Who Is Adrian Paul Aispuro and Is Anyone Behind Him?
Who Is Adrian Paul Aispuro and Is Anyone Behind Him?
What We Know (and Don’t Know) about the Man Arrested at a Kennedy Event in September
On September 15, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a speech at the historic Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. It was a typical event for a presidential candidate, without the kind of fanfare that has preceded his upcoming event in Philadelphia on October 9.
But it turned out to be one of the most shocking moments of the campaign season so far when a man carrying several weapons and impersonating a Federal Marshal demanded to see Kennedy himself, according to a statement from Kennedy security head Gavin de Becker. The man, arrested then and there, was later identified as Adrian Paul Aispuro.
The incident occurred even as the Biden administration continues to deny Kennedy the Secret Service protection normally given to presidential candidates who achieve Kennedy’s level of nationwide support.
The event, which also showcased traditional Mexican music and dance performances, featured Kennedy addressing a wide range of issues, including the housing crisis, economic recovery, the border crisis, and public health. Following his remarks, Kennedy took questions from an enthusiastic audience in the 1,270-seat venue.
However, unbeknownst to the Kennedy supporters in the theater, events occurring right outside were far more dramatic due to the presence of the heavily armed Aispuro. Members of the Kennedy security team from Gavin de Becker & Associates immediately noticed something strange about Aispuro because he was dressed as a Federal Marshal.
After demanding to be brought before the candidate, Aispuro was detained by Kennedy's private security, who discovered multiple firearms on his person. De Becker’s team also found a backpack filled with additional weapons, including a gun, a knife, and ammunition. When the Los Angeles Police were called, he was arrested and subsequently charged with three criminal counts: carrying a concealed firearm without a permit, carrying a loaded firearm and impersonating a police officer. Kennedy described this further on X:
“The man, wearing two shoulder holsters with loaded pistols and spare ammunition magazines was carrying a U.S. Marshal badge on a lanyard and beltclip federal ID,” Kennedy wrote early on September 16 on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “He identified himself as a member of my security detail.”
Under California law, these firearms charges are known as “wobblers,” meaning they can be classed as felonies or misdemeanors depending on a suspect’s prior criminal history. Yet Aispuro was only charged with misdemeanors on all three counts–––rather than more serious charges. He was released on $35,000 bail on September 22, 2023. He is due back in court on March 19, 2024.
But just who is Aispuro? Is he a politically motivated ideologue? Or has he been groomed by unknown individuals and, consequently, tricked into coming to the Kennedy rally heavily armed and demanding to see the candidate? Or is he just a social outcast suffering psychological breakdown, like Travis Bickle, Robert De Niro’s character in Taxi Driver, prior to his failed attempt to assassinate a presidential candidate?
Aispuro’s legal history includes a 2002 speeding violation in Arizona and a 2011 bankruptcy filing in California. This unremarkable history, and the profile of a man who was relatively down on his luck, continues to beg the lingering question about whether he acted on his own initiative when he showed up at the Kennedy event.
There is little evidence of Aispuro’s activities or beliefs online apart from a single TikTok video uploaded to the account “ogbigmr.e717”on July 31.
The video was recorded by a man not visible on camera, whom Aispuro referred to as “God’s gangster,” although it is Aispuro who does almost all of the talking. In the video, Aispuro sports a fake law enforcement badge as well as what appears to be a Federal ID card on his belt buckle. Aispuro was dressed in the Tik Tok video almost identically to how he was dressed when he was arrested at the Wilshire Ebell. The video appears to have been shot in the garage of an address associated with Aispuro in Northridge, a suburb in LA’s San Fernando Valley.
Aispuro begins by instructing his viewers to visit the Rumble channels of Alex Collier and Icons 2020. Collier is a UFOlogist who appeared on Art Bell's “Coast to Coast AM” radio program in 1998. He remains active online and speaks primarily about extraterrestrials, including those he claims to have contacted. Collier's content is largely apolitical and does not appear to contain any references to Aispuro.
