Bosses of Alberta men accused in plot to murder Mounties still under investigation, court docs suggest
Men prepared for ‘collapse of society,’ described protest as ‘war,' police allege
Alberta RCMP are still investigating several people they believe were issuing orders to the men now accused of plotting to murder Mounties at an anti-pandemic restriction border blockade last winter, newly released court documents show.
Police have identified a suspected leadership team outside of the Coutts border protest site that wanted to see not only vaccine mandates lifted but the "elimination … of the professional political class," according to the documents.
Police ultimately foiled the alleged plan with an early morning Valentine's Day raid that resulted in the seizures of several firearms and the arrests of 13 people, including four men now charged with conspiracy to murder.
Altering political, judicial and medical systems
In the days leading up to that raid, the documents allege the bosses outside of Coutts repeatedly called and texted the men with orders.
One text message, cited by police, shows the bosses told the men to spread the message that the real goal for the protest included altering Canada's political, judicial and medical systems.
The names of those leading the four men continue to be redacted because they are the subject of an active investigation.
Men trained for months
On Wednesday, a Lethbridge provincial court judge lifted a sealing order on parts of four search warrant applications after a legal challenge from a group of news organizations, including CBC, Global, CTV, the Globe and Mail, Postmedia and the New York Times.
These new details are revealed in the applications to obtain phone recordings of the calls made by Anthony Olienick, 40, Jerry Morin, 41, Chris Lysak, 48, and Chris Carbert, 45, from the remand centres where they are being held pending trial. A judge granted those search warrants in May.
Olienick, Morin, Lysak and Carbert are all charged with conspiracy to murder, along with weapons and mischief charges. The details alleged in the court documents have not been tested in court.
Additionally, Olienick has been charged with making or possessing an explosive device, and Lysak has been charged with uttering threats.
The documents detail how police came to believe the four men trained for months, stockpiled weapons and ammunition, and were taking orders from the unidentified bosses.
During the RCMP investigation, Olienick told undercover officers that he believed "all police should die" and said protesters were prepared to "slit [officers'] throats," the court documents allege.
3 men met in gun shop
In the months before the Coutts protest, Olienick allegedly told police he met Lysak and Carbert at a gun shop in Lethbridge, according to the summary of his police interview.
He then invited the two men and Morin to his rural property in the Municipality of Willow Creek, outside Claresholm, south of Calgary, where he ran his trucking business.
The group allegedly gathered on Sundays to "hang out, BBQ and shoot" as they prepared for the "collapse of society."
They considered themselves "preppers," Olienick told police, and said they expected they'd eventually "have to defend each other."
By the time police raided Olienick's properties in February, officers allege the man had stockpiled firearms, more than 36,000 rounds of ammunition and two pipe bombs with fuses that were strong enough to blow up cars.
Officers say they also seized four gas masks, camouflage and tactical gear.
'Sheepdogs … to protect the flock'
Police have said they believe the four men were part of a subgroup of protesters who viewed themselves as a security team.
Olienick described his team as "sheepdogs … there to protect the flock," according to the documents.
As CBC and The Fifth Estate previously reported, RCMP had several undercover officers in Coutts who were posing as protesters who befriended Olienick and Carbert.
On Feb. 12, Olienick told one of the undercover officers he believed he was fulfilling "his destiny" and said he wasn't sure he'd survive "this war."
"Olienick believed the police should all die," according to the officer's notes. "He also believed that if the police brought the war to Coutts, [the protesters] will slit their throats."
Lysak called a 'hitman'
As Olienick and the undercover officer were chatting, Lysak walked out of Smuggler's Saloon, a bar in Coutts where protesters gathered.
According to the officer's notes, Olienick pointed at Lysak and described his friend as "a hitman, a gunfighter and a long-range sniper."
That undercover officer and her colleagues came to believe Olienick and the others were plotting to bring weapons to the protest site using hockey bags.
On top of that, the officer recorded Olienick's desire to fight police.
