Armed FBI attacker shot dead by police believed to be enraged Trump supporter

The man may also have been present at the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.

Three days later, Ricky Shiffer, 42, attacked an FBI office in Cincinnati with an AR-15-style rifle and a nailgun. After his attempt to break into the building was unsuccessful, he fled to a rural area, where police shot and killed him during an armed standoff.

Truth Social later deleted his profile.

A Facebook video from 5 January last year also appears to show Shiffer at a pro-Trump rally in Washington the night before the riot at the Capitol. On Twitter, someone who appears to be Shiffer also claimed to have been present at the Capitol, though no one by that name has been charged for crimes that day.

Investigators are looking into whether Shiffer had ties to extremist groups such as the Proud Boys, law enforcement officials told the New York Times.

The far right has reacted with fury to the raid on Mar-a-Lago, with diehard Trump supporters framing the FBI operation as an act of authoritarianism and some vowing retribution. The federal judge who approved the warrant, Bruce Reinhart, has been subject to death threats.

In a possible effort to head off further tumult and potential violence, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said in a press conference on Thursday that he was moving to unseal the search warrant and inventory from the raid on Mar-a-Lago. Garland said that he had personally approved the FBI operation.

Trump also declared his support for the idea of unsealing the search warrant.