Who is Vem Miller? What we know about the suspect arrested near Trump’s Coachella rally

LOS ANGELES – A Las Vegas man who was arrested outside former President Donald Trump’s Coachella rally over the weekend had several guns, boxes of ammunition and passports in different names in his possession, a Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said Sunday.

The suspect, Vem Miller, 49, was contacted by sheriff’s deputies around 5 p.m. Saturday as he attempted to pass through a checkpoint leading into the gathering.

But Miller never made it inside, after authorities noticed “irregularities” in some of the things he said to gain access to the event.

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An investigation revealed that Miller not only pretended to be a reporter with access to the VIP area, but was also driving an unregistered vehicle with a fake license plate, Bianco said.

“The license plate was what we in law enforcement would recognize as a homemade plate and indicative of a group of individuals who claim to be ‘sovereign citizens,'” Bianco said. “We, and assuming the congressman, assume that he (Miller) was part of that identification group.”

Miller was also in possession of several passports and driver’s licenses with different names. Two rifles and several boxes of ammunition were found inside the vehicle, which Bianco described as “in disarray.”

Miller was arrested for possession of a loaded firearm and a high-capacity magazine. He was arrested and has since been released with a promise to appear in court at a later date, which online records show is January 2, 2025.

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“There is absolutely no way that any of us really knew what was in his mind,” Bianco said.

Trump’s safety or that of rally attendees was not affected, officials said.

Bianco declined to speculate on the suspect’s motives or state of mind. “We know we stopped something bad from happening, and it doesn’t matter what it was going to be,” Bianco said.

The sheriff gave more details about the group of “sovereign citizens” Miller allegedly belonged to.

“They’re certainly considered a far-right group…I wouldn’t say it’s an activist group. It’s just a group that doesn’t believe in government and government control. They don’t believe that government and the laws apply to them “These are people who are trying to do harm. And thank God we prevented it,” Bianco added.

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes “sovereign citizens” as those who consider themselves exempt from U.S. law, using “a variety of conspiracy theories and lies to justify their beliefs and activities, some of which are illegal and violent.”

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“It’s a political belief, if you will, that government rules and laws and everything that goes with that don’t apply to them. They never want to answer our questions. They don’t believe they need to ‘a driver’s license. license…they don’t register their vehicles It was an unregistered car that we had to go through the VIN number and manufacturing process to verify that it was a car. “It was indeed his (Miller’s) property and was sold to him, but it was never recorded,” Bianco said.

“What my team was able to do and what we did for the participants, I had complete confidence that absolutely nothing was going to happen inside that facility. And I’m extremely proud of what the deputies did fact and their adherence, their personal purchase in the sense that they took it upon themselves to ensure the safety of our former president and the participants in this rally,” he said.

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The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department is working alongside the FBI and Secret Service as the investigation continues.

Members of the media, along with VIP ticket holders, passed through a number of intersections manned by state and local law enforcement officers before arriving at a large grassy area where drivers were asked to open the hoods and trunks, and each vehicle was searched by a K-9 Officer. Other general ticket holders were directed to a site approximately 5km from the rally, where they were boarded by buses and driven to the site.

Security is tight at Trump rallies after two recent assassination attempts. Last month, a man was charged with attempted murder after authorities said he watched the former president for 12 hours and wrote that he wanted to kill him.

The Florida arrest came two months after Trump was shot in the ear during an assassination attempt at his Pennsylvania rally.

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“The US Secret Service believes that the incident did not impact protective operations and that former President Trump was not in any danger,” the US Attorney’s Office, the Secret Service and the US Department of Defense said in a statement on Sunday. FBI in a joint federal release.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.