Pennsylvania Man Arrested in Alleged ISIS-Inspired Plot

A Pennsylvania man was arrested after allegedly receiving a firearm and ammunition in support of the ISIS terrorist group, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Sept. 15.

Jonathan Hunter Kramer, 21, of Valencia, allegedly claimed affiliation with the terrorist group and also offered to share information about how to build explosives with others, the DOJ said.

He was charged with “receiving a firearm and ammunition knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the firearm and ammunition would be used to commit a felony or a federal crime of terrorism, including providing, attempting to provide, and conspiring to provide material support or resources to a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization,” according to a news release from the department.

Valencia is a community in Butler County, where an assassination attempt was made on President Donald Trump on July 13, 2024, during a rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds.

Kramer, who went by the online name “Hamza Al Rashid,” was arrested over the past weekend after coming back to a hotel room with three 30-round rifle magazines and five boxes of rifle ammunition. The news release added that the FBI executed search warrants on Kramer’s person, residence, and property, seizing a semiautomatic rifle and more rounds of ammunition.

The agents also found a prayer rug, pepper spray, around 30 knives, and an entrenchment tool. He had a handwritten note, which read: “DoNt look For me[.] IDK what I did buT I cant live In constant Fear,” according to the department.

According to court papers cited in the release, Kramer was known to the FBI since an investigation in 2023, showing that he was charged by Pennsylvania state officials, as a minor, for “his role in a plot to commit a mass casualty incident and for possessing child sexual abuse material.”

After he was released from custody in March 2026, an anonymous individual tipped off the FBI and said Kramer was exhibiting troubling behavior, including ordering packages and speaking “to his friends from before” he was detained, the DOJ said.

An investigation was then carried out, finding that he allegedly claimed an affiliation with ISIS, wanted to share manuals on how to make explosives with others, and had said he had a “mission” but lacked a “weapon” to carry it out, according to the press release. Officials also found that he was using the Arabic alias.

“The subject in this case was allegedly plotting a violent attack in support of ISIS—engaging with ISIS propaganda online, building attack concepts, and repeatedly expressing extremist rhetoric—all while acquiring weapons believed to be in preparation of the attack,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in the release.

It was not clear whether Kramer had legal representation who could speak on his behalf.

ISIS, which emerged during the Syrian Civil War and the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in the 2010s, took over swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq during that decade.

Many terrorist attacks or plots have been inspired by the terrorist group, including the 2015 Paris attacks that left more than 100 dead, and numerous incidents across the Middle East and North Africa.

Inside the United States, the group was alleged to have inspired an attack at the University of Merced in Merced, California, that killed four people in 2015; a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California in 2015, that left more than a dozen dead; and the Pulse nightclub mass shooting in 2016 that left 49 people dead in Orlando, Florida, among other incidents.