A travel center clerk helped foil a former U.S. Navy SEAL’s plot to attack police officers with explosives during a “No Kings” rally in California.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico announced that 49-year-old Gregory Vandenberg was found guilty of transporting explosives with intent to kill, injure or intimidate, and attempted transportation of prohibited fireworks into California, Fox News reported Monday.
Vandenberg drove from El Paso, Texas, to San Diego before the June 14, 2025 protest and stopped at a travel center near Lordsburg, New Mexico to purchase six mortar-style fireworks and 72 M-150 firecrackers, prosecutors said.
While buying the explosives, Vandenberg told the store clerk he planned to throw them at police officers during the demonstration, federal authorities said, per the report.
Prosecutors said Vandenberg asked about the amount of gunpowder in the fireworks several times and questioned whether taping several together would increase the force of the explosions. Vanderberg expressed that he was only interested in whether the fireworks would inure the law enforcement officers, prosecutors said.
He also told the clerk they should join the protest and hand out fireworks to other attendees, according to trial testimony. Vandenberg reportedly told the employee he would not get hurt because of his prior military experience, according to the report.
Employees were very concerned after hearing Vandenberg’s comments and decided to write down his license plate and contact law enforcement before he arrived in California.
Federal agents tracked him down to the the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, and arrested him the next morning while he slept inside his car, according to the report.
Prosecutors said he lied about why he was traveling and said agents found fireworks in his car, along with clothing that had extremist antisemitic and anti-Israel imagery on it.
“Among the items recovered were shirts bearing an Al-Qaeda flag, a shirt calling for the destruction of Judea, a hat featuring the Al-Qaeda flag and apparel displaying a variation of the Black Sun, a symbol associated with neo-Nazi ideology,” according to the report. “Jurors were also shown photographs of Vandenberg wearing a custom-made T-shirt bearing the word ‘AMALEK’ while inside the travel center. Prosecutors said Vandenberg told investigators the word meant ‘destroyer of Jews.”‘
When investigators looked at his cellphone, the home screen had a Taliban flag on it, according to the report. A forensic review of his phone revealed “violent extremist content, including antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-U.S. material, as well as messages discussing the upcoming protests,” prosecutors said, according to the report.
Messages suggested Vandenberg believes the U.S. government and President Donald Trump are under the control of Israel and Jewish people, according to the report.
“People in this country are free to hold their own beliefs and to express them peacefully,” Acting U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison said in a statement. “What they are not free to do is use explosives to threaten or terrorize others.”
Ellison said the verdict “sends the message that attempts to substitute violence for expressing one’s opinion has no place in our communities and will be met with federal consequences.”
Vandenberg was sentenced to 16 months in federal prison and will serve one year of supervised release after his prison sentence.
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