A 72-year-old man, who warned U.S. officials about his plans to kill Donald Trump before and after the 2020 presidential election, was arrested on Monday, the Brooklyn federal prosecutor’s office said.
Thomas Welnicki, 72, “knowingly and willfully threatened to kill, remove and cause bodily harm“to the former US president, can we read in the judicial document released Monday in support of the arrest warrant.
The suspect, arrested by agents of the Secret Service – the agency responsible in particular for protecting American presidents and vice-presidents -, was to be brought to justice on Monday.
According to the document, the man had telephoned at least three times, between September 24 and December 2, 2021, to the New York office of the Secret Service to express his intentions, asking for information on the protection of Donald Trump and by claiming to have owned a firearm in the past.
“I’ll do whatever I can to make sure he’s dead“, warned this New Yorker, a resident of Rockaway Beach, Brooklyn, calling Trump”Hitler“, during a telephone conversation in November 2021.
The septuagenarian had already made threats in the summer of 2020, before the presidential election and to the Capitol Police in Washington, ensuring that he “would procure weapons and bring down“Donald Trump if the latter loses the ballot and does not admit his defeat.
January 4, 2021, two days before the invasion of the Capitol by Trumpist militants, this time the suspect left two messages on the voicemail of the Secret Service office in Long Island, another New York neighborhood. He then threatened to kill Donald Trump and 12 members of Congress he did not identify.
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