A federal grand jury in Puerto Rico indicted a man this week on charges of threatening CNN, with prosecutors saying the man appeared to have been a copycat of the Trump-fan pipe bomb episode.
The threats were communicated in Spanish via Twitter, the FBI said in an affidavit.
A CNN employee spotted them and alerted the FBI, which got Twitter to disclose the account, which traced back to Puerto Rico, to a man named Carlos Rodriguez-Vidal, an agent said in the affidavit.
Mr. Rodriguez-Vidal admitted to crafting the Twitter messages, the FBI said.
“He wished to create fear within CNN, and was mimicking the individual who recently sent letter bombs to prominent current and former government officials,” the FBI said.
Among the tweets posted, as translated by the FBI, were threats to “bomb to CNN all over the country,” and “CNN is enemy and need to remove them from the air.”
The Twitter account, @SYROH10, was still active as of Friday afternoon.
It showed anti-CNN posts dating back to Oct. 26, which was when police arrested Cesar Sayoc, the man they have accused of orchestrating mail bombs sent to former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sen. Kamala Harris, and several former Obama administration officials who appear on CNN, among 14 total targets.
“The defendant attempted to create fear within CNN, and was mimicking the individual who recently sent letter bombs to prominent current and former government officials,” said Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, U.S. attorney for the District of Puerto Rico.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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