of
wild West days, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. But uh, but with the with the rise of with the rise of far right related violence, and you actually did have armed insurrection minded people showing up um in and around January six, um. But even before that, really during during lead up with a lot of the MAGA rallies, the Trump trains and all that, Uh, the legislature passed their own you know rules saying you couldn't bring guns into the into the legislature, and that was upped even further this year by the
installation of metal detectors. So, but that's new. But that was directly related to this, this this looming threat over over lawmakers in the state. Um, they didn't know if they were going to have anybody in custody before things started started today, and so the legislature made that decision for themselves that they were going to institute that policy
and have metal detectors on the way in. Yeah, I mean that that that that makes sense and that I as I understand it that it's still the law in the state of Texas actually that you can be armed inside the Capitol building. I certainly had been during protests
years ago. It's interesting the watching kind of the simultaneous adaptation by the law enforcement, by kind of elected and sort of standard centrist Democrats and by the left in different ways to this escalation in in political violence, and kind of the acceptability on the right of using the threat or the practice of violence to try to push um for political ideology. UM. Because everyone is kind of
adapting in real time to it. UM. I'm wondering, how are you kind of looking at this from the left, How are you how are you feeling about the way in which the actual state has responded so far. Yeah, it's complicated. UM. So the tradition in New Mexico is on the opening day of the legislature the governor gives the state of the state address. UM. And I covered
that earlier today. One of her key points and she and she tied it to this very issue, was she is pushing as a priority bill this year a quote unquote assault weapons ban. Uh. There is also another legislator who is pushing, um a what we would call a standard capacity but what they call a high capacity magazine ban. And you know, and then there's some other ones that are maybe a little bit more UM reasonable, like safe storage um, which is something that I can get behind,
you know. And I think there's a couple of things here to consider and and you know, and it gets complicated because people on the right have dominated the conversation about guns and gun control for so long that it's hard to have UM, well intentioned conversations from the left, I find UM And and yeah, yeah, so, you know, speaking personally as a gun owner and as somebody who has um made the decision of my life to be you know, armed and ready and have you know, body armor.
And I you know, I don't just shoot guns. I train with guns. I train other people. I have a group of people that I work with and trust that if things ever got real bad, I would, you know, we would call each other. Um. Being that guy, I obviously have very strong feelings about being told by the state that I don't have a right to defend myself with the same types of weapons that I know the
other side has. Right, so I think the answer you know, Sorry, that was a little bit of a roundabout, but the point is that, um, the person who perpetrated this, um Mr Penya. It's unclear, but he is a felon. And um there is some hay being made about um how he and others may have possessed guns. And you know, the reality we know is that it is not hard or difficult. Um two try to get guns one way or the other and so and and now you can just draw across the border to Texas for one thing,
I mean, or Arizona. Yeah, yeah, or Arizona. This guy was already what was in fact restricted from being able to own any kind of firearm, right, right, And and so it is hard to be somebody who works in the political left, and I work on a number of policy issues. My my day to day work focus is more on energy issues. UM. But but you know, but I have been doing this work long enough that I step in whenever there's stuff like this happening and cover it for for my work. But it's yeah, it's UM,
it's gonna be interesting to see. You know. I don't know if there's the political will in the state New Mexico. UM, even you know, moderate Democrats are our hunters are recreational shooters, UM. And I think that there's you know, there is some
strong feelings about gun violence. There was a very tragic death UM involving children last year during our legislative session, UM, where where a middle schooler I believe maybe a high school or a kid either way, UM, took a pistol from his parents, you know, sock drawer basically and shot
a kid. And you know, so again, safe storage is one of those things that I think most people generally can get behind, especially if we do something really good like subsidized safe storage, so that if you know, if you're a person who is of lesser means but you still want to protect yourself with a firearm, you can figure out how to get a safe or something like that. Anyway,
