Several members of the mainstream media blamed President Donald Trump for a suspect who allegedly killed five journalists on Thursday and reportedly had a longstanding dispute with the newspaper dating back to before Trump even declared his candidacy for the Oval Office.

Per several reports, authorities late Thursday identified Jarrod W. Ramos as the shooter who allegedly opened fire on the news staff of Maryland’s The Capital-Gazette newspaper. It came out shortly thereafter that Ramos had a longstanding battle with the newspaper dating back nearly a decade–one that resulted in lawsuits being filed and the man appearing to create a Twitter account in which he repeatedly bashed the Maryland newspaper for years.

Ramos appears to have had a long and troubled history with the newspaper. In 2011, he was convicted of criminally harassing a romantic interest. A then-Gazette columnist, Eric Hartley, wrote a story about his conviction and his history as a harasser. Ramos reportedly turned his anger on Hartley and the paper, starting a website dedicated to discrediting Hartley. In 2012, Ramos launched a lawsuit, representing himself, against Hartley, the Capital Gazette, its parent company, and editor Tom Marquardt.

Jarrod Ramos sued the Capital Gazette for defamation after they reported in 2011 about his conviction for criminal harassment (2011 article pictured) pic.twitter.com/tzMiwB2ME5 — BNO News (@BNONews) June 29, 2018

“He waged a one-person attack on anything he could muster in court against the Capital,” Marquardt told the Los Angeles Times Thursday. “I said during that time, ‘This guy is crazy enough to come in and blow us all away.’”

Ramos lost his last appeal in the lawsuit in 2015 but appears to have continued to let loose against the paper on social media until the summer of 2016, using a defaced image of Eric Hartley as his Twitter avatar.

This appears to demonstrate a long-standing, deeply troubling hatred that Ramos had for the paper and against the legal system. Just before he allegedly went into the newspaper’s offices, a tweet was published from what appears to be Ramos’s Twitter account bashing the judge in the case he filed against the newspaper.

Suspect in Maryland newspaper shooting sent a tweet just 3 minutes before the attack, referring to the judge who tossed out his lawsuit against the Capital Gazette pic.twitter.com/vDqzPGja5V — BNO News (@BNONews) June 29, 2018

Ramos may have gone to such great lengths that he even appears to have made a fake Twitter account for the aforementioned judge, which he seems to have tagged in the last tweet sent from the account before the shooting on Thursday.

What’s more, there were signs, and apparently warnings, to police for years about Ramos:

"He's a f***** nut job" –woman who says she was stalked by suspect in fatal shooting of 5 people at Capital Gazette in Annapolis…says she warned former police official years ago.."he will be your next mass shooter" — Jayne Miller (@jemillerwbal) June 29, 2018

I can say with complete certainty that a @capgaznews employee had previously told @AACOPD about concerns regarding the suspect in today’s shooting on #Annapolis — Joshua Stewart (@jptstewart) June 29, 2018

I also just found out that in addition to warning the @AACOPD about the suspect, another @capgaznews employee warned the @AnnapolisPD as well. — Joshua Stewart (@jptstewart) June 29, 2018

But never let the facts get in the way of a good anti-Trump narrative. Multiple members of the mainstream media blamed Trump for the killings in their reactions to the tragedy.

In a since-deleted and apologized-for tweet, Reuters editor John Cox wrote that Trump had blood on his hands. “This is what happens when @realDonaldTrump calls journalists the enemy of the people. Blood is on your hands, Mr. President. Save your thoughts and prayers for your empty soul,” Cox wrote on Twitter. “At least four people killed in Maryland newspaper shooting: reports.”

Cox has since deleted the tweet and apologized for it–admitting he violated Reuters’ ethical standards by saying this was connected to Trump.

