- 11/6/2025
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00:00Okay, everybody, we'll start in a few minutes, so not exactly on time, but I'll give you the
00:21list of speakers. So the first speaker will be United States Attorney Bill Asaley, B-I-L-L,
00:29and then Asaley is spelled E-S-S-A-Y-L-I. Second speaker will be Kenneth Cooper, C-O-O-P-E-R.
00:40He's the Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives,
00:46Los Angeles Field Division. Last speaker will be David Kowalski, K-O-W-A-L-S-K-I. He's the Deputy
00:57Chief and Commanding Officer of the Los Angeles Police Department's Counterterrorism and Special
01:04Operations Bureau. Also in attendance will be Commander Rich Ruiz, R-U-I-Z, from the Los
01:11Angeles County Sheriff's Department. He will be here. He will not be giving any remarks,
01:16though. So we expect to start in a few minutes. Should we be ready, or are we ready to go?
01:23Could you repeat Kowalski's title? Yeah, he's the Deputy Chief, LAPD, and he's the Commanding
01:30Officer of the LAPD's Counterterrorism and Special Operations Bureau. That's a mouthful, I realize.
01:41And then are you going to be showing different things in the screen before or after?
01:44At some point, yeah, this will be a video of the Molotov cocktail attack for one of the
01:49defendants, and this is photos of that defendant. This had to do with the, in Paramount last
01:57Saturday, both of these. So are we ready to go? Okay.
02:40Okay, good morning everyone.
03:04I'm Bill Asseli, United States Attorney, Central District California.
03:07This morning we are announcing that we have filed federal criminal complaints against two defendants
03:12who engaged in violence during the recent civil unrest in downtown Los Angeles and in Paramount.
03:19The last few days we have seen vicious attacks on our agents and our properties here in the federal government.
03:25The escalation of violence by these rioters poses a serious threat to our agents and the safety of the public.
03:33Throwing rocks, explosives, assaulting agents and committing other acts of violence are extremely dangerous and will not be tolerated.
03:42The President had no choice but to call in the National Guard to protect our assets and our personnel.
03:48Our agents and our law enforcements were overwhelmed and we are grateful for the help of the National Guard that we've received.
03:56The defendants charged in the complaints are accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers and sheriff deputies
04:05who are called in to restore order after two demonstrations against federal immigration enforcement turned violent.
04:12As alleged in the complaints, these defendants, one in Paramount, the other in downtown Los Angeles, threw Molotov cocktails at police officers.
04:22Last Saturday, one defendant, Emiliano Galvez, hid behind a fence and threw the destructive device at a sheriff's deputy, then ran away.
04:32Deputies gave chase and arrested him. That's the video you actually see playing right there.
04:39The following day, police officer, a police officer apprehended the other defendant, Rocky Quigui, after spotting him with a Molotov cocktail in his hand.
04:49Officers witnessed him throw the device in the air and then arrested him with a lighter in his right hand.
04:55I commend our prosecutors and our law enforcement partners for swiftly taking action against these individuals.
05:03Our community must be kept safe for peaceful protests and against thugs and criminals looking to start trouble.
05:12We expect more charges to be filed in the coming days and weeks.
05:15If you took part in these riots and were looking to cause trouble, we will come looking for you.
05:23These defendants are charged with possession of an unregistered explosive device in violation of 26 United States Code Section 5861D.
05:33Possessing a Molotov cocktail and or another destructive device is punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison.
05:41They are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
05:43I now introduce the Los Angeles Special Agent in Charge of the ATF Office here, Mr. Kenneth Cooper.
05:50Good morning, everybody.
05:57I just want to stand here and represent ATF and the public and announcing to the public that ATF is firmly committed to our whole government approach to providing public safety, especially with what's going on here in Los Angeles.
06:15I want to make it very clear that we are not putting our state and local partners with L.A. County Sheriff's Office or Sheriff's Department or LAPD.
06:25We are not pulling them into Title 8 investigations.
06:30We understand their restrictions with state law.
06:35So this is us coming together when violent acts are committed against the citizens of Los Angeles.
06:42And in cases like this, the facts of the case are fairly simple.
06:48If you guys see the defendant here, Mr. Galvez, this was during the Paramount riots where Border Patrol was utilizing gas because they were having rocks and fireworks thrown at them and they were being assaulted.
07:08L.A. County Sheriff's Department responded to assist.
07:13This individual is identified even by open source media preparing to assault them with a destructive device.
07:23And as you can see, by the grace of God, when he deployed that in a fireball, it luckily did not hit one of the deputies as it clearly would have caused substantial physical injury or death.
07:37So ATS firmly committed, these are the most aggressive criminal acts.
07:43And we will aggressively work with our state and local and federal partners to investigate the use of destructive device, arson or explosives or firearms to assault our public citizens and our public safety first responders.
08:00I guess that didn't even highlight our partnership too.