that's so there there are things that we can do. UM. I think we know that outright bands one don't work and are hard to pass, and things like magazine capacity things, the enforcement level becomes difficult, and UM a good example of that is in New Mexico, we did pass a
red flag law a number of years ago. And uh, you know, I've heard, I know you've talked about red flag laws in the past, and you know, and we had what a lot of states have had, which is that a number of sheriffs in conservative counties just very publicly said out loud that they weren't going to enforce it. And sure enough, you know, last year during the summer, when we hit the two year mark of the lab beying into effect, it had been used less than a
dozen times um statewide. And so yeah, I mean, and one of the one of the things that's of obvious concern is if you have a lot of people living in these conservative areas where the sheriffs aren't enforcing the laws, um, they effectively have the ability to take the firearms they can acquire there to the areas that have maybe more restrictive gun control where there are elected Democrats and then shoot up their houses. Um, yeah, I think kind of
outside of that, I'm wondering. So, and obviously we're still looking at the fall out of this. There's still quite a bit we don't know. I don't think there's a lot of context on how Penya found these men that he hired. Um, although I am interested in that. I think it'll be it'll be worth learning. Is there kind of a lessons learned that that you're going through with us here? Has this altered it all kind of going forward? How you think you might respond or your community might
respond the next time something like this occurs. Oh yeah, I mean I think there's a couple. I mean, actually, one of the things you just said is that we don't necessarily know how we found these guys. And and that's true because we still don't know the names of some of them. But the one, the one man we do know, UM was one of was a was a person who donated money to him while while he was running because because again remember this this is this was a man who was running for office last year and
lost three to one. Um And and yeah, and so this this one accomplice whose name we have Jose Triho donated to him, and um, they're very you know, they're they're clearly, um, they clearly know each other and have some sort of a connection there. But I think what's worth noting is that going down that path. Right, So when I looked up that guy, I found the political
a nation from last year. And while I was there looking at political donations, I just happened to look at all the other names, which is how I found the other uh you know the name of the other man who has his connection to him, um Fletcher and Michael Fletcher. Right, And that guy two years ago, during the you know protests, drove a car through a crowd of protesters, and thanks to some amazing um, you know, anti fascist organizers here in New Mexico, they were able to identify them, even
though the cops never did anything about it. And so I think that if if there's gonna be lessons learned here, it's that these people have been showing their true colors for a long time. And um there's if if if we're going to have police in this world we live in and we're going to ask them to quote unquote keep us safe, Uh, then they have to do their job, and they have to follow up with with things like know, somebody driving through a crowd of people. The video is
on our Twitter thread. It's very scary. I mean, I know people have seen it all over the country. It wasn't just unique in New Mexico. But um, anyway, that guy was Penya's third highest donor and he's a young man. His his listed profession is security guard and um and the other guy, jose A Trihio, is listed as a cashier.
So there's a lot of questions about how how did these young men have so much money it with jobs that are you know, you don't necessarily have a lot of money lying around if you're a cashier a security guard at least at least not to donate to political candidates.
Back when I had jobs like that, I didn't anyway, Um, and especially then also for all the guns they have, right, Like, there's pictures of these guys with a table full of glocks and um, you know and mag's and that's that stuff is not cheap, so I don't there's there's there is a these people were known to law enforcement one way or the other, because again Penya was a felon and um, I want to be clear he was able to run in New Mexico because in Mexico we believe
felons deserve a second chance for things like running for office. In fact, it would be great someday to have somebody who's maybe got that life experience to become a legislator. Obviously, there are circumstances like maybe this one that proved that people haven't you know, turned around from whatever life they were leading beforehand. But we're also but we're also not here excluding people from being Um, being a felon does not make you a bad person, That's what I'm really
trying to say here. But a felon who has a history like this and then has clearly demonstrated a will towards violence and hangs out with violent people, UM, maybe there should be some things done to keep an eye on those people. This is one of those situations that there's a number of difference to lucitions too or I think things that will will lead to solutions. But it's also it's much more muddled than people would like it
