The F.B.I says Frank Carillo has been a regular on the website GETTR – calling for the assassination of President Biden, former President Obama, Vice President Harris and their families. Agents got copies of his posts vowing to “hunt you down and torture you to death.” “They all need to die,” he allegedly wrote, “and they will soon.”
Tall, gaunt and gray, Carillo listened as the agent read one post volunteering to do the job if someone would supply the money. “I have my AR-15 locked and loaded,” he allegedly wrote.
With information from GTTR and from Google, a prosecutor was able to connect Carillo to those posts, and he reportedly admitted as much to a member of the SWAT team that arrested him on August 3rd in Winchester.
Carillo’s older brother testified that the accused was “a big mouth with no brains. He sits at home, watches TV and is on his phone call day,” said Joseph Carillo.
He noted that Frank Carillo had lost the use of his right arm in a motorcycle crash, and when taken to a gun firing range was not very good with the Glock pistol he had purchased.
But the F.B.I. found that weapon along with an AR-15 and 2,000 rounds of ammunition in Carillo’s home – about 90-minutes away from Washington, D.C.
His lawyer argued that he had no serious criminal record and should not be held behind bars. She proposed that he be ordered not to travel to the nation’s capital and not use social media where – in her words – “the more outrageous a post the better.”
But Judge Joel Hoppe said there were not conditions that could reasonably assure the safety of individuals or the community. “He lives largely off the radar in an echo chamber of lies, hate, vitriol and conspiracy theories,” Hoppe said. “He’s getting unglued, worked up, buying a rifle and an arsenal of ammunition. I can’t ignore that.”
Carillo is expected to be indicted and – if convicted – could face five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for making violent threats online.
