Federal authorities have arrested the man suspected of calling in bomb threats to multiple Jewish community centers across the U.S. over a nearly one-year period.
Juan Thompson, 31, who was fired by the news website, The Intercept, last year for fabricating quotes and impersonating sources using fake email addresses, was arrested by the FBI Friday morning in St. Louis. He is accused of making bomb threats against eight different Jewish community centers between June 2016 and February 2017, KMOV-TV reported.
This was the first arrest in response to what has become a trend recently: In the last three months, dozens of Jewish community centers in multiple states have been targeted with bomb threats.
But while many liberals have pushed the narrative that President Donald Trump's election in November empowered anti-Semitic sympathizers to make these threats, a court complaint from the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York suggests otherwise.
According to the complaint, Thompson made the calls not as an anti-Semitic political statement but to try to get back at a woman with whom he used to have a romantic relationship.
Court documents allege Thompson made false bomb threats to at least eight Jewish community centers in the name of the alleged victim. Another threat was sent to the Anti-Defamation League in New York City and promised "more bomb threats tomorrow." Thompson used his own name in the ADL threat, but then claimed the victim framed him.
Thompson also allegedly used his own name in a separate email sent to one of the targeted Jewish Community Centers.
"Juan Thompson put two bombs in the Jewish Center today. He wants to create a Jewish [N]ewtown," Thompson wrote, authorities said. The reference was to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that killed 26 people in Newtown, Connecticut, including 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7 years old.
Thompson allegedly began making the calls and sending the emails last year after the woman broke up with him. The messages, which included embarrassing emails and fax messages sent to her employer, were reportedly intended to defame her. Thompson is also accused of filing false police reports against his ex-girlfriend, including falsely telling police that she possessed child pornography, KTVI-TV reported.
Thompson reportedly took to his Twitter account recently to offer his side of the breakup: "Two years ago, after swearing off white women, I started dating one named Francesca. She seemed like a cool Brooklyn white radical. There were warning signs though." Thompson went on to claim the woman didn't tell him she had herpes until after the two "hooked up."
"We broke up after someone showed me the light, and since then she's stalked and harassed me," Thompson alleged. "Threatened to have me killed, and said she was going to make me a prison 'statistic' and looked forward to me being 'raped' in prison."
In a Feb. 24 tweet chronicling all of Thompson's allegations against the woman, Thompson asked his followers if they knew any "good lawyers."
"Need to stop this nasty/racist #whitegirl I dated who sent a bomb threat in my name & wants me to be raped in jail," Thompson tweeted.
Three days later, Thompson tweeted at the official U.S. Secret Service account, saying, "She is unstable and violent. I'm a witness I can I testify."
Later that day, Thompson tweeted that the Secret Service had tracked him down for questioning.
"The @SecretService visited me looked at my tweets, questioned my politics b/c some awful white woman I date reported me. I won't be silenced," Thompson tweeted.
Thompson is currently charged with only one count of cyberstalking, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
An FBI spokesman did not immediately respond to TheBlaze when asked if further charges are forthcoming.
(H/T: Daily Caller)
