Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said there he’d been targeted by “many armed” individuals whom the FBI arrested in February for allegedly threatening to kill Jewish members of the Michigan government.
A recently unsealed criminal complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan last month, identified Tipton, Michigan, resident Jack Eugene Carpenter III as the author of the violent threat, issued via Twitter.
“I’m back in Michigan now threatening to carry out the death penalty against any Jew in Michigan government if they don’t leave, or confess,” he tweeted on Feb. 17, according to the complaint.
“Because I can legally do it, right?”
Carpenter’s mother told Michigan State Police that her son was in Texas at the time and had recently asked for money to travel back to Michigan. When she refused, he said he was angry and promised to “sell some [silver]” to raise the necessary funds.
According to the complaint, this morning he tweeted: “I will be back in Michigan, still driving with expired plates. You may want to let everyone know, and the Wayne County sheriff as well, any attempt to subdue me will be met with deadly force to defend self
The documents show that Carpenter had been investigated for allegedly stealing a handgun from his girlfriend and that he had previously been arrested on suspicion of assault.
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His mother told authorities that Carpenter was in possession of three handguns, a 12-gauge shotgun and two hunting rifles, one complaint identified as a “military style” weapon.
In addition to allegedly targeting Nessel, Carpenter also named Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in various online screeds, as well as Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is the nation’s top infectious disease expert during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The FBI has confirmed that I am the target of an armed defendant in this matter,” Nessel said said in a tweet Thursday. “We hope that federal authorities take this offense as seriously as the Hate Crimes & Domestic Terrorism Unit that hatched a plan to assassinate an elected official.”
A University of Michigan spokeswoman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Carpenter will be let go in 2021 after working at the school for 10 years.
When the university does not disclose the specific circumstances of his departure, a A Twitter account identified as Carpenter’s makes repeated references to COVID-19, vaccines and various right-wing conspiracy theories, including QAnon and baseless denials of the results of the 2020 presidential election.