Federal prosecutors said a hate-filled registered sex offender from Staten Island is also an apparent right-wing terrorist who took to social media threatening to bomb and kill protesters and even Senator Charles Schumer.
Brian Maiorana, 54, was picked up Tuesday by members of the NYPD-FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force on charges for repeatedly making violent threats on social media to murder protesters, politicians, law enforcement agents and other individuals.
The criminal complaint noted that Maiorana — a Level 1 sex offender in New York because of a 2007 felony conviction in Pennsylvania for statutory sex assault — made most of his threats between Oct. 19 and Nov. 8 of this year on an undisclosed social media channel.
“The Department of Justice will not stand idly by when people like the defendant allegedly threaten to kill elected officials, lawful protesters and law enforcement simply because of animus towards the outcome of an election,” acting U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of New York Seth DuCharme said in a statement. “Americans have a constitutional right to voice their opinions, but this Office will not tolerate violence or threats of violence used to intimidate others with whom they disagree.”
Among his targets was apparently New York Senator Charles Schumer, whom Maiorana allegedly referred to in an anti-Semitic rant on Nov. 8 as “the Jew senator from Jew York.”
In that same post, Maiorana allegedly suggested blowing an “the FBI building for real” and referenced “The Turner Diaries,” a 1978 novel that’s popular among white supremacists and neo-Nazis that has been link to acts of domestic terrorism, such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Earlier posts on Oct. 19 featured Maiorana allegedly calling for pipe bombs to be thrown into “these mobs of potentially non-violent violent protesters”; and on Nov. 5, he allegedly threatened “anyone that claims to be democrat [sic] … as well as their family members” to be murdered.
He further threatened violence on Nov. 8 against those celebrating the election of Joe Biden as the nation’s next president over Donald Trump, prosecutors said.
Most of the unhinged posts allegedly written by Maiorana featured typographical and punctuation errors, federal agents noted.
Law enforcement sources added that Maiorana allegedly also purchased equipment used to build firearms and had posted on a militia forum in June that he was working to start “manufacturing implements of war.”
In reality, as a registered sex offender, Maiorana is banned from possessing firearms. While searching his home Tuesday, agents recovered a semi-automatic firearm and related ammunition.
If convicted on the charges, Maiorana faces up to five years in federal prison. He was ordered held in custody with out bail at his arraignment Tuesday.
