FAIRVIEW PARK, Oh. (WSVN) — A northeast Ohio man is facing criminal charges after threatening President-elect Donald Trump on Twitter.
According to the criminal complaint, 24-year-old Zachary Benson posted on the social media site early Wednesday morning as election results were still coming in.
He wrote two tweets just after 1 a.m. on Nov. 9:
- “Diplomacy. (Expletive) Fools. I hate you all. I want to bomb every one of your voting booths and your general areas.”
- “My life goal is to assassinate Trump. Don’t care if I serve infinite sentences. That man deserves to decease existing.”
Court documents said Benson knew he went “too far” with the posts, and deleted them the next morning. By then, the Secret Service was already investigating.
An agent interviewed Benson the same day regarding the tweets. According to the Secret Service, Benson was “very apologetic, insisting “he never intended any harm to anyone and would not want anything to happen to Trump or the general public despite his threat about bombing ‘general areas.'”
Benson is charged with making threats against successors to the presidency. He is due to appear in court on Thursday, Nov. 17.