When I saw the news today that a mass shooter had targeted the employees of a newspaper in Maryland I responded emotionally and inappropriately. — Rob Cox (@rob1cox) June 29, 2018

2- Though my comments were entirely personal, they were not in keeping with the Reuters Trust Principles and my own standards for letting facts, not snap judgments, guide my understanding. — Rob Cox (@rob1cox) June 29, 2018

3 – My experience as a member of the community of Newtown, Connecticut in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy, combined with the possibility that my colleagues in the press were being targeted, pushed me into a state of emotional distress. — Rob Cox (@rob1cox) June 29, 2018

4 – I am sorry for my comments, which I quickly deleted and have disavowed, and especially remorseful if they did anything to distract from the thoughts and love we must send to the community of Annapolis. — Rob Cox (@rob1cox) June 29, 2018

Cox was hardly the only person to have engaged in blaming the president for the killings. For instance, Mike P. Williams of Yahoo tweeted:

Donald Trump has repeatedly and angrily branded the press as a threat, as the enemy, as a danger to America. Someone just shot up a newsroom and killed journalists. He has blood on his hands. — Mike P Williams 🌹 (@Mike_P_Williams) June 28, 2018

And this one, accusing President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump of being “complicit” in the shooting:

Your husband calls journalists the enemy and has poisoned his brainwashed fanbase against them. He’s complicit in this crime. And so are you. #BeBest https://t.co/g3zUV8vjrz — Mike P Williams 🌹 (@Mike_P_Williams) June 28, 2018

Williams is not the only out there making allegations against Trump on this front:

We don’t know the motive for the Capital Gazette newspaper mass shooting in Annapolis, but sincerely hope how Trump and the far right incite hatred towards journalists had nothing to do with it. Regardless, this should send a message that rhetoric is dangerous and unacceptable. — Adam Best (@adamcbest) June 28, 2018

A shooting in a newspaper office after years of journalists being called the enemy of the people. I’ve heard so many Trump supporters call for murdering the press. Now they’re celebrating all over the Internet. We’re heading somewhere very dark. — Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) June 28, 2018

What’s more, without further information about the shooter’s politics, Jared Yates Sexton–who works for Salon, a far-left publication–conflated Ramos’s long history of bashing the Gazette back to 2011 and 2012 with a sole tweet he appears to have sent out referencing Trump back in 2015. The account that appears to be Ramos’s tweeted a reference to President Trump’s lawsuit against Univision during the campaign.

An account allegedly belonging to the Annapolis shooter makes frequent threats toward the paper, refers to "journalist hell," includes multiple Charlie Hebdo references and memes, and warns the paper against calling Donald Trump "unqualified." — Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) June 29, 2018

Again, the tweet Sexton is referencing appears to be part of a longstanding vendetta that Ramos had against the newspaper and does not indicate either way whether the author of it supported or opposed the president in his action against Univision. It also is unclear as of now whether Ramos is a supporter of Trump or not, but a search of Ramos’s voter registration record in Laurel, Maryland, indicates he is unaffiliated with any political party.

Maryland allows voters to register by party–Republican, Democrat or any other party–and Ramos does not appear to be registered.

Similarly, Judd Legum, an editor with leftist group ThinkProgress, tweeted that Ramos “does appear to be a Trump supporter”:

Shooting suspect Jarrod Ramos does appear to be a Trump supporter. Tweeted positively about a big Trump lawsuit against the media. He also had sued The Capital and had a longstanding grudge against the paper. pic.twitter.com/8DyG7Lbvj5 — Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) June 29, 2018

Fellow ThinkProgress leftist Aaron Rupar also blamed Trump:

The president of the United States has been actively promoting hatred of journalists since the first day he took office pic.twitter.com/pQKjFJjf65 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 28, 2018

Vincent Frank, a sportswriter who is heard on ESPN radio, argued that Trump’s “dangerous” rhetoric led to the shooting at the Maryland newspaper:

Trump calls free press an enemy of the United States. Multiple times. Shooting at one of the oldest press institutions in the United States. Let's not draw conclusions, but…his rhetoric as POTUS is dangerous. We already knew that before today. — Vincent Frank (@VincentFrankNFL) June 28, 2018

Meanwhile, Caitlin Hu, a geopolitics editor for Quartz, implied that Trump was responsible by tweeting out this:

just a tiny sample of all the times trump has incited his followers to hate and fear journalists pic.twitter.com/2oCrDBG4gM — Caitlin Hu (@husca) June 28, 2018

