Bomb suspect was cash-strapped ex-stripper devoted to Trump
Body builder, former stripper and loner Cesar Sayoc reportedly showed little interest in politics until Donald Trump came along.
Cesar Sayoc is an amateur body builder and former stripper, a loner with a long arrest record who showed little interest in politics until Donald Trump came along.
On Friday, he was identified by authorities as the Florida man who put pipe bombs in small manila envelopes, affixed six stamps and sent them to some of Trump’s most prominent critics.
His arrest capped a week in which the bombs aimed at some of America’s biggest names - Obama, Clinton, De Niro - dominated the news and invited speculation about who might be responsible for them. The answer, authorities said, was Mr Sayoc, a 56-year-old man from Aventura, Florida, who was devoted to Trump, had a history of financial problems and an extensive arrest record, including a stint on probation for making a bomb threat.
His lawyer in that 2002 case, Ronald Lowy, described Mr Sayoc as “a confused man who had trouble controlling his emotions.” A cousin of Mr Sayoc, Lenny Altieri, used stronger terms.
“I know the guy is a lunatic,” Mr Altieri said. “He has been a loner.” Mr Altieri confirmed that Mr Sayoc had been a stripper. On an online resume, Sayoc described himself as a booker and promoter for burlesque shows. Stacy Saccal, the general manager of the Ultra Gentlemen’s Club in West Palm Beach, said Mr Sayoc had worked there for about two months, first as a floor bouncer and for the past month as a disc jockey - most recently on Thursday night, hours before his arrest Friday morning.
“I didn’t know this guy was mad crazy like this,” she said Friday. “Never once did he speak politics. This is a bar. We don’t talk politics or religion in a bar, you know?” Florida voter records show Mr Sayoc first registered in March 2016 as a Republican and cast a ballot in that November’s presidential election.
He has been an active Trump supporter, tweeting and posting Facebook videos that appear to show him at the president’s rallies.
Mr Sayoc’s social media accounts are peppered with memes supporting Trump, and denigrating Democrats.
Mr Sayoc lived in a white 2002 Dodge Ram van, which was plastered with stickers supporting Trump and criticising media outlets that included CNN, which was also targeted by mail bombs.
The van was often parked outside an LA Fitness in Aventura, backed up in a parking space under the trees for shade. Patrons say they frequently saw him in the locker room.
“He’d just be walking straight to the shower and be in the shower forever,” said Edgar Lopez, who often exercises at the gym. “I never saw him working out.” Other times, the van was seen parked at the beach in nearby Hollywood before dawn, with Mr Sayoc stripping down to skin-tight shorts for an outdoor shower. “I’ve seen the guy maybe 80 times and I never said a word to him because I had a feeling he was a little off,” said Marc Weiss, the superintendent of a building near where Mr Sayoc frequently parked. “I assumed because he was showering at the beach that he was homeless.” In 2015, he reported to police that his van was broken into outside of a gym in Oakland Park, Florida. He claimed that more than $US40,000 worth of items were stolen, including $7,150 worth of Donald Trump-brand suits.
But often, Mr Sayoc was on the other side of legal complaints.
In the 2002 bomb threat case, he had lashed out at a Florida utility representative because his electricity service was about to be cut off. The arrest report said Mr Sayoc threatened in a phone call to blow up the utility’s offices and said that “It would be worse than September 11th.” Mr Sayoc was also convicted in 2014 for grand theft and in 2013 for battery. In 2004, he faced several felony charges for unlawful possession of a synthetic anabolic steroid often used to help build muscles. He also had several arrests going back to the 1990s for theft, obtaining fraudulent refunds and tampering with evidence.
Mr Lowy said he recalled that Mr Sayoc also had a run-in with authorities where he was charged with possessing a fake driver’s license after altering his birthdate to make him appear younger.
Mr Sayoc displayed no political leanings at the time of the bombing charge, Mr owy said, except for plastering his vehicle with Native American emblems. Mr Sayoc told his lawyer his father was Native American.
