Benson
“My life goal is to assassinate Trump. Don’t care if I serve infinite sentences. That man deserves to decease existing.”

He’s no Proust, but Fairview Park resident Zachary Benson’s writing caught the attention of law enforcement. Benson was arrested after a flurry of Election Night tweets and later charged in federal court for making threat to a successor to the presidency. The above quote has since been deleted, along with Benson’s Twitter account: @ZeeAyeKeyKay.

Another one: “Diplomacy. Fucking fools. I hate you all. I want to bomb every one of your voting booths and your general areas.”

Benson told the Secret Service that his tweets came from a place of frustration with the election — and after a few drinks at a local restaurant, he added. He said he had no intention of assassinating the president-elect.

According to the criminal complaint, Benson had deleted those tweets the following morning.

This article appears in Nov 9-15, 2016.

Eric Sandy is an award-winning Cleveland-based journalist. For a while, he was the managing editor of Scene. He now contributes jam band features every now and then.

4 replies on “Fairview Park Man Arrested for Threatening Donald Trump Via Twitter”

  2. Only one? You’d better believe that there’d have been multiple threats against Hillary.
    The wingnuts would have been going apeshit…and talking smack about “getting their muskets.”

    Chuckles the Clown

  3. Don’t Secret Service people get any rudimentary legal training? Mr. Benson’s posts are protected free speech. There is no evidence he intended to act on them, ever.

    This false arrest undermines our democracy and way of life. Most of us have said regrettable things about politicians on the internet in the heat of the moment. There’s a special danger of chilling political debate created by this mistake, and the Secret Service agents involved should be disciplined as well as retrained.

    Let’s hope the federal judge who holds the preliminary hearing doesn’t also fail at Americaning.

    Geeze Louise. This is not Communist China.

  4. Chuckles, you clown. It’s always the liberals, not the conservatives, or “musket” owners who have wailing melt-downs and riot when they don’t get their way, and always demand special treatment. Hillary was her own downfall, and you all stood around with your thumbs in your mouths believing every lie they told you. It’s over, my friend. Move on.

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