According to the GiveSendGo page, Rufini's father contracted cancer, which led to his son being unsupervised on his cell phone for long periods of time.
"He spent a lot of time alone with nothing to do but wait and think and the cell phone became a welcome distraction. His interests in history and theology led him down a rabbit hole where he was recruited into group chats targeting teenage traditionalist Catholics with extreme political content," Rufini said of his son.
"We later learned that these chats were being closely monitored, and possibly operated by, FBI agents as part of an effort to investigate Traditional Catholics that was downstream of a broader domestic investigation spurred by the events of January 6th," he said, referencing the bureau
launching an operation earlier this year against "Radical traditional Catholics."