to be. Um. I think I tend to think that from the perspective of like people who are activists, who are members of the community. One of the better things that we can do is keep an eye, as y'all do, on who's doing what. Like you know, when you have people who are donating to one of these right wing, you know, fascist kind of candidates, Um, when they're saying certain things on social media, or the candidates saying so
things on social media that are seen as incitements to violence. Like, keeping those people on your radar is useful and keeping you know, as you did, being able to kind of document once somebody actually starts acting, Hey, this person has has made further threats in the past. Um, these are groups of people that might be at risk from them. We know the person, Like, here's evidence that this person
is and has been a threat. That's all really useful. Um. The question is always is like, how do we actually stop these people before they carry out violence? Um? And this is a question that that to to be certain, law enforcement the state don't have very good answers for because they only kind of come in and take action after, um, the attacks have started. We just got lucky in this
case that nobody was hurt or killed. Um. You know, there have been a couple of of mass shootings averted as a result of anti fascists finding someone who was making threats, who had firearms and in some cases like was not legally supposed to have them, and making that
public ahead of time. Um, but more often than not, it's sort of this case as it as it was pen where we're the name comes out, we realize who it was, and it's like, yeah, we had we had this guy documented, We knew this dude was a threat. And I think that's the that is still kind the the thing that we don't have a good answer to is what is the actual how do you how do you actually take action to stop these people from carrying
out the attacks? Because obviously there's a thousand different legal issues with that, there's a number of different moral issues with that, because for every guy like Pinia who talked about carrying out attacks and then attacked people, there's a couple of dozen who talk about ship like this and
don't do anything. But UM, I don't know, this is this is something that I think that I think has to be answered and it's not on you know, you specifically or the New Mexico activist community to figure it out, but it is it is like, this is a big part of the struggle. I think because the the cops and the state, we'll do the thing that they do, which is when there are bodies or when there's bullet casings on the ground, generally, eventually someone will get arrested,
not always, not necessarily, even the vast majority of the time. Again, nobody's caught the fucker's we're blowing up power stations in North Carolina. But you know, so, I think the question for us that and I'm sorry, folks, I'm not going to be im not gonna be saying, here's how we solve the problem of armed right wingers carrying out attacks on people is how do we how do we get from knowing who's a threat to stopping them effect effectively
stopping them from carrying out actual attacks. And that is, you know, as our years of lead, if that is what we're in and boy, things like this make me think that that's a reasonable way to describe the present political situation in the United States. Um, this is something we're going to have to answer. And obviously you know, I've asked you kind of your lessons on it. We don't, we don't. I don't think there's much more to say
at the moment. But it is this is this is the question, right, Um, it's a question we ask ourselves. I know people are asking themselves up in Portland. Um, the guy who carry out an attack almost exactly a year ago at a protest in Portland at a long history of making threats online and now one person is dead and others paralyzed, several more have been have been injured.
You know, these are this is. This is a tough question, and it's it's not one that uh, I think just kind of raw ideology actually gives us a very good answer on because there's the there's the emotionally satisfying answer, which is like, well, we just need to get some folks together and go like fuck these people up. And
it's like, well, you can't. That's actually not a realistic thing because number one, there's so many people making these threats, like you don't actually have the human bandwidth two for that to be realistic outside of the fact that those people would be destroying their lives and throwing themselves into the mall of the state to do it. So this is this is a toughie. I do. There's I mean, there's one there's one part of this that I think New Mexico can can offer some some I don't know.
There's one thing we got right, and um, I don't know if if you know, everybody out there is familiar with the name Coy Griffin or his organization Cowboys for Trump. But during the lead up to the election, this guy kind of made a name for himself. He went around the country on horseback with a bunch of dudes and they all dressed up like Larkin as cowboys. Um, most of them are not and um, and you know they had American flags and they yeah, literally called Cowboys for Trump.