According to the officer, Olienick said he feared police would come at night "when everyone was sleeping" and he would miss the chance to rally his troops "to fight."
A 'feud' over leadership
Olienick also said he had a satellite phone and former military members on the outskirts of the protest site who would "rush in and smash through police vehicles."
The newly unsealed records also detail numerous intercepted phone calls from the four men's cellphones and show police were concerned the four men were co-ordinating to bring weapons from a second stockpile near Nanton.
Police said they intercepted a phone call between Olienick and an unnamed man in which the two discussed a "detailed list" of items to be brought to the protest site.
The records suggest tension between those on the ground and the people directing them who had not yet shown up to the protest site.
Carbert told the undercover officers there was a "feud" over leadership and training, and that he had called one of the bosses "a coward" who could not be bothered to come to the protest when he, Lysak and Olienick were "getting ready to f--king go."
The arrests
Late in the afternoon on Feb. 13, police intercepted text messages to Olienick requesting a meeting between the bosses, Olienick, Lysak and Carbert. The boss, whose name is redacted, told Olienick not to bring cellphones and instead use their radios.
When they got back to Coutts, officers arrested Lysak and charged him with uttering threats toward a police officer.
Later that night, police raided a property near the protest site, seizing weapons and arresting 13 people, including Carbert and Olienick.
Meanwhile, Morin had returned to his home near Olds, north of Calgary. On the morning of Feb. 14, police intercepted phone calls to Morin's phone from one of the bosses.
Morin told the caller he was planning to go back to Coutts.
"Morin said he was not going to go down there and shoot people" before the caller "interrupted to say sarcastically 'Oh, let's talk about that over the phone, you f--king idiot.'"
Olienick's Telegram conspiracy theory
Police followed Morin from his home as he drove south, arresting him near Calgary.
Once the four men were arrested, they gave interviews to police.
In his interview with police, Olienick told officers he believed the blockade would end only when police sided with protesters and the military stood down.
"When asked about the conspiracy to commit murder, Olienick said nothing happened but the firearms were in case RCMP pulled the trigger first," the court documents said.
Olienick also told police he believed that when that happened, Canada would be invaded by a United Nations-directed army of Chinese troops to install a "totalitarian communist regime" with "executions and gas chambers."
Olienick said he learned this conspiracy theory from Telegram.
Men made calls from jail
Once the three men were incarcerated in remand centres, their phone records showed they called the bosses directly or allegedly made contact with them through family members, police said.
The applications for the search warrants sought recordings of those phone calls in part because police believed the men may have discussed allegations circulating in media reports that they had been connected with an extremist network called Diagolon.
The court documents do not outline whether police have any specific evidence connecting Diagolon to the men or the alleged conspiracy.
Olienick, Lysak, Carbert and Morin are scheduled for trial in June 2023.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alberta men accused in plot to murder Mounties saw undercover cops as 'girls' who could help: court records
Female undercover officers befriended protesters acting as ‘security’ for Coutts border blockade
Newly released records show police believed the Alberta men now accused of plotting to murder RCMP officers debated having two women smuggle a hockey bag filled with guns into a protest against pandemic-related restrictions, suggesting they would go unnoticed by police because they were "girls."
However, those two women were actually undercover police officers.
The next day, RCMP launched a rare "imminent harm" wiretap, which is permitted to be executed without a judge's sign-off when there is an immediate threat to safety.
The blockades and protests at the Coutts border crossing in southern Alberta began on Jan. 29 and ended following the Feb. 14 pre-dawn execution of warrants on trailers and property, which resulted in RCMP seizing more than a dozen firearms, as well as ammunition and body armour.
In the aftermath of the searches, 14 people were charged criminally, with four men — Jerry Morin, 41; Chris Lysak, 48; Chris Carbert, 45; and Anthony Olienick, 40 — facing the most serious offence: conspiracy to murder RCMP officers.
The four men also face a weapons and mischief charge.