Icons 2020 is a Rumble channel operated by a man who goes by the name Sovereign Sarge, whom Aispuro mentions by name. The channel covers a wide range of anti-government theories discussed by Sarge and his guests. Notably, the logo associated with the TikTok channel where Aispuro's video is posted is frequently used by Sarge in his videos on Icons 2020.
Yet despite Aispuro suggesting that he knows both Sarge and Collier and declaring that he will appear in their content, he does not seem to feature in the channel's videos. Investigations of Rumble and Telegram accounts associated with Icons 2020 also do not show any mention of Aispuro.
In the same TikTok video, Aispuro spells out his full name and implores viewers to calculate his full name in Gematria, an ancient Hebrew-based numerology system in which words are assigned numerical values, in order to “know who you're dealing with.”
Aispuro then asks to be contacted on his personal email address (which he reads out in the video) by the Hells Angels and a rival LA-based biker group, the Mongols. Aispuro concludes his video saying:
“Let’s f*#king break some kneecaps. Let’s go for a ride, dog [while pointing to a motorcycle]. Let’s fuck it up, all right. I’m putting this planet on lockdown. DefCon 1, regulators mount up [a reference to the 1994 Warren G hit song “Regulate”]. Stay at home orders, effective now. That’s what’s happening. Take care of each other, protect the women and the children. If I don’t make it back, call the fucking President, your commander-in-chief, Donald J. Trump.”
In the video, which becomes increasingly intense in tone, Aispuro did not indicate the event from which he might not “make it back” or when it might occur. This leaves one to speculate about whether or not he might have been referring to the Kennedy event
We do not know where Aispuro was between July 31 and September 15, the day he appeared at the Wilshire Ebell. Kennedy did hold an event about border security in Los Angeles (near Aispuro’s home) on August 3 — soon after the release of the video — but no presence of Aispuro has been documented there.
Aispuro’ brother, who was briefly detained following the Kennedy rally because he drove the suspect to the event, told The New York Post that Aispuro had been called to the event as a security guard and therefore had shown up planning to work. Aispuro is certified as an Emergency Medical Technician, but he is currently unemployed.
Moreover, details of the incident contradict Raymond’s ‘security guard’ explanation as, according to Kennedy’s security team, Aispuro asked to be taken straight to Kennedy himself and carried far more weaponry than would be authorized for security personnel.
The possibility that someone did indeed call Aispuro to the event and that he may not have been acting alone remains to be further investigated.
Raymond was quoted telling the Post, “My brother got bad information from someone or was misled somehow” while calling the Kennedy security team’s response to the incident “bullshit.”
Raymond also told the Daily Beast that his brother was a “loner” whose interests include watching videos about aliens. He told the Post that the entire incident was “a misunderstanding” and that his brother was “not political.”
Aispuro was described by his brother as an out-of-work medical technician, which is corroborated by a GoFundMe page that Raymond set up for his brother in October of 2021 after Adrian apparently lost his job due to a workplace injury.
According to Raymond’s statement on the GoFundMe page titled ‘Help a Frontline Unsung Hero’:
“My brother suffered permanent injuries getting that patient in the ER. He ruptured five discs in his lower back: L1-L5, and ruptured one of the hamstring muscles in his left leg. My brother has been struggling to get his health and life back with no treatment or physical therapy provided; he's been committed to his own recovery and therapy. With his knowledge of medicine and the human body, it's probably better that way. To make an already bad, unpleasant, and difficult situation even more so, his employer flat out turned their back and abandoned him; [he] lost his career in one night.”
Raymond added that his brother had been living off savings that would soon run out. He said that family assistance was also strained, and he expressed fears that his brother could end up homeless. As of September 2023, the GoFundMe campaign had raised just $100 from a single anonymous donation that came shortly after its launch.
While one can only speculate about Aispuro’s intentions when he showed up at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre armed to the teeth, history shows that individuals with suspected political motivations for violence almost never act alone, so it is worth questioning who else may have been involved in this incident. This consideration is particularly important due to Raymond's assertion that his brother was “misled” into going to the Kennedy event.
