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 Monday morning, the Brooklyn federal prosecutor's office said.
Thomas Welnicki, 72, "knowingly and deliberately threatened to kill, kidnap and inflict bodily harm" on the former US president, the court document released on Monday in support of the arrest warrant reads .
A 72-year-old from Rockaway Beach, Thomas Welnicki, has been charged with threatening to kill former President Trump (who is once again identified by the feds here as “Individual-1”).
pic.twitter.com/E5YhxbAlJJ
- Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) January 10, 2022
"I'll do whatever I can to make sure he's dead"
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 will do everything I can to make sure he is dead," warned the New Yorker, a resident of Rockaway Beach, Brooklyn, calling Trump "Hitler" in a conversation. telephone in November 2021.
Two calls during the attack on the Capitol
The septuagenarian had already uttered threats in the summer of 2020, before the presidential election and to the Capitol Police in Washington, ensuring that he "would get arms and bring down" Donald Trump if the latter lost the ballot and did not admit defeat.
Read also Capitol Assault: Trump gives up speaking on January 6
On January 4, 2021, two days before the invasion of the Capitol by Trumpist militants, an unprecedented attack that resulted in five deaths, the suspect this time left two messages on the voicemail of the
Long Island
Secret Service
office, another New York neighborhood.
He then threatened to kill the former president as well as 12 members of Congress whom he did not formally identify.
The history of the United States is marked by the deaths of four presidents assassinated during their tenure, from Abraham Lincoln in 1865 to John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963.
