Virginia man threatened to set Kamala Harris on fire, FBI says

A Virginia man was arrested late last week, accused by the FBI of making 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 found that he had made several threatening statements on microblogging platform GETTR. Carillo had his first court appearance in the Western District of Virginia on Monday, where a judge ruled that the defendant be detained pending a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday.

FBI special agent Melissa Macaron wrote in a criminal complaint that investigators first received reports of Carillo’s posts on July 27 after he made an online threat toward a Maricopa County election official in Phoenix, Arizona. The threat read in part, “somebody needs to kill this f***.” The name of the official was redacted from the court documents.

Agents at the FBI’s Phoenix office made requests to GETTR to review more of Carillo’s account and it was discovered that he had made approximately 4,359 posts targeting various public officials, according to court documents. The names included Harris, President Joe Biden, FBI Director Christopher Wray and others who were not mentioned in the records.

Investigators say that Carillo mentioned Harris 19 times on his social media account, including in one threat made on July 27, which read, “Kamala Harris needs to be put on fire alive I will do it personally if no one else does it I want her to suffer a slow agonizing death.”

In another post on the same day, Carillo wrote, according to court documents, “Harris is going to regret ever trying to become president because if that ever happened I will personally pluck out her eyes with a pair of pliers but first I will shoot and kill everyone that gets in my way that is a f****** promise.”

The July 27 post arrived just six days after Harris announced her bid 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, which left Trump with an injury to the tip of his right ear, law enforcement charged two Florida men in threats against public officials. One, arrested July 15 by the Secret Service, was accused of threatening to kill Biden. The second, arrested on July 19, was charged with making threats toward Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance.

Carillo was also accused of making several posts that talked about using firearms to shoot people. The criminal complaint included examples of threats that targeted Muslims, immigrants and Canadian Prime Minister Justice Trudeau.

FBI officials identified Carillo through subscriber information provided by GETTR. A search warrant of his residence was carried out on Friday, during which law enforcement found a RF-15 rifle and 9 mm handgun. Carillo also asked an officer during the search if it was “about the online stuff” he “posted,” according to authorities.

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 via email for comment on Monday.

U.S. Attorney Christopher Kavanaugh of the Western District of Virginia said in a news release related to Carillo’s arrest, “Open political discourse is a cornerstone of our American experience. We can disagree. We can argue and we can debate. However, when those disagreements cross the line to threats of violence, law enforcement must step in.”