More recently, Mr Sayoc described himself on social media as being affiliated with the Seminole Warriors boxing club and being a member of the “Unconquered Seminole Tribe.” Gary Bitner, a spokesman for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, said there is no evidence to show that Mr Sayoc worked for the tribe or was a tribal member. Mr Altieri, his cousin, said Mr Sayoc’s only connection to Native Americans was that he once dated a member of a tribe.
Mr Sayoc was born in New York City. His mother was Italian and his biological father was Filipino, and his parents separated when he was a young boy, Mr Altieri said. After his parents separated, Mr Sayoc was “kind of rejected” by his family. “When you get no love as a young kid, you get kind of out of whack,” he said. He enrolled at Brevard College in North Carolina in 1980 and attended for three semesters, said Christie Cauble, the school’s interim director of communications. He then transferred to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, enrolling for the 1983-84 academic year. Buffie Stephens, director of media relations for the school, said Mr Sayoc didn’t declare a major. He played a few games as a walk-on player for the university’s men’s soccer team. There is no indication he ever completed a degree.
He moved to the Miami suburbs in the late 1980s. He had serious financial problems in recent years, including losing his home in foreclosure in 2009 and filling for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in 2012.
In court records, Mr Sayoc was described as having $US4,175 in personal property and more than $21,000 in debts, mostly from unpaid credit cards. His monthly income at the time was $1,070.
“Debtor lives with mother, owns no furniture,” Mr Sayoc’s lawyer indicated in a property list. Mr Sayoc’s mother, Madeline, also filed for bankruptcy around the same time. She was not immediately available to respond to phone messages left with her by the Associated Press.
Mr Sayoc’s media diet appears to have consisted of a toxic mixture of conspiracy theory, parody accounts and right-wing news sites. One of Sayoc’s most favored recent sources was a Twitter account that spread hoaxes about the Parkland High School shooting in Florida earlier this year.
He tweeted at least 40 times a screenshot of a meme featuring the transparently false claim that Parkland mass-shooting survivor David Hogg never went to Stoneman Douglas High School, occasionally including hostile captions such as “He is a George Soros paid protester.” Mr Soros, the billionaire progressive political donor, was targeted this week by a package bomb.
Mr Sayoc even seems to have stumbled across a Polish conspiracy news site, tweeting out a wildly false claim that Angela Merkel had been conceived using Adolf Hitler’s frozen sperm.
In June, he praised Trump in a birthday message saying, “Happy Birthday President Donald J. Trump the greatest result President ever.”
--- The Associated Press
‘No blame’ for suspect’s actions, says Trump
President Trump said he knew the pipe bomb suspect was one of his supporters, but said “there is no blame” for the suspect’s actions.
Officials described the more than a dozen devices allegedly sent by Mr Sayoc as being made up of PVC pipe, a timer and possible explosive material. One fingerprint was recovered from a package sent to Representative Maxine Waters (Democrat, California), leading to a major break in the investigation, the officials said.
“These are not hoax devices,” said FBI director Christopher Wray.
At a US Justice Department press conference in Washington, officials said he would face five federal counts including interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives and making threats against former US presidents.
The charges in total carry a potential penalty of 58 years in prison, officials said.
“This is utterly unacceptable. Political violence, or the threat of violence, is antithetical to our vigorous system of self government,” Attorney-General Jeff Sessions said.
“This is a law and order administration,” Mr Sessions said. “We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially not political violence.”
Charges were filed against Mr Sayoc in the Southern District of New York.
Online court records show Mr Sayoc was arrested in Miami in 2002 for a bomb threat. He received one year probation for the incident, according to the records. He has two other criminal cases in Miami courts, the records show.
Law enforcement took DNA from the suspicious packages intercepted this week to identify Mr Sayoc, two federal officials said. Once they had a name, they then pulled a potential mobile-phone number, one of the officials said. That allowed them to triangulate his location based off his mobile-phone records, the official said.
