United States v. Humber

United States v. Humber, case number 2:24-cr-00257 in the Eastern District of California, is the primary U.S. federal prosecution arising from the Terrorgram Collective investigation. The case charged Dallas Humber of Elk Grove, California and Matthew Robert Allison of Boise, Idaho in a 15-count indictment filed September 5, 2024, and unsealed September 9, 2024. It is notable as one of the most significant applications of 18 U.S.C. § 2339A (material support to terrorists) to an online white-supremacist content network and produced the longest sentence (30 years) imposed on any Terrorgram defendant globally.¹

Indictment

The 37-page indictment was filed in the Sacramento Division of the Eastern District of California. The charges:

Count 1 - Conspiracy. Counts 2-5 - Soliciting hate crimes (four separate acts targeting individuals on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and gender identity, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 249). Counts 6-8 - Soliciting the murder of federal officials (three named or identified federal officials appearing on "The List" hit-list publication). Counts 9-11 - Doxing federal officials (publishing private identifying information with intent to threaten). Count 12 - Interstate threatening communications, 18 U.S.C. § 875. Counts 13-14 - Distribution of information relating to explosives and destructive devices, 18 U.S.C. § 842(p). Count 15 - Conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, 18 U.S.C. § 2339A.

Maximum cumulative sentence across all counts: 220 years per defendant.

The prosecution was a joint effort by DOJ's Civil Rights Division, National Security Division (Counterterrorism Section), and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Civil Rights Division delivered remarks at the charging announcement.²

Statutory Theory: 18 U.S.C. § 2339A

The material support charge under § 2339A was the most legally significant count. Unlike its companion statute, § 2339B, which is limited to designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations, § 2339A broadly proscribes providing material support "knowing or intending that it will be used in preparation for, or in carrying out" specific terrorism-related offenses including assassination (18 U.S.C. § 351), use of weapons of mass destruction (§ 2332a), and destruction of energy facilities (§ 1366).

At the time of the indictment, Terrorgram Collective was not designated as an FTO (which requires a State Department determination; the SDGT designation followed in January 2025). The choice of § 2339A therefore allowed prosecutors to proceed without an FTO predicate. The prosecution's theory was that Humber and Allison provided "services" and "personnel" (including themselves) in furtherance of the specific offenses to which the Terrorgram network's publications and activities were directed.

Lawfare described the use of § 2339A in this context as significant, noting that while not entirely without precedent, applying it to an online content production operation required the government to prove that propaganda production and distribution constituted "services" in legal contemplation.³

Evidence Cited

The indictment and DOJ press releases identified specific evidentiary items: Humber's December 2022 post of electrical substation transformer images captioned "for educational purposes only of course"; her January 2023 post praising the Randolph County, EnergyUnited substation shooting as evidence that Terrorgram's "hard work in detailing its effectiveness" had "encouraged" the attack; her October 2022 communications with a Telegram user planning a Brazil school shooting one month before the Aracruz attack; her continued contact from pretrial detention; all three Terrorgram publications (Militant Accelerationism, Do It For The Gram, The Hard Reset); and the "White Terror" video series produced by Allison featuring 105 far-right killers.⁴

Outcomes

Humber changed her plea to guilty on August 8, 2025. U.S. District Judge Dena Coggins sentenced her on December 19, 2025, to 360 months (30 years) in federal prison plus lifetime supervised release. The sentence exceeded the 20 years given to Terrorgram co-founder Matthew Althorpe in Canada.

Allison pleaded not guilty and contested the charges. As of May 2026, his trial was pending in the Eastern District of California. He remained in federal custody.

DOJ linked the case to a separately prosecuted Wisconsin murder-for-hire plot targeting a federal official and to the infrastructure sabotage charges against Andrew Takhistov in New Jersey, as examples of the Terrorgram network's downstream violence.