This story was updated at 12:50 p.m. on Wednesday, June 14.
WASHINGTON — A 19-year-old Maryland man has been arrested on federal charges related to a threat to kill two prominent liberal senators, including independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Nicholas Bukoski allegedly threatened to murder Sanders and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., over social media messages in March.
“Senator, I would watch your back as you’re out today… You wouldn’t want to be caught off guard when I use my second amendment protected firearm to rid the world of you, you stupid crazy old fool,” Bukoski wrote in an Instagram message to Sanders’s office, according to prosecutors.
Bukoski was indicted in U.S. District Court in Washington in April on five charges, including two counts of threatening to assault and murder a member of Congress. He also faces three counts of transmitting threats in interstate commerce — one against each senator, and the third against participants in the “March for Our Lives” protest.
The indictment was under seal until Wednesday, which U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu asked for because public disclosure could “jeopardize future plans” to arrest Bukoski, she argued.
Sanders and Harris are both considered hopefuls for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
According to court papers, Bukoski made the three threats on March 24, the day of the demonstration, which brought hundreds of thousands of participants to Washington to call for gun law reform. Sanders was Vermont that day at a March for Our Lives rally outside the Statehouse in Montpelier.
Bukoski sent three threatening messages within a few minutes on the day of the demonstration, according to a memo filed by prosecutors Wednesday. The first was his message to Sanders.
In a message two minutes later to Harris’s office, he referred to her using a profanity and a slur, then wrote: “I am going to make sure you and your radical lefty friends never get back in power you will never run for president, because you won’t make it to see that day.”
He later texted the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department tip line a message law enforcement took as a threat directed at the March for Our Lives.
“I am intending to send the message that gun control, bomb control, or any other kind of weapons control will not stop attacks, it is an issue of the heart,” he texted, according to prosecutors. “My heart is messed up and evil, and part of me wants to see people suffer, goddammit. Anyway, good luck and Godspeed finding my presents. This will be my only message.”
Police tracked the message to Bukoski, locating his address in nearby Anne Arundel County, Maryland.
Bukoski was arrested in April on unrelated charges for committing an armed robbery of a convenience store with a knife in January.
Prosecutors requested that the court detain Bukoski until trial.
An arrest warrant issued in April was executed on Friday, according to records.
Sanders’s office does not comment on security issues, according to a spokesperson.
Read the story on VTDigger here: UPDATED: Man indicted on charge of threatening to kill Sanders.