Ironically, the Wilshire Ebell Theatre is on the same street and just six minutes by car from the location of the former Ambassador Hotel, where Senator Robert F. Kennedy. was assassinated in 1968. The location of the hotel is now home to The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, a complex of public schools in Los Angeles.
As reported earlier in The Kennedy Beacon, the incident has parallels with the murder fifty-five years ago: in that case, the convicted gunman may have been a patsy and the killshot appears to have come from a different person than Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of the assassination.
In 2023 political violence against anti-establishment candidates is again real and visible. Germany’s surging opposition party, AdF, alleged that in early October its leader and German parliamentarian Tino Chrupalla was stabbed with a syringe in a violent attack, although German police deny this claim, according to MSN.
Also recently, Ecuadorian politician Pedro Briones was assassinated in broad daylight in August.This attack was the third political assassination to take place in Ecuador in a single month. Briones was part of Citizen Revolution, the party of exiled former President Rafael Correa. The former Ecuadorian President is known internationally for granting asylum and citizenship to Wikileaks publisher and antiwar activist Julian Assange. Notably, Kennedy is the only major candidate in the 2024 US Presidential election who has pledged to pardon Assange on all the criminal allegations he faces related to his publishing activities.
In late 2022, former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was shot in an assassination attempt that left one of his supporters dead and others injured. Khan blamed US intelligence agencies for conspiring to overthrow his government in the months before the attempted assassination.
Likewise, Kennedy Jr. blames the CIA for the assassination of his father as well as for the 1963 assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.
The possibility that Kennedy could be targeted is real, as the candidate himself has said. Comedian Tim Dillon, who recently hosted a podcast with Kennedy and his wife Cheryl Hines, described a bizarre moment in the middle of the recording session when the room went completely black, saying that Kennedy sincerely thought someone was coming to try to kill him.
Kennedy's fears are far from unfounded. According to a Secret Service risk assessment document obtained by the non-profit group Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Secret Service is aware of multiple and frequent death threats made directly to Kennedy from an individual that the Secret Service labels as a "known subject." The Secret Service has also identified another "known subject," who has sent Kennedy many odd 'gifts,' including a wedding band. This stalker has professed love for Kennedy while also expressing anger at her inability to be in close personal contact with the candidate. A third subject admitted to paying unnamed individuals to spy on Kennedy while offering an admission of vandalism targeting Kennedy, according to the Secret Service dossier.
Both Kennedy's head of security, Gavin de Becker, and the Secret Service have made it clear that the violent threats the candidate faces are matters of fact rather than speculation. What is therefore left to speculation is why Kennedy has not been provided with the Secret Service protection that other candidates in his position have historically received upon the first instance of such a request.
In an open letter to President Biden dated September 18, Kennedy’s campaign manager Dennis Kucinich wrote: “It is astonishing that under such circumstances, you would deny Secret Service coverage to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has polled more than 20% in the first five primary states, and whose net favorability rating exceeds both yours and Donald Trump’s.”
The letter continues, “Although it is a well-known historical fact, apparently in your case it bears repeating: Mr. Kennedy's uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated. Mr. Kennedy's father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated while a presidential candidate.”
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Very unsettling. I'm 73 and remember all too well the Kennedy assassinations, MLK's murder, Malcom X's murder, attempted assassinations of Ford and Reagan, as well as Allende's murder. I was driving to work when I was caught up in the horrible traffic jam at Washington circle just moments after the Letelliler bombing. What do many of these things have in common? The CIA. Their tentacles are everywhere, even today. And they often use disaffected loners like this fellow, or Oswald or Sirhan, to do their dirty work. This is why I really don't want Bobby to have Secret Service protection. Don't trust it. They are too close to the nest of vipers that have plagued this country since the sixties. God save us and please protect our next president, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
I appreciate this thorough report on Aispuro. Of course it is despicable that the Biden admin is not providing secret service coverage for Bobby.