A Massachusetts man was indicted on Thursday on charges of cyberstalking after sending dozens of threatening phone and text messages to Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, one of President Donald Trump’s most senior White House aides.

The man, John Anthony Proia III, 41, was also accused of sending threatening messages to Katie Miller’s parents. The charging document identifies the recipient of the threats only as Victim-1, but an official familiar with the case said the person in question was Katie Miller.

Over the past two months, according to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, Proia sent more than 40 phone and text messages to Katie Miller, including some calls late at night. Prosecutors said that he often used expletives and “a menacing tone” in his communications, which came from an ever-changing series of numbers. Proia, they added, employed an internet-based phone system known as Voice over Internet Protocol that allowed him to obfuscate his identity and change his phone number.

According to the indictment, some of the text messages sent to Miller used obscene and disturbing sexual language. In one message sent to her parents, the indictment said, Proia referred to Stephen Miller as “a Jewish Nazi/white supremacist” and asked Katie Miller’s mother if it disturbed her that her daughter was married to him.

The case against Proia comes at a moment when threats against public figures of all political stripes are on the rise.

“Terrorizing someone isn’t some sick game; it’s a crime, which is why the FBI and our partners take it so seriously,” Ted E. Docks, the special agent in charge of the bureau’s Boston division, said in a statement.

Docks also said that Proia had been arrested by members of the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, an unusual show of force for a cyberstalking case. Proia was scheduled to appear in court Thursday evening.

The charges filed against Proia were not the first time the Miller family has raised concerns about its security.

In November, state and federal investigators scrutinized a Virginia woman, Barbara Wien, who distributed leaflets disclosing the Millers’ home address. Those inquiries prompted a secret court fight over the balance between personal safety and free speech at a moment of sensitivity over political violence — just weeks after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed by an assassin at an event at a Utah college campus.

Before Proia was indicted, two senior FBI counterterrorism supervisors in the bureau’s Washington field office were demoted after expressing concern about the case involving the messages to Katie Miller, according to another person familiar with the case.

Darren Cox, the assistant director in charge of the Washington office, said this week that he had made that decision, not FBI Director Kash Patel.

“Director Patel did not order this decision,” Cox wrote in a statement. “This was a personnel decision made at the Washington field office level alone based on our constant evaluation of mission needs. Any suggestion otherwise is false.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Alan Feuer/Haiyun Jiang
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