Joshua Ryne Goldberg

Joshua Ryne Goldberg (born May 14, 1995) is an American internet troll convicted of attempting a bombing on the 14th anniversary of the September 11 attacks

Goldberg first received law-enforcement and media attention under his Twitter handle "Australi Witness" following the Curtis Culwell Center attack, a terrorist attack on a Garland, Texas exhibit featuring images of Muhammad in May 2015, in which two assailants died in a shootout with police.

Initially charged with distributing information about bomb-making techniques in connection with a planned attack on a 2015 Kansas City 9/11 memorial event, Goldberg's trial was suspended pending efforts by doctors to return him to competence Goldberg was returned to competency and on December 20, 2017, pleaded guilty to federal charges of attempted malicious damage and destruction by an explosive of a building. On June 25, 2018, Goldberg was sentenced to ten years in federal prison and lifetime supervision.

Early life Goldberg is Jewish. He lived with his parents in Orange Park, Florida, a suburb of Jacksonville.

Online activities Goldberg made online posts under many pseudonyms After learning of his internet activities, the FBI attempted to place him under physical surveillance, but this was generally ineffective because for several weeks he did not leave his parents' house or open the front door.

Islamist-related personas

Australi Witness Australi Witness was an online persona claiming to be an ISIS-affiliated jihadist from Australia, who was described by Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence Group, as holding a "prestigious position" in online jihadi circles.

Australi Witness retweeted a call for an attack on the Draw Muhammad Contest being held at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, on May 3, 2015. The post that Australi Witness retweeted called on "brothers in Texas" to go there "with your weapons, bombs or with knifes " to "defend your Prophet". praised Simpson and Soofi as martyrs, and later posted a list of synagogues in Australia, ostensibly to encourage his supporters to attack them. He communicated that he was planning an attack in Melbourne to an FBI informant, who posed as a jihadist, and a 17-year-old who pleaded guilty to planning a Mother's Day 2015 bombing in Melbourne using pressure cooker and pipe bombs, which was never carried out, was found to have been in contact with Goldberg.

According to the FBI, Australi Witness posted to an ISIS-related website that he had recruited two people (one in Los Angeles, the other in Melbourne) to, "using guns, shoot up local synagogues when the maximum amount of Jews are praying", stating that "the entire thing was my idea, and I helped them every step of the way".

The fake jihadist personas were also used to besmirch Amnesty International and the Human Rights Law Centre by claiming that the fake jihadists had employment ties, or donated money to, these organizations.

National Reviews Charles Cooke described the article that Taranto responded to as "exquisite satire", while Mike Masnick of Techdirt called it "damn good satire, because it's just stupid enough at the beginning to drag you in and make you believe it, and then, slowly but surely, over the course of a very long writeup, it starts tossing out ever more ridiculous ideas -- drip... drip... drip -- that just, gently, turn up the outrage-o-meter, such that many people don't even realize that it's satire." This persona was linked to Goldberg on Facebook.

Goldberg posted on the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer as "Michael Slay". Upon his arrest and unveiling, the administrator of the site removed his posts.

Other personas Times of Israel blog hoax In April 2015, Goldberg covertly wrote and posted a hoax article on a Times of Israel blog calling for the extermination of the Palestinian people. The article was ostensibly written by Josh Bornstein, a Jewish Australian lawyer, and triggered widespread condemnation. Bornstein immediately disavowed responsibility for the post, which was deleted by The Times of Israel. In May 2015, Bornstein faced online threats from Goldberg's Australi Witness Twitter account, and it was only later learned that Goldberg was responsible for the hoaxing.

MoonMetropolis Goldberg was also active on Twitter, Reddit, Disqus and others under the username MoonMetropolis,

Unmasking and criminal proceedings News reports about the Australi Witness online persona calling for the Garland attack first brought the account to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). However, according to the FBI affidavit filed in court, by the time they received this information from the AFP, their investigation into Goldberg was already well underway. Potaka and McMahon independently tracked and identified the person behind the Australi Witness account after he impersonated Potaka on Facebook, leading to a chain of events which connected Australi Witness to Goldberg.

Australi Witness passed specific and also encouraged the informant to make the bomb more deadly by adding rat poison to the shrapnel. and emailed BBC journalist Mike Wendling, claiming credit for the Curtis Culwell Center attack and warning that a pressure cooker bomb would be detonated in a "large Midwestern US city" on September 11, 2015. Goldberg appeared in court on September 15, where he was ordered to undergo a 30-day mental health evaluation to determine his fitness to stand trial.

After his arrest, it emerged that Goldberg had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia and anxiety disorder. US Magistrate Judge James Klindt ruled Goldberg mentally incompetent to stand trial and Goldberg was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment for four months at the Federal Medical Center, Butner. Goldberg again appeared before Klindt on June 15, 2016, and was described by prison psychiatrists as "improving", and that there was a "good chance" of him being returned to competency to stand trial. Another status update was scheduled by Klindt for October 15, 2016. Goldberg's lawyer, Paul Shorstein, later said that Goldberg had Asperger syndrome and had been diagnosed with clinical depression. Goldberg's defense subsequently claimed that Goldberg had autism, wanted to be a journalist, and had made "impressive" journalistic progress in his trolling activities. Goldberg has claimed that he was the target of abuse by prison staff because of his autism.

On December 20, 2017, Goldberg pleaded guilty to attempted malicious damage and destruction by an explosive of a building, in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

On June 25, 2018, Goldberg was sentenced to ten years at the Federal Correctional Complex, Butner in Butner, North Carolina, followed by lifetime supervised release.

Goldberg was released from prison on April 1, 2024.