This guy was a seeded county commissioner in Otaro County here in New Mexico. And um, he went to January six and he was the first convicted person from the January six fallout, and he lost his seat in in Otaro County, which is like the smallest amount of thing, right, Like it's the man should have been locked up. But um. But one of the things that is frustrating but also maybe good, is that probably you know, through my work doing what I do, I had been documenting this man
for years because he'd been saying all kinds of crazy shit. Um. Sometime in nineteen I think or maybe it was. He like went up on top of a mountain to pray this is his words, and recorded himself on a Facebook live and like literally said that black people should go back to Africa and like this. This video was on his Facebook and I mean it had been out for days and nobody said anything about it anywhere until I
clipped it and put it on Twitter. You know, I took I took away the forty minutes of other weird shit, he said, and I put that thing out into the world and said, this man deserves to be like under so much scrutiny, it's ridiculous. And then of course it got pressed, and then of course he came under fire,
and then a couple of people were paying attention. So then when he went to January six and again on a live video because people can't stop instagramming their crimes, he said he was taking all of his guns and going to meet his you know, homies in in Washington, and so he got arrested. He got arrested there. He was one of the few people who got arrested like on the ground that day because the FBI and the
Secret Service were already looking for him. Because again somebody else had been out loud about saying, uh, this man literally just said he's taking guns to d C. Is somebody please going to do something about this? So I don't know, it wasn't great and I feel like more could have been done, and again, fortunately no one got hurt. I mean, I guess people did if you wanted to take the whole of January six into into UM mean,
but I guess. I guess. My point is is that it's sort of just a constant vigilism, right, It's like you just have to be and it's not you know, and obviously one person can't do it, but you have to have groups of people that do it. I mean, I'm I'm one guy who works with an organization of people and we work on a number of policy things
in the state. And again I don't necessarily do this all the time, but I also know that there's a number of amazing people, especially in no Tarot County, UM which is a very conservative county, but there's a number of amazing people who do really hard work and they show up at county commission meetings and they get thrown out, and they go to school board meetings and they get thrown out, but they go and they document it, and they tweet and they TikTok and and it's it's you know,
it's that work that puts the word out from these little, tiny places. You know. The last time I was on the show, Robert, we were talking about the school board stuff here in Los Cruces and the right wing chuds that had showed up to that, and you know, it's the same thing, right, It's like, you don't I mean, you can't do it alone. But it doesn't take that
many people to show up. And as you know, and once you once you show them that you're not afraid and that there's more of us than there are of them, they tend to slink away. And I think that there's I think that there's value in that, and there's you know, it's not the answer that you're talking about, but there's there's a modicum of hope they're worth remembering. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. That's all. Those are
all really good points. Um well, Lucas, I think that more or less covers what we came to talk about today. Did you have anything else you wanted you wanted to say to the audience before we kind of roll out of here anything you wanted to plug, place you want to well, yeah, I mean yeah, I'd just like to say that, you know, I the number one donor to this guy's campaign is a corporation called Halopano Corporation. It's
owned by a billionaire named Harvey Yates. He's part of the family that discovered oil in the state of New Mexico. New Mexico is the second largest producer of oil in the United States. Harvey Yates donated to every Republican candidate this cycle. And I think that what I want to like just just say out loud, because again, my my
job is normally I talk about energy issues. Is that on the one hand, you know, we have questions about where some of these young men who have you know, cashier jobs and security guard jobs, where they came up with four thousand dollars to donate to a political candidate
over the course of a few months. It's not unsurprising that an oil corporation donated five thousand dollars, right, But what's worth remembering is is that you know, these these mega corporations of it of all stripes, but especially oil and gas um are the backbone of the political movement that we are talking about. You know, even if we're sort of beating around the bush, right, there's there's one side here that is dominated very heavily by this far
right extremism. And they and they and their funders treat them all the same, right, Like, oil and gas companies don't care if you're a quote unquote moderate Republican or a hardcore right wing maga guy or a literal Nazi. They just want somebody who's gonna like get in there
and you know, give them tax subsidies. Um. And you know, and I just the the fight over energy issues in this country is often framed around climate change, as it should be, because I mean, obviously the climate crisis is something we can't ignore, but it's so much worse than that. And you know, we could do a whole other thing about that someday, but I just it's just so important.
I can't let it go. Um. You know, looking looking at at this at this what I'm gonna call it domestic terrorists donation sheet, you know, and seeing that the number one, you know, his number one donor was this oil and Guests guy, Like, it's just not a coincidence. It really isn't and it's it's worth remembering. So that's that's the last thing I want to plug or last thing I want to say in terms of plugs. You
can find me on Twitter. I'm just Lucas E. Herndon and if you are interested in New Mexico politics things, you can follow us now at progress Now I am awesome. Uh well you cannot find me there, but you can find me elsewhere. Um, you'll figure it out. Thank you, Lucas. This has been really I mean good is a weird word,
but I appreciate it. That's what happened last time too. Yeah. Well, I'm sure we'll have you back on in the near future and we will be back tomorrow with some more ship that is hopefully, uh fun fun stuff, maybe fun stuff. I always get the episodes where it's not it could happen here, it's it did happen here, the thing has occurred. Oh no, all Rank Robert, thank you. It could happen here is a production of cool Zone Media. Well more
podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for. It could happen here, Updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.