A whistleblower lawyer was stunned when he found out he was listed as a target in the UFC 250 event terror plot foiled by the Secret Service and FBI.

Tristan Leavitt, who is the president of Empower Oversight, a group of lawyers who represent whistleblowers and a West Virginia state delegate, told Just the News on Wednesday that his guess as to why he was targeted was because he took a nine-day trip to Israel in November 2025, a few weeks after the ceasefire in Gaza, to see the conditions firsthand.

Leavitt said he was made aware of the foiled plot when he "received a phone call from a reporter asking if I had a comment on the criminal complaint" after a long day of legislative meetings in West Virginia. 

"I hadn't had any chance to read it, so it definitely came as a shock to me," Leavitt told the Just the News, No Noise TV show. 

The Justice Department on Tuesday announced charges against five men for an alleged plot to targeted members of Congress who are known supporters of Israel and have received political donations or backing from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who were attending the UFC Freedom 250 fighting event at the White House last Sunday. 

The FBI has placed five suspects in custody so far and is actively searching for 18 others who were involved in the plot.

Members of West Virginia’s congressional delegation were named alongside Leavitt — the only state-level representative listed — in reference to a website that deals with donations from AIPAC. However, he said there’s currently no clear reason as to why the officials were listed. He also said he hasn’t received campaign donations or anything of the sort from AIPAC.

Leavitt told Just the News that the FBI has not reached out to him about any security concerns following the arrests, which he attributes to the fact that the suspects apparently did not get that far in their plan, as well as a lack of coordination with the Secret Service and FBI notifying targets. 

“I’ve just taken comfort in the fact that it seems like it wasn’t too advanced of a plot,” Leavitt told Just the News, but said it was chilling to see himself identified and learn the details of what he described as their "nefarious" plot. 

Investigators said the 23-person group involved in the plot seem to have been motivated by varying anti-government ideologies, anti-Semitic beliefs and satanic conspiracy theories.

Leavitt told Just the News that he believes the suspects' mix of conspiratorial beliefs and violent intentions can be attributed to a wider societal problem: people failing to do their own research and relying on questionable sources of information. 

"If they read something about, you know, a satanic ring, that's what they believe. And so I think part of it is people not getting enough sources of information and not doing their own research," Leavitt said.  

"So I would love to see us as a country dial down the political rhetoric and recognize that for many of these, which are just policy, policy discussions, you know ... those are not things that need to result in violent threats," he added. 

Katherine Pugh is a reporter for Just the News. Follow her on X for more coverage.