The Other McCain

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‘Zizian’ Cult Member Gets Bailed Out

Posted on | February 21, 2026 | No Comments

Daniel Arthur Blank

Latest news in the radical vegan transgender death cult case:

CUMBERLAND, Md. (AP) — A member of a group known to outsiders as Zizians that is linked to six deaths was bailed out of jail in Maryland on Friday.
Police in Maryland connected Jack “Ziz” LaSota, Michelle Zajko and Daniel Blank to homicide investigations in California, Pennsylvania and Vermont after a landowner found them living in box trucks at the end of a snow-covered dirt road last February, according to court documents and pretrial testimony.
Blank was bailed out Friday at about noon after posting $15,000. Blank’s attorney Rebecca Lechliter declined comment. Zajko and LaSota remain in custody and are being held without bail.
Blank’s release includes conditions that he must live alone and submit to GPS tracking.
The deaths linked to the group reached six last year when a U.S. border agent was killed in Vermont. The three members were later arrested on trespassing and gun charges in the woods of western Maryland. Seven of the group’s members are jailed in three states, all awaiting trial.
Maryland state Trooper Brandon Jeffries wrote after their Feb. 16, 2025 arrests that all the “suspects involved are to be questioned regarding other crimes that have occurred across the country and have ties with the Zizians Cult.”
Called “Zizians” by outsiders, the young, highly intelligent computer scientists appear to share radical beliefs about veganism, animal rights, gender identity and artificial intelligence. Since 2022, members have been tied to the death of one of their own during an attack on a California landlord, the landlord’s subsequent killing, the shooting deaths of Zajko’s parents in Pennsylvania, and a highway shootout in Vermont that left the border agent and another Zizian dead.
Jury selection was supposed to start recently in Cumberland, Maryland, where LaSota, Zajko and Blank are charged with possession of LSD and possession with intent to deliver LSD, multiple gun violations, trespassing and hindering a police officer.
The trial was delayed until June, however, after Zajko, who also is charged with resisting arrest, fired her attorney, briefly represented herself and hired a new lawyer.

This isn’t too surprising During their initial hearing in Allegany County District Court last year, Blank’s case for release was clearly the most sympathetic. Whereas both LaSota and Zajko are facing federal charges and are “persons of interests” in active homicide investigations, Blank has not been implicated in any crimes other than the state charges related to the trio’s arrest while trespassing last year near Frostburg. His stepfather appeared on Blank’s behalf at that hearing, where the defendants were represented by public defender Rebecca Francoeur-Breeden:

Sitting in the courtroom Tuesday, we heard Daniel Blank’s squeaky voice blabbering incomprensibly, then Ms. Francoeur-Breeden mentioned that Blank has mental health issues. She said Blank’s stepfather, who was willing to help Blank get some kind of local residence if he could be released, had flown in from California and was present in the courtroom. Judge Bean asked the stepfather to stand up and address the bench. He was a gray-haired man in a brown overcoat, obviously distraught, and said he would do whatever he could to help his stepson. Daniel Blank reportedly has dyslexia and is somewhere on the “spectrum” of autism. Yet, as Ms. Francoeur-Breeden told the court, he was unquestionably “brilliant”:

Daniel Blank was born in Berkeley, California and always excelled in school, earning straight A’s and praise from his teachers, his mother Nadia Blank told Open Vallejo. He competed on a science bowl team throughout middle and high school and was fluent in three languages, she said.
Blank, who became vegan in college, graduated a semester early from the University of California, Berkeley with a double major in bioengineering and computer science, according to a resume posted on his LinkedIn profile. As an undergraduate, he conducted research for two Berkeley professors and interned at Oracle and Daphnia Labs.
Blank’s mother said he accepted a high-paying corporate offer in Oakland following graduation.

Blank disappeared in 2022, and seeing his stepfather in court was emotionally jarring. Being a father myself, what must it be like to have your “brilliant” stepson disappear, end up in some kind of weird cult, and get arrested in connection with a nationwide crime spree?

And so it appears that the court, not wishing to seem unreasonable — and considering that the prosecution has apparently found no evidence implicating Blank in any other crimes connected to the Zizian cult — has finally agreed to let him out on bond pending the state trial now scheduled for June. Will keep you updated on any further developments.



 

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