T.N. man accused of border attack plot ‘talks a big game, but it’s all lies,’ son says

Paul Faye, a Tennessee man accused of plotting to join a far-right militia movement, is a big talker who did not intend to harm anyone, his son told NBC News.

A Tennessee man accused by the federal government of plotting to join a far-right militia movement targeting immigrants and law enforcement at the southern border is a big talker who did not intend to harm anyone, his son told NBC News. 

Paul Faye, 55, was arrested Monday on a single charge of possession of an unregistered firearm or silencer. The complaint from his arrest, which was first reported by the newsletter Court Watch, shows he was the target of a nearly yearlong undercover FBI investigation into far-right militia movements. 

“They think my dad is a terrorist,” Joseph Faye, 30, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “He’s not a terrorist. He talks a big game, but it’s all lies.”

According to the complaint, the elder Faye made a series of claims of being involved with militias to undercover FBI agents in 2023 and communicated a desire to go to the southern border and “stir up the hornet’s nest” by acting as a sniper — seemingly targeting immigrants and U.S. border officials. He allegedly told the FBI that he had coordinated with militias in Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Paul Faye also claimed to have contacts that could make explosives and said that he had booby-trapped his home with butane tanks, and he was in touch with a man who was later charged with conspiracy to murder officers and employees of the United States government, according to the complaint. 

In a motion, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee wrote that Paul Faye had been “planning over the course of eighteen months to travel to the border and commit acts of violence against migrants and federal law enforcement” and had “actively recruited and encouraged others to engage in similar conduct.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tennessee-sniper-border-arrest-paul-faye-son-rcna137744

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