Additionally, Olienick faces a charge related to an allegation he had a pipe bomb that police say they seized from his rural property in the Municipality of Willow Creek outside Claresholm, south of Calgary.
These new details are revealed in search warrant applications, also known as ITOs, which describe the two key investigative tactics — the undercover operation and the wiretaps — used to justify charges, raids and further searches.
Four ITOs were unsealed and filed with Lethbridge Provincial Court on Wednesday after a legal challenge from a group of news organizations, including CBC, Global, CTV, the Globe and Mail, Postmedia and the New York Times.
Although the documents were unsealed, redactions and an interim publication ban prevented many of the details from being reported — most notably, information gleaned from wiretaps, statements made by the four accused to police and inflammatory statements made to undercover officers.
The media consortium will have a full hearing on Sept. 29 to determine if the publication ban will be lifted for remaining redactions.
Police allege guns to be shipped in hockey bag
The unsealed documents show that when they were filed, RCMP believed Olienick, Carbert and Morin were part of a sub-group of protesters who "were arming themselves for a standoff against police."
Police believed three of the four men facing conspiracy to murder charges knew each other and made plans prior to the Coutts border blockade, according to the documents.
On Feb. 11, two female undercover officers — referred to in the document by pseudonyms — posed as protesters and befriended Olienick and Carbert at a Coutts bar called Smuggler's Saloon. The two officers reported that they had witnessed the planning of a suspected shipment of guns in a hockey bag that night, according to the undercover officers' notes.
The documents say Carbert then asked Olienick if he "preferred to use guitar cases like they usually did," but "Olienick said the package was too big and they needed a hockey bag."
The plan was to meet Morin at a check stop along the train tracks near the protest site, where he would hand over a "heavy" delivery.
The documents detail a conflict over whether the undercover officers would help. Carbert felt the hockey bag would be too heavy for the women to lift, but Olienick believed it was a perfect cover.
"Olienick believed that the police would not think much of it if [the two women] carried the bag because they were 'girls,'" reads one of the ITOs.
Officers ordered to leave suspected 'gun exchange'
When the undercover officers told the men they were "fine with guns," the document states that neither Carbert nor Olienick denied the bag contained firearms.
Although the undercover officers did arrive at the checkpoint with Olienick, Carbert and Morin, their supervisor told them to leave and not be involved in what they believed was going to be a "gun exchange," the records say, so they did not see the hockey bag.
Based on the undercover officers' observations, RCMP "[believed] Morin provided firearms to Olienick and Carbert for the purpose of using those firearms to shoot at and kill police officers."
From
left to right: Chris Carbert, 44; Anthony Olienick, 39; Jerry Morin,
40; and Christopher Lysak, 48. They are each accused of conspiring to
murder RCMP officers near Coutts, Alta., during the border blockade and
protests earlier this year. (Carbert/Facebook, Coutts Convoy Restart/Facebook, Morin/Facebook, Instagram)
The situation at Coutts was intensifying leading up to the Valentine's Day police raids.
The day after the hockey bag handover, RCMP launched an imminent harm intercept, meaning they could set up wiretaps of the suspects without the typically required court authorization, because they believed their officers were in danger.
But under the heading "Imminent Harm Interception of Private Communication" in one of the ITOs, 54 paragraphs and subparagraphs are blacked out with redactions.
'Arming themselves for a standoff'
The four released ITOs contain very little information about the fourth man, Lysak. There is a fifth ITO, which prosecutors successfully argued should remain sealed because it relates to an ongoing investigation.
Social media posts have connected two of the men to a network called Diagolon, an American-style militia movement birthed in Nova Scotia with white supremacist beliefs.
Members of the network want to establish a white nationalist state through violence, according to experts in extremism.
The social media accounts belonging to Carbert and Lysak connect the pair to Diagolon, including a photo of Lysak posing with the group's founder, Jeremy MacKenzie.
Two Diagolon patches were found on body armour seized during the execution of RCMP search warrants at Coutts on Feb. 14.
