All because of an innocuous tweet from former FBI Director James Comey.
Scott Maddock, principal of the Grass Valley Charter School in Grass Valley, California, was unaware of the conspiracy theory when he arrived at work on a normal-seeming Monday morning in late April. But when he checked his voicemail, he heard a man identifying himself as “a patriot,” alerting Maddock to the “threat.”
Maddock wasn’t sure what to make of it. The message was nearly three minutes long, repetitive and inarticulate. But ignoring it wasn’t an option.
Out of an abundance of caution, he contacted police, who began investigating.
It didn’t take long to unearth the roots of the threat, preposterous as they were.
On April 27, Comey had shared a tweet listing a handful of jobs he had held in the past alongside the hashtag #FiveJobsIveHad.
By removing letters, the hashtag could be shortened to “Five Jihad,” they argued. And a search for the abbreviation formed by the first letters of the jobs he listed — GVCSF — led to the Grass Valley Charter School Foundation, whose fundraiser was scheduled for this weekend.
Comey, they concluded, was broadcasting an attack.
Grass Valley police quickly determined that the theory was baseless and that the school, with about 500 students from prekindergarten through eighth grade, was under no threat.
But word traveled fast in Grass Valley, home to about 13,000 people.
Maddock and Wendy Willoughby, president of the foundation, had started to hear from parents who were worried not about the predicted attack, but about the people who believed in it.
What if one of them showed up, armed, to protect against a threat that did not exist, as had happened at a popular Washington pizzeria two years ago? At the same time, some members of the community vowed to attend the event to provide protection.
After several sleepless nights, Maddock, worried the event could spiral out of control, announced last week that the fundraiser was canceled, as reported by The Sacramento Bee.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.