Gaby Dunn, a self-identified “former newspaper journalist” whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Playboy, Vice, the Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, Salon, and Slate, tweeted the killings happened once Trump’s “anti-media narrative started”:

https://twitter.com/gabydunn/status/1012460333162586112

Washington Post columnist Brian Klaas tweeted:

When is it time to take violence against journalists seriously? pic.twitter.com/dKNblLWKWp — Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) June 28, 2018

Klaas quickly added this caveat:

We should wait for the facts about this horrific shooting in Maryland. My point is that violence against journalists—and incitement to violence against journalists—isn’t an isolated incident under Trump. (Also, recall that 81 journalists were killed across the world last year). — Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) June 28, 2018

Teen Vogue‘s Lauren Duca, who infamously got in a spat with Tucker Carlson on Fox News in late 2016, said that there is no separation of the president’s comments about the fake news media from the shooting in Maryland–even though, again, the shooter had a vendetta that dated back to long before Trump sought public office:

The shooting today in the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland cannot reasonably be separated from the President's mission to villainize the press as "the enemy of the American people." — Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) June 28, 2018

Eylon Levy, an anchor and “investigative journalist” with Israeli television outlet i24News, tweeted:

President Trump, who repeatedly calls the media "the enemy of the people", is offering his thoughts and prayers to the victims of the shooting at a newspaper office in Annapolis. — Eylon Levy | אילון לוי (@EylonALevy) June 28, 2018

Andrew Feinberg, a White House correspondent with Breakfast Media, directly blamed the president for the shooting:

You caused this, Mr. President. — Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) June 28, 2018

Later, when NBC News reported that the shooter was not ideologically motivated, Feinberg doubled down and falsely blamed Trump again:

NBC is reporting that this shooter may not have been ideologically motivated. So let me be clear: I stand by what I said. You cannot be POTUS, hold rally after rally to attack reporters, calling them fake, disgusting/dishonest & not expect someone to think shooting them is ok. — Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) June 29, 2018

Young Turks host Cenk Uygur, a former MSNBC anchor, also blamed Trump:

When you have a president who says the press is "enemy of the people" is it surprising that someone shoots up a newspaper office? @realDonaldTrump has blood on his hands. He loves inciting people even after seeing the consequences in places like Charlottesville. #CapitalGazette — Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) June 28, 2018

Mikko Alanne, a showrunner for National Geographic’s Long Road Home program, called for Republicans to push Trump to resign–and again blamed him for the shooting:

Will no one in the Republican Party have the courage to call for Donald Trump to resign the Presidency? This man has ceaselessly propagated hate against journalists for years, calling them the enemy of the American people. Today's killings are the direct consequence. — Mikko Alanne (@MikkoAlanne) June 28, 2018

It’s unclear what the Pulitzer Prize Committee thinks of the kneejerk blaming of Trump in relation to the Maryland shooter, but someone the organization awarded a Pulitzer Prize to just last year blamed the president as well:

While Jarrod W Ramos follows no one on Twitter (from his known account) there seem to be a good number of Trump supporters and members of the alt right who follow him. #journalists #capitalgazette — Thomas Peele (@thomas_peele) June 29, 2018

This Palmer Report editor does not even care that the facts don’t fit the media’s anti-Trump narrative, and says as much in this tweet:

The Annapolis shooting suspect is confirmed as Jarrod Warren Ramos. Six years ago he sued Capital Gazette and lost. But he didn't bother to shoot up the place until after Donald Trump started promoting violence and scapegoating journalists. This is precisely as ugly as we thought — Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) June 29, 2018

Detroit Free Press correspondent Todd Spangler joined in blaming Trump on his Twitter account as well:

https://twitter.com/tsspangler/status/1012532008663347200?s=21

Evan Rosenfeld, the head of social media for Mediaite and a stringer for the New York Times suggested in a not-so-subtle question to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that President Trump “contributed to” the shooting:

Honest question, Sarah: is it at all possible that President Trump calling the media the enemy of the American people has contributed to a mentally unstable person taking matters into their own hands? https://t.co/CsfiNOOpEq — Evan Rosenfeld (@Evan_Rosenfeld) June 28, 2018

Anirvan Ghosh, a self-identified “communicator” and “editor” who says his work has appeared in the Huffington Post, on taxpayer-funded National Public Radio, in Forbes, and in Medium, claimed that President Trump had called the journalists at the Capital-Gazette newspaper the “enemy of the people” a few days ago:

Trump had called the journalists at the Capital Gazette the “enemy of the people” four days ago. pic.twitter.com/DJo4ZeXuw3 — Anirvan Ghosh (@anirvanghosh) June 29, 2018

It does not appear President Trump has ever said anything about the Capital Gazette, and his comments about the fake news media being the enemy of the people refer to inaccurate media reports and specific outlets like CNN and NBC:

Why was the FBI giving so much information to the Fake News Media. They are not supposed to be doing that, and knowing the enemy of the people Fake News, they put their own spin on it – truth doesn’t matter to them! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2018

So funny to watch the Fake News, especially NBC and CNN. They are fighting hard to downplay the deal with North Korea. 500 days ago they would have “begged” for this deal-looked like war would break out. Our Country’s biggest enemy is the Fake News so easily promulgated by fools! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2018

….it is very possible that those sources don't exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2017

Adam Klasfeld, a reporter for Courthouse News based in New York, tweeted that he thinks it does not matter if there are any ties to Trump for journalists to bash Trump:

We do not know the suspect or motive for the mass shooting in an Annapolis newspaper office. That said, the White House rhetoric labeling the press the "enemy of the people" is extremely dangerous, regardless of whether there turns out to be any tie to this incident. — Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) June 28, 2018

To his credit, however, Klasfeld later said it is “harmful” to speculate about the shooter’s motives:

These two things are true: 1) It is harmful to speculate about the possible motives of the Capital Gazette shooter. We simply do not have information. 2) This is an appropriate time to note the deadly climate of hostility against the press in the United States. — Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) June 28, 2018

It’s not just on Twitter that the media is bashing Trump falsely for this. CNN and MSNBC were hosting their regular rounds of fake news on Thursday night as well. See Video Above

A CNN analyst and former FBI agent, Asha Rangappa, said live on air on Thursday night:

Just to relate this back to a bigger conversation we’ve had this week about civility and rhetoric, lone wolf actors are often alienated individuals who are looking to displace their anger and frustration onto some kind of outside entity or enemy, and I think it’s worth pointing out that we’ve had a constant rhetoric coming even from the president that the press is the enemy of the people. That’s been repeated constantly, and I think it’s worth noting that if there is a link here, that the publication was being targeted, that that kind of rhetoric can be very dangerous in these times.

Also on CNN, anchor Chris Cuomo–who was just given a primetime weeknight time slot–bashed Trump on his network on Thursday night in connection with the shooting. Cuomo somehow tied this to the border crisis, as well:

The shooting, taken together with the kids stranded at the border and the political punch-fest that we’re suffering, all lead us to the same problem: those kids torn from parents, dumped all over the country, the harshness of that move, the lies about fixing it, the slow fade of interest in our society about it. The empty calls for civility; why empty? Because they’re mostly made those who are decidedly uncivil. And yeah, I’m talking about the president, those around him who excuse and empower his talk, his media friends that echo and reward it, the idea of suggesting today that this shooting is to be blamed on the left is as baseless, unproductive, and frankly stupid as it is to point to the other side.

Here is video of Cuomo:

.@ChrisCuomo: Today, another example of a gun violence pandemic our society is maddeningly willing to accept. It is a fact there has been no meaningful legislation in Congress to stop this. More dead, more shattered lives, more reasons to do something to stop these shootings. pic.twitter.com/Y2zbqi4Gm9 — Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) June 29, 2018

This a developing narrative and storyline. More is likely to come soon.

Breitbart News’s Ian Mason and Kristina Wong contributed to this article.