Man charged with threatening Jewish centers to frame his ex
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| Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, center, member of Congress's bipartisan task force combating anti-Semitism, speaks with a reporter after holding a press conference to address bomb treats against Jewish organizations and vandalism at Jewish cemeteries, Friday March 3, 2017, at the Park East Synagogue in New York. |
NEW YORK
(AP) -- A former journalist fired for fabricating details in stories
made at least eight of the scores of threats against Jewish institutions
nationwide, including a bomb threat to the Anti-Defamation League, as
part of a bizarre campaign to harass and frame his ex-girlfriend,
federal officials said Friday.
Juan Thompson
was arrested in St. Louis and appeared there in federal court Friday on a
cyberstalking charge. He politely answered questions and told the judge
he had enough money to hire a lawyer.
A crowd of supporters who attended said Thompson had no criminal record. His lawyer didn't comment.
Federal
officials have been investigating 122 bomb threats called in to Jewish
organizations in three dozen states since Jan. 9 and a rash of vandalism
at Jewish cemeteries.
Thompson started making
threats Jan. 28, a criminal complaint said, with an email to the Jewish
History Museum in New York written from an account that made it appear
as if it were being sent by an ex-girlfriend.
"Juan Thompson put 2 bombs in the History Museum set to go off Sunday," it said.
He
followed that up with similar messages to a Jewish school in Farmington
Hills, Michigan, and to a school and community center in Manhattan,
authorities said.
In another round of emails
and phone calls, he gave the woman's name, rather than his own, the
court complaint said. The Council on American-Islamic Relations received
an anonymous email saying the woman put a bomb in a Dallas Jewish
center.
Thompson, who's black, then took to
Twitter: "Know any good lawyers?" he wrote. "Need to stop this
nasty/racist #whitegirl I dated who sent a bomb threat in my name." He
later tweeted to the Secret Service:
"I'm been (sic) tormented by an
anti-Semite. She sent an antijewish bomb threat in my name. Help."
But
police say it was a hoax created to make the woman look guilty.
Thompson also made threats in which he identified the woman as the
culprit, authorities said. It's unclear why Jewish organizations were
targeted.
Republican President Donald Trump
suggested in a meeting Tuesday with state attorneys general the threats
against Jewish community centers may have been designed to make "others
look bad," according to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro.
Trump also has condemned violence against Jewish organizations.
Thompson
was fired from the online publication The Intercept last year after
being accused of fabricating several quotes and creating fake email
accounts to impersonate people, including the Intercept's
editor-in-chief. One of the stories involved Dylann Roof, the white
shooter of black worshippers at a Charleston, South Carolina, church.
Thompson
had written that a cousin named Scott Roof claimed the gunman was angry
that a love interest chose a black man over him. A review showed there
was no cousin by that name. The story was retracted.
The Intercept wrote Friday it was "horrified" to learn of Thompson's arrest.
Thompson had been accused of bizarre behavior before.
Doyle
Murphy, a reporter at the Riverfront Times, an alternative weekly in
St. Louis, said he was subjected to social media harassment after
writing about Thompson's troubled past in the fallout from his firing at
The Intercept.
Murphy said Thompson set up
anonymous accounts on Twitter and other social media posing as a woman
who claimed she had been sexually assaulted by Murphy. Murphy said he
contacted Twitter but every time one fake account was taken down a new
one popped up. He said he contacted police but there was little they
could do.
"It was a nightmare, and there's not a whole lot I could do about it," Murphy said.
The
Federal Communications Commission said Friday it will grant an
emergency waiver allowing Jewish community centers and their phone
carriers to track the numbers of callers who make threats, even if the
callers try to block the numbers. It said Democratic U.S. Sen. Charles
Schumer had requested such a waiver earlier in the week.
According
to the criminal complaint, Thompson and the ex-girlfriend, a social
worker, broke up last summer. The following day, her boss received an
email purporting to be from a national news organization saying she'd
been pulled over for drunken driving.
The
harassment got worse, authorities said. She received an anonymous email
with nude photos of herself and a threat to release them. Her company, a
nonprofit that works to end homelessness, got faxes saying she was
anti-Semitic. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children got
a note saying she watched child porn.
Thompson's IP address was used for the emails, but he told police his computer had been hacked, the complaint said.
The
ADL said Thompson had been on its radar since he fabricated the story
about Roof. According to ADL research, Thompson also claimed he wanted
to dismantle the system of "racial supremacy and greedy capitalism that
is stacked against us." He said he was going to run for mayor of St.
Louis to "fight back against Trumpian fascism and socio-economic
terrorism."
FBI Director James Comey met with Jewish community leaders Friday to discuss the recent threats, the agency said.
University
City, Missouri, police Lt. Fredrick Lemons told the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch that detectives will question Thompson about the 154
headstones toppled last month at a Jewish cemetery there.
