Cesar Sayoc, a fervent supporter of President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty in March 2019 to sending homemade pipe bombs to whom he considered enemies of Trump, including former President Barack Obama; former Vice President Joe Biden; former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton; billionaire donor George Soros; and actor Robert DeNiro.
Sayoc was sentenced five months later to 20 years in federal prison.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/pipe-bomb-mailer-cesar-sayoc-sentenced
The New York Times reported that the FBI said the “devices were packed with powder from fireworks, fertilizer, a pool chemical and glass fragments that would function as shrapnel,” if they worked as intended.
The bombs, however, had design flaws and did not work as intended. None of the bombs detonated.
Sayoc was arrested in October 2018, shortly before the mid-term elections, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he was living in what was described as “decrepit white van that was plastered with bombastic stickers that glorified” Trump and Obama and Clinton in “red cross-hairs.”
Sayoc’s attorneys said that their client suffered from an untreated mental illness and, motivated by Trump’s inflammatory comments about immigrants and Democrats, acted to seriously injury or kill Trump’s political enemies.
“He was a Donald Trump superfan,” Sayoc’s attorneys said.
The Surgeon General does not consider being a “a Donald Trump superfan” a mental illness.
Yet.
Perhaps the Surgeon General said.
Prosecutors said that Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose district covers part of Fort Lauderdale, received a package from Sayoc.
After Sayoc was sentenced, Wasserman Schultz said that Sayoc, “was admittedly inspired by the president’s hateful rhetoric.”
“This president’s words have consequences,” she said.
Trump denied that his rhetoric incited violence.
“I think my rhetoric brings people together,” he said.
Trump may be right if he was referring to a morgue.
Trump’s quote came four days after a 21-year-old murder suspect, Patrick Crusius, posted an anti-immigrant message online and then opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019 that killed 23 people and wounded two dozen others.
Crusius told police he wanted to kill as many Mexicans as he could.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-el-paso-issue-report-active-shooter/story?id=64753896
https://time.com/5643110/el-paso-texas-mall-shooting/
In May 2020, ABC reported “at least 54 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.”
For example, a Latino gas station attendant in Gainesville, Florida, was punched in the head by a white man. A surveillance camera captured the attacker’s words. “This is for Trump,” he said.
Police questioned a man in Washington about his threats to kill a local Syrian-born man. The suspect said he made the threat because he wanted the Syrian man to “get out of my country,” adding, “That’s why I like Trump.”
When three Kansas men were on trial for plotting to bomb a Muslim-dominated apartment complex in Garden City, Kansas, one of their lawyers told the jury that the men “were concerned about what President Trump had to say about the concept of Islamic terrorism.” Another lawyer insisted Trump had become “the voice of a lost and ignored white, working-class set of voters.”
ABC News could not find a single criminal case that was filed in either state or federal court where an act of violence or a threat was made in the name of President Barack Obama or President George W. Bush.
https://abc7news.com/cesar-sayoc-jr-bomber-pipe-bomb-suspect/4558899/
The ABC story included summaries of each of 54 examples.
Here is the link:
https://abc7news.com/cesar-sayoc-jr-bomber-pipe-bomb-suspect/4558899/