Mr Trump vowed to prosecute the suspect to the “fullest extent of the law” on Friday, calling for Americans to “show the world we are united”.
“We must never allow political violence to take root in America,” Mr Trump said at the White House. “Cannot let it happen. I’m committed to doing everything in my power as president to stop it.”
The US President applauded law enforcement, saying the search for the suspect has been like trying to find “a needle in a haystack”. He added: “They have done an incredible job and want to congratulate them.”
“I have instructed authorities to spare no resource or expense in finding those responsible in bringing them to swift and certain justice, and we will prosecute them, him, her, whoever it may be to the fullest extent of the law,” Mr Trump said.
President Trump also said he knew the pipe bomb suspect was one of his supporters, but said he bore “no blame” for the suspect’s actions.
“There is no blame. There’s no anything,” Mr Trump told reporters at the White House before leaving for a political rally in North Carolina.
“If you look at what happened to Steve Scalise, that was a supporter of a different party,” he said, recalling the 2017 shooting at a Republican baseball practice that left several wounded, including the congressman from Louisiana.
Asked if he planned to tone down the partisan rhetoric at rallies, which his critics contend has deepened political divisions in the country, Mr Trump replied: “I think I’ve been toned down. You know, I could really tone it up.”
Later Mr Trump lectured the media at length, accusing reporters of trying “to use the sinister actions of one individual to score political points” against him hours after police apprehended a staunch supporter of his in connection with the mail-bombs scare.
Mr Trump was campaigning in Charlotte, North Carolina, to support two Republican candidates facing close races in the state.
He is planning at least 10 rallies over the five-day stretch before Election Day.
Mr Trump, who held back some of his usual name-calling at a rally in Wisconsin earlier this week, returned to his attack lines in Charlotte even as he called for an end to the “politics of person destruction”.
Not long after, he referred to his 2016 opponent as “Crooked Hillary Clinton,” prompting a round of “lock her up!” chants.
Meanwhile investigators discovered four new suspicious packages on Friday addressed to New Jersey Democratic senator Cory Booker, California Democratic senator Kamala Harris, California billionaire Tom Steyer and former director of national intelligence James Clapper, law-enforcement officials said. They were similar to the 10 others, officials said.
The package mailed to Senator Booker contained what appeared to be an explosive device, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Federal investigators have said that the previous packages have the same telltale signs: manila envelopes with six US flag stamps and the return address of a Florida office of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, with her last name misspelled.
The first suspicious package was found Monday in the mailbox of the Westchester County, New York State, home of George Soros, a billionaire who is a prominent liberal donor. Late Tuesday, one addressed to Hillary Clinton was intercepted at her home, also in Westchester County, and on Wednesday, several were found addressed to other prominent Democrats, including former president Barack Obama and Representative Waters.
On Friday morning, New York City police evacuated a US post office in Midtown Manhattan after receiving a report of a suspicious package for Mr Clapper at CNN’s New York address, according to law-enforcement officials. The package addressed to Senator Booker was intercepted in Florida, officials said.
Federal and local investigators have said that the suspected bombs inside the packages should be considered dangerous, but no one has been hurt. The FBI sent the suspected explosive devices and packages to its facility in Quantico, Virginia.
An initial exam of the devices recovered by law enforcement shows most of the devices contained flash powder, a federal official said. Flash powder is used in pyrotechnics and fireworks.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, also a Democrat, said the state’s homeland security office was working with federal, state and local investigators. “Saddened and angered that an explosive device was sent” to Senator Booker’s office, he said in a tweet.
Mr Trump in a tweet Friday said the attempted bombings were “unfortunate” because they were slowing Republicans’ momentum in the midterm elections.
“Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this ‘bomb’ stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows — news not talking politics,” Mr Trump tweeted. “Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!”
With Byron Tau, Joseph De Avila, Vivian Salama, Aruna Viswanatha and Rebecca Ballhaus.
The Wall Street Journal/AP
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