A Virginia man was taken into custody on August 2 after reportedly making multiple violent threats against Vice President Kamala Harris on the social media platform GETTR.
The FBI was notified of the alleged threats on July 27, when the Maricopa County Recorders Office in Arizona reported potential threats against Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer by the GETTR user joemadarats1.
These alleged threats were posted six days after President Joe Biden publicly announced that he would not seek reelection and endorsed Kamala Harris as his replacement on the Democratic ticket.
These threats followed an assassination attempt on the former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13.
The FBI’s Phoenix office conducted open-source research and found multiple threatening posts by the same user, who targeted various public officials, including Harris, Biden, and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
As per the complaint, the GETTR account joemadarats1 mentioned Harris a total of 19 times, posting numerous threats against her, such as cutting her eyes out, setting her on fire alive, and using explicit language along with graphic threats.
After initiating an investigation, the FBI traced the GETTR account to an email address linked to Carillo through an analysis of Google and T-Mobile records. Further investigation revealed that the IP addresses used for posting the threats were associated with Carillo’s residence in Winchester, Virginia.
On August 2, law enforcement executed a federal search warrant at Carillo’s residence, where they seized an AR-15 rifle and a 9 mm handgun.
During the initial interaction with law enforcement, Carillo reportedly expressed surprise and asked why they were there. FBI special agent Nicholas Olson informed him that it was related to something he had posted online, as mentioned in court documents.
Carillo allegedly expressed disbelief over the situation and commented, “This is ridiculous, for a comment. I guess I’m gonna need a lawyer,” according to the complaint.
The complaint states that Carillo later admitted to another officer at the scene that he had indeed posted the mentioned content online.
The Epoch Times attempted to contact Carillo regarding the charges, but as of noon on August 5, no attorney was listed on the federal court system’s docket.