(New York) 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 .
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.
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.
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 Donald Trump and 12 members of Congress he did not 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.