Fresno-area family still scarred 3 years after FBI raid for false bomb threats | Opinion
Three years ago this month, brothers John and Sam Niblick, their mother Wendy Johnson-Niblick and friend/roommate Kashaun Clyburn endured the most terrifying experience of their lives.
Just before dawn on May 2, 2022, their family home on a quiet cul-de-sac in the gated community of Quail Lakes outside Clovis got raided and ripped through by federal agents and local law enforcement. The Niblick brothers and Clyburn spent hours in handcuffs, in John’s case so tightly the bruises on his wrists lasted for weeks, and accused of making bomb threats to out-of-state schools – a crime that carries a 10-year prison sentence for every charge.
“The FBI agent told me there was already more than enough ample evidence to show that I was the criminal,” John Niblick said. “But I didn’t understand how that could be possible.”
Niblick didn’t understand because he was totally innocent. Rather, his family and Clyburn were themselves victims – either of a random act committed by a bombing suspect more than 2,000 miles away or the rash one of an overzealous federal agent.
When the Niblicks were startled awake that morning by red and blue flashing lights, followed by loud thumping and shouts of “Police! Open the door!,” it wasn’t a complete surprise. About a month prior, they responded to the more normal knock of a Fresno County sheriff’s deputy asking if they had any connection to a school in Wisconsin they’d never been to or heard of. The brothers weren’t certain what prompted the visit. They suspected one of their computers had gotten a virus and removed its hard drive.
Except this time, rather than one officer at their front door, it was a mass of FBI and Department of Homeland Security agents and sheriff’s deputies with a search warrant and guns drawn. Clyburn, still asleep, had their bedroom door kicked in and awoke to the sight of multiple gun barrels.
“I begged them not to shoot me,” said the 25-year-old Clyburn, who befriended Sam Niblick at Sanger High over their shared love of video games. “I’ve never been more frightened.”
Thirty-year-old John Niblick, who is autistic and has muscular dystrophy, appears to have been the primary focus of Wisconsin-based FBI agent Corey Baumgardner, whose name appears on the warrant.
The questioning began innocently enough. Niblick recalls agents and deputies quizzing him about where he attends college and his choice of major before the more pointed inquiries about what social media groups he belongs to and the computer software on his laptop.
Niblick remained puzzled over why any of this was happening. Then the FBI agent in charge of the operation took out his cell phone and played Niblick several recordings of a digitally altered voice threatening administrators at schools in Wisconsin and New Jersey with detonating pipe bombs he planted on their campuses. Suddenly Niblick was being accused of making those calls, even though he had no connection to either school and had never visited those states.
“(The FBI agent) kept saying, ‘You made that call, and I know you made that call,’ ” Niblick said. “By that point I was so terrified that I started shaking. He said, ‘Obviously you must’ve done it because you started shaking when I played the recordings. But when I asked what you wanted to major in in college you weren’t shaking at all.’
“I tried to tell him my autism and muscular dystrophy contributes to the shaking. It was just so hurtful.”
While the Niblick brothers and Clyburn were being interrogated separately, law enforcement ransacked every room in the house, rummaging through closets and dumping the contents of drawers onto the floor. Beds were torn apart and box springs slashed open.
Following the home’s inspection by an FBI bomb technician, 25 electronic items owned by the four household members – cell phones, laptops, tablets, computer towers, hard drives, a SIM card and a digital voice recorder – were boxed and seized.
Before departing, the FBI agent who tried to force John Niblick to confess to making the bomb threats issued a stern warning that he would return with enough evidence to convict him of these crimes. However Baumgardner didn’t leave a business card, a common law enforcement practice, giving the frightened family no means to contact him for questions or updates about the impending charges.
Over the next six months, in multiple batches, each of 25 items confiscated during the raid were returned. Wendy Johnson-Niblick made multiple trips to the FBI field office in north Fresno to retrieve them.
But they never heard from Baumgardner again.
‘We kept waiting and waiting’
The Niblicks and Clyburn were unsure of their legal rights, or how to proceed. They reached out to the ACLU and two local attorneys but were told that due to the lack of an arrest or any charges being filed nothing could be done for now.
“Once the criminal lawyer told me to wait and see, I just waited and saw,” John Niblick said.
“And we kept waiting and waiting and waiting,” Wendy Johnson-Niblick added. “Kept being afraid that one day (the FBI) might get back to us or say something. But after that, nothing. Just waiting.”
As months of waiting morphed into years, the trauma from that morning never dissipated. All three young adults living in the house still get nightmares about being handcuffed and interrogated. Clyburn can no longer sleep with his door closed.
The Niblicks were so frightened about the looming charges they couldn’t bear to call an FBI office and ask about the status of their case. If they were active suspects, the brothers reasoned, why would law enforcement tell them anything?
“When someone comes to your house and disrupts everything, it’s really hard to deal with,” said Sam Niblick, 26. “Especially when they say to your face that they’re going to be back to ‘finish this.’ The entire time you’re wondering what ‘finish this’ means, and when ‘finish this’ doesn’t come you’re not sure what to do.
“These are scary people. You wake up every day wondering, ‘Is this the day they’re coming back?’ ”
Finally cleared, 3 years later
Earlier this month, John Niblick sent an email informing me of the situation. He wrote: “I don’t want any other innocent family to have to undergo the terror and emotional duress that we were put through.”
After meeting with the Niblick family and Clyburn and listening to their story, I urged Wendy Johnson-Niblick to call the FBI and request an update on their case.
Last week, despite some reservations, Johnson-Niblick phoned the FBI office in Sacramento. She was told that a Wisconsin resident was in custody for making the bomb threats and her family was no longer under suspicion. And that somehow, the suspect had disguised his computer’s IP address to match one of theirs.
Why didn’t the FBI inform the family they were off the hook after being wrongly accused?
“I was just so relieved that my kids didn’t have charges piling onto their shoulders, I just said thank you,” Johnson-Niblick said. “I should’ve asked. There’s so many more things I should’ve asked.”
To help get the Niblicks some further answers, I emailed the FBI’s offices in Sacramento and Wisconsin. The reply from Caroline Clancy, a public information officer for the Milwaukee Division, amounted to “No comment.”
“The FBI’s longstanding policy is to neither comment on or confirm or deny the existence of an investigation,” Clancy wrote, in part. “This is to maintain the confidentiality of non-public information that is central to FBI matters.”
‘A responsible judge wouldn’t have signed’
The FBI needn’t worry about the Niblicks and Clyburn seeking legal recourse. For one, they’re not inclined to do so. Second, the window to file for damages against a federal official is normally two years, according to Fresno civil rights attorney Kevin Little.
After learning about the May 2022 raid on the Niblicks home and the agonizing wait that followed, Little suggested that IP address theft is common and should not have met the legal standard for probable cause.
“A responsible judge would not have signed that warrant based on the information you just told me,” Little said.
The search warrant cover letter left with and kept by the family contains the printed name of Eastern District federal court Judge Sheila Oberto. Judges often sign search warrants electronically, Little said, so copies do not always bear their signature.
After three years of keeping silent and repressing trauma, John Niblick was inspired to speak out after reading about an Atlanta family whose house was mistakenly raided by the FBI in 2017 and whose case reached the Supreme Court last month.
“My hope is that by sharing my story, I can pressure the FBI to take responsibility for its actions in the future and to prevent further raids of innocent people,” he wrote in the initial email.
That’s unlikely to happen. But if personal integrity still exists in federal law enforcement, the family’s next FBI contact will be a simple apology.