08:07The second case with LAPD, both incidents ATF was able to work with each of these police departments to get an arrest on individuals that were attempting to harm the police officers with destructive devices.
08:25The Los Angeles Police Department appreciates the partnerships with both our federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, especially during this time of unprecedented civil unrest.
08:40We're going to continue to work with them to ensure that our community remains safe during this challenging time,
08:47especially when it involves cases where violence is being conducted against both of our our local law enforcement uniform officers as well as our our federal officers during this time.
08:58We'll continue to work together to make sure our community remains safe and target those individuals that are doing harm to both our community members as well as our law enforcement officers as they try to keep peace in our communities right now.
09:11Thank you very much.
09:12Thank you very much.
09:13And I'll introduce Commander Ruiz from Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
09:18Good morning, everyone.
09:21This is going to be brief.
09:22I just want to say thank you to our federal partners to work for working together with us and moving forward with these prosecutions on behalf of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and all of the local law enforcement agencies in L.A. County.
09:37If there's any questions, we could take a couple right now.
09:42Yes.
09:43How many people have been federally charged so far?
09:46And what's the importance of charging federally?
09:48We'll get you those hard numbers later.
09:50I know there's at least nine people charged over the weekend.
09:53We've had we've had more people charged this week for throwing rocks at officers.
09:58These two cases for throwing Molotov cocktails.
10:01We've had I think a couple others, but we can get you that full list.
10:05We might even do a bigger briefing tomorrow with all the federal agencies to go over that more detail today.
10:10We want to highlight these specific cases because we find this particular act of violence to be extremely dangerous.
10:16As you saw in Colorado, these Molotov cocktails have the ability to seriously harm or kill a person or, you know, and a police officer that they were thrown at.
10:25So we want to highlight these two cases today.
10:27We'll get you more numbers.
10:28We'll get you more numbers.
10:29The importance of charging people federally is to is for people to know that there's serious consequences for the behavior for their conduct.
10:35You have the right to peacefully protest.
10:37No one's going to stop you.
10:38But as soon as you cross that line into violence, you're throwing stuff, you're throwing rocks, you're throwing bombs.
10:43That's unacceptable.
10:45It will not be tolerated.
10:46And we're going to come down with a really heavy hand.
10:48And this isn't state.
10:50This isn't state court.
10:51This is federal court.
10:52So you're going to go to federal prison and you're going to go for many years.
10:55So the consequences in federal system are much greater usually than they are in the state system.
11:00That's the importance of it.
11:01Yes, sir.
11:02Can you talk about the process of catching these two individuals specifically?
11:05You put out a call to the media and the public to give tips.
11:09Was that something that helped in leading to their arrest or was it intelligence from your police agency?
11:15Do you want to do that?
11:17There's two separate cases.
11:18So let's take one at a time.
11:19We'll start with the LAPD case.
11:21Yeah.
11:22Good morning, sir.
11:24Specific to the Los Angeles Police Department case, we have a situation where our police officers are trying to keep the peace during a very difficult time on Sunday afternoon when the city was facing this unprecedented violence in many areas of the downtown area.
11:41In this particular case, we had a police officer who identified this person holding what he believed to be a Molotov cocktail.
11:50And fortunately, was able to identify and several officers were able to apprehend him safely without causing any harm to anyone, especially our police officers in it.
12:01And I just want to point out the the not only the keen observation skills of our police officers right now during a difficult time, but the courage they've had in trying to take these people into custody.
12:12Remember, all of our officers are working long hours right now.
12:15And and they're they're tired, but they're still doing the best job possible to keep this community safe and protect our critical infrastructure.
12:24We want to cover the sheriff's case real quick.
12:29One second.
12:30Yeah.
12:31So initially, I will tell you, we were in the command center here and seeing that live being reported by and I don't we don't know exactly what media source that we were seeing that.
12:42So live footage of that pending attack.
12:45The defendant clearly was physically demonstrating his his intent on deploying it.
12:54We were we were quickly trying to contact the L.A. County deputies on scene to warn them of this pending attack and then essentially try to vector him to that arrest.
13:05He he he did evade arrest.
13:08They had him detained at the time, but they didn't quite have the overall information that was coming in on it to make the probable cause arrest.
13:16So he was detained and identified.
13:18And then good old fashioned police work put it together in a quick period of time working hand in glove with the detectives from L.A. County Sheriff's Department with our agents.
13:29HSI, this individual is an illegal alien, is in the country unlawfully.
13:36They helped with an initial detention of them.
13:39So it was a combination of data, some some some open source stuff that we were looking at.
13:47It was a combination of a search warrants, interviews, canvassing.
13:52We were able to deploy our canine dog to that scene and recover remnants of that device, including wick, pieces of the wick, the bottle.
14:05And we were take soil samples that obviously will go to our lab to make the determination of the flammable liquid that was used in that.
