A Virginia man was arrested late last week on charges the FBI made online threats to kill Vice President Kamala Harris and other public officials.
According to court records reviewed by Newsweek, Frank Carillo, of Winchester, Virginia, was charged with making threats against the vice president of the United States after investigators discovered he had made several threatening statements on the microblogging platform GETTR. Carillo made his initial appearance Monday in a U.S. District Court in the Western District of Virginia, where a judge ordered the defendant held in custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday.
FBI Special Agent Melissa Macaron wrote in a criminal complaint that investigators first received information about Carillo’s posts on July 27, after he made an online threat against a Maricopa County election official in Phoenix, Arizona. The threat read, in part, “Somebody needs to kill this asshole.” The official’s name was redacted from court documents.
Agents from the FBI’s Phoenix office asked GETTR to look more closely at Carillo’s account and found that he had posted approximately 4,359 messages targeting various public officials, according to court documents. The names included Harris, President Joe Biden, FBI Director Christopher Wray and others not named in the documents.
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Investigators say Carillo mentioned Harris 19 times on his social media account, including in a July 27 threat that read: “Kamala Harris needs to be burned alive, I will do it personally if no one else does, I want her to suffer a slow and horrible death.”
In another post the same day, Carillo wrote, according to court documents: “Harris is going to regret trying to become president because if that ever happens I will personally gouge her eyes out with a pair of pliers but first I will shoot and kill anyone who gets in my way, that’s a shitty promise.”
The July 27 message came just six days after Harris announced her candidacy for the Oval Office and two weeks after an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
Since the shooting that injured Trump in the right ear, law enforcement has charged two Florida men with threatening public officials. One, arrested July 15 by the Secret Service, was accused of threatening to kill Biden. The second, arrested July 19, was accused of making threats against Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
Carillo was also accused of posting several messages that discussed using firearms to shoot people. The criminal complaint included examples of threats targeting Muslims, immigrants and Canadian Prime Minister Justice Trudeau.
FBI agents identified Carillo through subscriber information provided by GETTR. A search of his home was conducted Friday, during which law enforcement found an RF-15 rifle and a 9mm handgun. Carillo also asked an agent during the search if these were “the things online” that he “posted,” authorities said.
He was arrested following the search and the felony charge against him carries a maximum prison sentence of five years.
Newsweek reached out to the public defender assigned to Carillo by email for comment Monday.
U.S. Attorney Christopher Kavanaugh of the Western District of Virginia said in a press release about Carillo’s arrest: “Open political debate is a cornerstone of our American experience. We can disagree. We can argue and debate. However, when those disagreements cross the line into threats of violence, law enforcement must intervene.”
