Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel confirmed she was a target of threats directed at Jewish elected officials after the FBI arrested a heavily armed man charged with transmitting an interstate threat, a five-year felony.
Jack Eugene Carpenter III, a resident of Tipton, Michigan, had tweeted on February 17 that he was “heading back to Michigan now threatening to carry out the punishment of death to anyone that is jewish in the Michigan govt if they don’t leave, or confess,” according to the FBI’s affidavit.
Carpenter, 41, had allegedly been in Texas when he tweeted from an account named TemperedReason, where he claimed to be a former employee of the University of Michigan who “was fired for refusing to take experimental medication,” apparently referring to the COVID-19 vaccine.
Through the Twitter account, Carpenter made other violent threats and anti-semitic rants, including a theory that the Covid-19 vaccine was developed by Jews to control the world.
Other manifestos on the Twitter account included:
- Declaring himself the King of Israel
- Declaring a new state on his property called “New Israel”
- “I’ll be coming back to Michigan, still driving with expired plats. You may want to let everyone know, and Wayne County Sheriff as well, any attempt to subdue me will be met with deadly force in self-defense.”
- If arrested, Carpenter would “get the lawyer removed due to conflict of interest because they are Jewish.”
- A list of public officials including Gretchen Whitmer; Anthony Fauci; Chris Cuomo; and multiple University of Michigan personnel, all of whom he planned to target for “crimes against humanity”; the only Jewish figures he mentions is Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and Dana Nessel.
- One tweet threatened to have Twitter CEO Elon Musk “publicly hanged.”
Other popular right wing conspiracy theories he mentioned:
- Q-Anon
- Joe Biden was not lawfully elected President
Carpenter was a systems administrator in the computing department at the dean’s office of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, the school’s largest college. He had been employed there for 10 years, and had been let go in 2021.
Federal agents determined that Carpenter had previously been arrested on assault charges and had stolen one of his handguns from his girlfriend. His mother told authorities he was in possession of several firearms, including three handguns, a 12-gauge shotgun and a military-style hunting rifle.
JTA, CNN, UP Matters