14:15So does that kind of answer your question of how this was essentially a very complex investigation that we were able to put together in a short period of time
14:26because of the partnership between all federal agencies and our state and local partners?
14:32I think we have some stills from there's some body cameras.
14:39It's not as good as this footage.
14:41But if we haven't put that out.
14:43It's in the complaint after data.
14:45Yeah.
14:46Which has been sent out.
14:48Yeah.
14:49We just posted the videos on our X account.
14:54So both these videos are available on X right now on our account.
14:57And where did this video come from?
14:59I think this was cell phone.
15:01This was posted on social media.
15:04Do you think there's any connection between these two suspects?
15:08We're not aware of any connection between the two suspects, but obviously both appear to be motivated by similar motivations.
15:15This was an attack on law enforcement.
15:19You know, presumably they're motivated by our immigration enforcement efforts and wanting to make a statement, which you can make a statement, but you can't throw bombs or Molotov cocktails.
15:29That's that's not acceptable.
15:31Do you think there's any other people that were associated with these two that you're still looking for?
15:35We are.
15:36Let me just be clear.
15:37This is just the two cases we have been able to charge now.
15:40We are looking at hundreds of people.
15:42We have video.
15:43We have FBI collecting video.
15:46We are collecting body cam.
15:47We're collecting social media.
15:49We're collecting everything.
15:50And we're going to take our time.
15:52We're going to identify people.
15:53They think the mask is saving them.
15:54It's not saving them.
15:55We're going to identify them and we will bring charges.
15:58We will bring charges for attacks on local law enforcement.
16:01We have a federal statute for that.
16:02In a time of civil unrest, we can charge them with a stat with a federal statute.
16:06We can bring arson charges, explosive device charges.
16:09We can bring Hobbs act robbery charges for the looters.
16:12We're coming after all these people.
16:14So let's be clear.
16:15This is the beginning, not the end.
16:16Other questions.
16:17I'm not sure if I have that information on hand.
16:22I think was either visa overstay.
16:24I don't have his criminal history in front of me.
16:39And I'm not sure that I don't know that I have that right now.
16:42But I believe he's here lawfully.
16:46Yeah, he's a US citizen.
16:48Anything else?
16:50Are you working with LA City Attorney Nathan Hockman on any of this?
16:54The district attorney?
16:56Yeah.
16:57Absolutely.
16:58No, we work hand in hand with the district attorney, Mr. Hockman.
17:02To be honest with you, we have a very good relationship with our law enforcement partners,
17:06LAPD, the sheriffs.
17:08They both provided assistance to our agents on Friday and Saturday.
17:12I know it took them some time to be able to get the appropriate resources to handle the unprecedented and unexpected crowds.
17:19So we have a good relationship with him, the district attorney's office.
17:23They're going to bring their charges.
17:25You've got people failing to disperse and some of the lower level stuff.
17:28But the more serious stuff, the robberies, the arson, the Molotov cocktails, the assaults, we want to bring those federally
17:38because I think our partners understand that there's greater consequences for them in the federal court system than there is in the state court system.
17:44Yes?
17:45I just wanted to ask based on you just made a comment about unprecedented times with the information we've gathered.
17:52Do you feel what makes this unprecedented in terms of entering now the sixth day of protests?
17:59Yeah.
18:00Yeah.
18:01Well, these organized and orchestrated and it appears to be, we're looking into it, well funded agitators are coming into town and they are resisting federal law enforcement operations.
18:14Some people apparently have the notion that California really is a sanctuary from federal immigration laws.
18:20Let me assure you, there is no sanctuary.
18:23Federal laws are applicable here and they will be enforced.
18:26And nothing they have done to date has impacted our ability to carry on our immigration enforcement efforts.
18:31And they are continuing as we speak.
18:34Two more questions?
18:37Yes, ma'am.
18:38Tom Holman said that the initial raid that happened at ambiance apparel was about a money laundering investigation.
18:44Can you speak to that at all?
18:45I can't speak about the details of the investigation because it is ongoing.
18:49That is one of the charges I think that was mentioned that we're looking at, but there are several charges.
18:54And that was done under a search warrant.
18:57That search that was done there was authorized by a federal court judge based on probable cause of evidence of a crime.
19:05And that's what the agents were doing there at that time.
19:08Last question.
19:10If not, we're good.
19:11I want to just say, I want to really thank our partners.
19:14I want to thank the ATF.
19:15The ATF really has a special skill set.
19:17This is what they do.
19:18They do explosives.
19:19They do bombs.
19:20They do firearm investigations.
19:23And we really thank them for their expertise in helping us file these cases very quickly.
19:28And I want to thank our partners at the LA County Sheriff's Office and the LAPD.
19:32And like I said, we just posted the videos on our X account, so you can pull them there.
19:37Thank you guys very much.
19:38All right, thank you.
19:39Press release is out.
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