A Virginia man has been charged with posting repeated death threats against Vice President Kamala Harris on social media, authorities said Monday.

Carillo Was Arrested Friday

The man, Frank Lucio Carillo, of Winchester, Virginia, was arrested on Friday and appeared in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, Virginia, on Monday to face a charge of making threats against the vice president of the United States. The felony charge carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison.

The arrest came after the FBI discovered nearly 20 threats against Harris from an account linked to Carillo on the social media site GETTR, according to filings in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia.

The threats included promises to kill Harris and her family, to pluck out her eyes with pliers and to burn her alive. “Kamala Harris needs to be put on fire alive I will do it personally if no one else does it I want her to suffer a slow agonizing death,” Carillo said in one post on July 27.

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In an affidavit supporting Carillo’s arrest, the FBI cited “4,359 posts/replies made by ‘joemadarats1’ targeting various public officials” over the past year, including Harris, President Joe Biden, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Stephen Richer, the recorder of Maricopa County in Arizona who became known for rejecting claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from former President Donald Trump.

Threats Happened Days After Harris Replaced Biden

The threats against the vice president were made days after Harris replaced Biden to become the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, according to court records.

In a statement on Monday, Christopher R. Kavanaugh, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said: “Open political discourse is a cornerstone of our American experience. We can disagree. We can argue, and we can debate. However, when those disagreements cross the line to threats of violence, law enforcement must step in.”

The FBI began its investigation of Carillo after it was notified by its Phoenix office of a GETTR user that had threatened Richer, according to the affidavit.

The FBI found that Carillo had also written “numerous other posts about firearms and shooting people” and had made violent threats against, among others, Muslims, “illegals” and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada.

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In February, Carillo said in a post that he had an AR-15 assault rifle, “LOCKED AND LOADED.” As the FBI searched Carillo’s home last week, federal agents recovered a pistol and an AR-15, which the affidavit said he had purchased in February. They also recovered thousands of rounds of ammunition.

After he was arrested, Carillo was quoted in the FBI agent’s affidavit as requesting an attorney, and then saying, “This is all over a comment, huh?”

Carillo’s lawyer’s name was not immediately available.

Records show that Carillo described himself as unemployed and disabled when he filed for bankruptcy in Virginia in 2018. He previously resided at addresses in Pennsylvania and New York.

The number of threats against public officials has been on the rise in recent years and Carillo’s arrest comes weeks after a Pennsylvania man attempted to assassinate Trump at a July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Annie Correal/Nicole Craine
c.2024 The New York Times Company