In New Mexico on Monday, Solomon Peña, a Trump supporter who ran — and lost — in a state legislative race in last year’s midterm elections, was arrested by police in the Albuquerque area for orchestrating what evidence indicates were at least four shootings targeting personal residences of local Democratic officials.
It appears Peña was personally present for at least one of the attacks and fired a weapon there, per info from police reported in the Albuquerque Journal. There were no injuries reported in connection to the incidents, but that’s not because they weren’t serious. Earlier this month, over 12 shots were fired at state Rep. Linda Lopez’s residence, including at least three that hit her 10-year-old daughter’s bedroom, making debris fall from the ceiling. The shootings stretched across roughly a month, starting on December 4 with an incident at a local residence of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa, where bullets reportedly went through a front door. Peña previously visited at least three of the targets’ residences in the aftermath of Election Day last year, raising concerns about supposed election fraud — for which, of course, there remains zero legitimate evidence.
Relatedly, Peña has expressed support for Trump on social media and appeared to indicate he ventured to Washington, D.C., on January 6, placing him around the attack on the Capitol. He reportedly paid four other individuals to assist him with carrying out the attacks, which, besides Lopez and Barboa, also affected now former Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O’Malley and state Rep. Javier Martínez. Reportedly, a key development in the investigation took place after the attack on Lopez’s residence, when local police stopped one of the assailants who assisted Peña within an hour of the incident. That man, Jose Trujillo, was driving a vehicle registered in Peña’s name. Local officer Kyle Hartsock said Peña was present for the attack that night.
Peña has a criminal history and spent well over half a decade in prison in connection to a series of retail robberies. Amid court disputes over his candidacy, a judge concluded ahead of Election Day that a state law blocking those convicted of felony offenses — like Peña — from taking office unless they received a governor’s pardon was unconstitutional. Those who he later visited after the election and before the shootings included O’Malley, Barboa, and Lopez. According to O’Malley and Barboa, Peña referenced the number of residences his campaign reached in its door-to-door efforts, which obviously is not an inherent predictor of a campaign’s success. O’Malley said she informed law enforcement of the encounter, although Peña evidently didn’t show direct predispositions to violence at that time. “He was just sort of all over the place — the things he was putting together weren’t quite connecting or fitting,” Barboa additionally recalled. “You can’t say because you knocked on a thousand doors, you know you got a thousand votes.”
The attacks obviously connect to what remains a continuing and persistent threat of political violence exemplified by figures on the far-right who Trump refuses to condemn in remotely consistent terms. He has pushed for the release of all those detained in connection to the Capitol riot, not making any distinction at the time between those in pretrial detention and those already sentenced or those accused of violent crimes versus those facing accusations of nonviolent offenses. His accepting attitude isn’t helping. There was also reporting about a Capitol rioter and a co-conspirator who were plotting what were evidently meant as lethal attacks against law enforcement personnel purportedly involved in building the criminal case against the rioter. Authorities arrested the duo after a third individual provided information.
