Robert Chain’s threatening phone calls to the Globe’s newsroom started immediately after the Globe appealed to newspapers across the country to condemn what it called a “dirty war against the free press,” prosecutors said. He is charged with making 14 calls in all, between Aug. 10 and Aug. 22.
On Aug. 16, the day scores of editorials were published, Chain, 68, of the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, told a Globe staffer that he was going to shoot employees in the head at 4 o’clock, according to court documents. That threat prompted a police response and increased security at the newspaper’s offices.
Chain said he would continue threatening the Globe until it stops its “treasonous and seditious” attacks on Trump, according to a court complaint.
Several times, he called Globe employees the “enemy of the people,” a characterization of journalists that Trump has used repeatedly, including in a tweeton Thursday before the charges were announced.
Newsrooms have received threats for years and rarely do they result in charges. However, sensitivity has been heightened since a gunman with a long-running grudge against the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, killed five employees there in June.
Federal officials pledged to continue to go after anyone who puts others in fear of their lives.
“In a time of increasing political polarization, and amid the increasing incidence of mass shootings, members of the public must police their own political rhetoric. Or we will,” Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said.