By Jay Weaver
Miami Herald
MIAMI — Cesar Sayoc, the South Florida man accused of sending mail bombs to a long list of Democratic critics of President Donald Trump, will be transferred to New York for a detention hearing and prosecution.
A Miami federal judge on Friday agreed to allow Sayoc’s attorneys to make their case for his release on bond in New York. He will remain in federal custody in the meantime, charged with a host of crimes, including mailing explosive devices to former President Barack Obama, former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and more than a dozen other prominent Democrats around the country.
Sayoc, 56, a former stripper who mainly lived in his van but maintained an official address at his mother’s Aventura condo, was arrested a week ago at an auto store in Plantation.
Federal prosecutors have argued against any pretrial release for Sayoc, calling him a danger to the community and a flight risk this week. Earlier this week, they filed a new document outlining the “overwhelming” evidence the FBI has gathered since the say he began mailing out the manilla envelopes with crude pipe bombs from South Florida in mid-October. None of that evidence was discussed at Friday’s brief hearing in a Miami court room.
In the document filed with Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres in Miami, prosecutors said evidence of Sayoc’s “terror campaign is still being collected but is already overwhelming.” Earlier this week, Sayoc’s defense attorneys called the prosecution’s evidence in a criminal complaint “flimsy stuff.”
Prosecutors highlighted that Sayoc started planning the postal attacks months ago, in July, based on FBI searches of his laptop, cellphone and other devices found in his van, according to a new federal court filing.
FBI agents have seized multiple electronic devices from Sayoc’s van, a vehicle that doubled as his home and was impounded when he was arrested last Friday at an auto parts store in Plantation. His laptop showed Sayoc began doing searches in late July of numerous prominent Democratic figures, such as former President Obama and former Secretary of State nominee Clinton, according to the FBI.
Sayoc, a strident Trump supporter whose van was plastered with screeds against the president’s foes, also kept a list of potential targets that far exceeded the 15 politicians and others who were mailed manila envelopes containing the pipe bombs in October, New York federal prosecutors said in the court filing. Sayoc’s list, found on his laptop, included names and home addresses of more than 100 potential Democratic targets, law enforcement sources told the Miami Herald.
It was reported by Texas news media this week that Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke was threatened by Sayoc in Facebook messages starting in April. Also, O’Rourke’s campaign and the office of Democratic state Rep. Alfonso “Poncho” Nevarez confirmed they were contacted by FBI agents who warned them that Sayoc had looked up their home addresses to send possible bomb-filled packages to them, according to the news accounts.
“The FBI is warning each individual who appears … to have been identified by the defendant as a potential target, and will continue to do so if additional names are identified in other evidence,” the prosecutors’ court filing in Miami federal court said.
Prosecutors also disclosed new forensic evidence that they say links Sayoc’s latent fingerprints to two manila envelopes —not one, as previously noted in the criminal complaint. The filing also states there is DNA evidence from 10 of the mail bombs —not two, as previously cited in the complaint. Investigators believe all of the packages were mailed by Sayoc from South Florida.
To further make their case for Sayoc’s detention, prosecutors described the former male stripper as a dangerous criminal who was once charged in Miami-Dade County in 2002 with threatening to “blow up” Florida Power & Light over an unpaid electric bill that “would be worse than” the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Sayoc received a probationary sentence for that bomb-threat charge, records show.