This
cache of firearms, body armour and ammunition was found in three
trailers near the blockade of the Canada-U.S. border, police say. (Submitted by Alberta RCMP)
The main searches were conducted on trailers on the property of Joanne Person, halfway between Smuggler's Saloon in Coutts and the protest site.
Person, who faces less serious charges connected to the blockade, had been hosting several of the protesters, including Olienick, Carbert and two other men who were not identified in the documents. A gun registered to Lysak was seized from Person's property during the search.
Men involved in sophisticated security team
By the second week in February, RCMP had identified a sophisticated security team that allegedly included Olienick, Morin and Carbert.
Olienick kept watch over several live surveillance feeds that showed RCMP officers' movements within the protest area and at various checkpoints, undercover officers noted.
Those officers spotted body armour, a laminated map and the live video feed in Olienick's truck, which led to police commenting on "the sophistication of the security role," according to the ITOs.
RCMP are seen policing the Coutts, Alta., border protests on Feb. 9. (Nassima Way/CBC)
Olienick, who communicated with protest leadership through an intermediary, told undercover officers that protesters had "access to hundreds of firearms and ammunition within Coutts," the court records allege.
"I believe that Olienick's involvement as security within the Coutts blockade involves structure, hierarchy and organization," the document says.
Police also believed they would find "documents and data related to planning, organization and operations of the protest group's security for the Coutts blockade" at one of Olienick's properties.
The search warrant application also alleges Olienick disclosed that protesters had brought in more semi tractors and farm equipment to "barricade themselves from the RCMP because they were breaching the borders of the town."
'Search by night' raids
Late on Feb. 13, police arrested Lysak outside Smuggler's Saloon and charged him with uttering threats toward a police officer.
By this time, police had applied to search Person's property and stated in their application they wished to do so at night, when fewer protesters would be present.
"I believe there will be a significant risk to police, public and protestor safety when executing this search warrant, including protestors attempting to swarm, obstruct and attack police," the document said.
Protesters
from the blockade at the border crossing near Coutts, Alta., pass
through the Milk River blockade site on Highway 4 on Feb. 15, as police
officers look on. (CBC)
In the early hours of Feb. 14, officers raided trailers on Person's property and seized a weapons cache, including a handgun registered to Lysak. Olienick and Carbert were arrested in the course of the raids on the property.
'This is war'
The morning after the raids, police surveilled Morin's home and followed him discreetly for nearly an hour and a half before pulling his truck over in Calgary at 12:23 p.m.
Police found two weapons in his truck, but also applied for a search warrant for Morin's home because, the documents allege, he had disclosed in previous days that he had more firearms than what police recovered during his arrest. Another gun was seized at Morin's house, according to the ITOs.
The ITOs also referenced social media posts made by some of the accused, including Morin, who posted a video to Facebook during the protests.
In a video titled "Call to Action" posted the day before his arrest, Morin encouraged others to join the protest.
"This is war," Morin said.
Investigators believed group had more members, weapons
The RCMP's investigation into the alleged planned attack continued after they arrested the four men. Police also applied to search a rural property belonging to Olienick near Claresholm. Officers said they believed he had guns there and "was part of a group that spoke about using firearms against police."
"Police have not yet identified all members of the group and I believe there were members of the group that were not present in Coutts," police said.
Police also learned that in the months leading up to the protests, Olienick had ordered different accessories for a handgun, despite not having one registered in his name, according to the documents.
According to the records, this included magazine holders, a holster that could accommodate a handgun with an attached light, and a shot timer, which police noted are typically used for exercises "intended to improve shooting speed and accuracy while shooting quickly."
Police believed Olienick had equipment stored outside of Coutts, which members of his "group" were planning to transport into the protest area.
"I believe equipment intended for Coutts did not arrive," wrote one investigating officer.
- Please send any tips on this story to fifthtips@cbc.ca
Clarifications
- After publication, the court issued additional redactions. This article has been updated.Oct 05, 2022 5:07 PM MT
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