The suspect in the sending of pipe bombs to two former presidents, several prominent Democratic politicians and other critics of Donald Trump is set for a first appearance in a Florida federal courtroom on Monday, as investigators continue to build a detailed picture of his troubled past.

Trump claims media used pipe bomb campaign to score 'political points' Read more

Cesar Sayoc, a fanatical Trump supporter with a lengthy list of convictions including a previous bomb threat, faces up to 48 years in prison on five charges relating to the mailing of 13 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to the various targets, among them Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, the last two Democrats to occupy the White House.

A 14th package, addressed to the billionaire liberal donor Tom Steyer, was discovered in California on Friday. It was not included in the charges. None of the devices, which were sent to senators, members of Congress, former government officials and Democratic benefactors, went off and nobody was injured.

Sayoc’s arrest by FBI agents on Friday at an auto parts store in Plantation, Florida, was the culmination of a week-long game of cat and mouse with a suspect some dubbed the “MAGAbomber”, in reference to Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign slogan and because the intended victims had all criticised and been verbally attacked by the president.

George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and political activist, was the first to receive a bomb, in the mailbox of his suburban New York home on Monday. That was followed by Secret Service agents intercepting devices intended for the Obamas and Clintons.

The New York offices of the news channel CNN were evacuated on Wednesday after the discovery of a suspicious device in the mailroom. A day later Robert De Niro, the Oscar-winning actor who is a vocal Trump critic, received a package at his office in the city.

By Thursday night, investigators had traced the packages to a post office in the Miami suburb of Opa-locka. On Friday morning, agents pounced after identifying Sayoc by a fingerprint on one of the bombs and locating him in Plantation using a ping from his mobile phone.

As well as taking the 56-year-old into custody, the FBI towed away his white van plastered with photographs of Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence and images of leading Democratic figures, such as Hillary Clinton, Obama and the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, in the crosshairs of a gun.

“The van was kind of weird, stuff like: ‘Thank God we have a president with balls’ on the side of it,” Junior Herrera, an auto mechanic who works at the AutoZone shop, told the Guardian. Sayoc was a regular customer, he said, and was known to sleep outside overnight in his vehicle.

“He never spoke about anything political, he was always talking about car parts, you know? But he wouldn’t let you look inside the van, not even a peek. I helped him change the oil once, it was just, ‘Hey, I need this done’ and open the hood.’”

According to Debra Gureghian, Sayoc’s boss at a Fort Lauderdale pizzeria until he quit in January, he would deliver pizzas in his van but was only allowed to do so at night and was also told to park away from the business so customers would not see the vehicle.

“He was very angry at the world, at blacks, Jews, gays,” she told the Washington Post. “He always talked about: ‘If I had complete autonomy none of these gays or these blacks would survive.’”

She said she did not fire him because “good drivers are hard to find”.

More recently, Sayoc was a bouncer and disc jockey at a West Palm Beach adult club, showing up for work on Thursday night even as the FBI was knocking on his mother’s door in Aventura, an address from which he registered to vote as a Republican in 2016.

“I didn’t know this guy was mad crazy like this,” said Stacy Saccal, manager of the Ultra Gentlemen’s Club. “Never once did he speak politics. This is a bar, we don’t talk politics or religion.”

On social media, Sayoc’s extremism was more prominent. He had several Twitter and Facebook accounts where he posted rightwing conspiracy theories, racist memes and abusive or threatening messages to those who did not share his political views. He also uploaded videos of himself wearing a red “Maga” hat and holding banners at Trump rallies.

Sayoc’s arrest record stretches back 25 years, for offences including theft, battery and domestic violence. In 2002, the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office said, he served a year’s probation after admitting making a threat to blow up the offices of his electricity supplier because he did not like the size of his bill.

The FBI matched a fingerprint taken at a previous arrest to one on a pipe bomb sent to Maxine Waters, a California congresswoman, according to a complaint document from prosecutors in the southern district of New York. It states each of the IEDs was “largely similar in design and construction”, namely a six-inch PVC pipe with a small clock, battery, wiring and explosives.

“These are not hoax devices,” said the FBI director, Christopher Wray.

Sayoc will remain at a federal detention centre in Miami until Monday’s court hearing, after which he will face extradition to New York.

Play Video 1:02 Trump says media using pipe bomb case to score political points against him - video

The US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said investigations continued and he could not rule out expansion of the five charges detailed in the complaint: interstate transport of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives, threats against former presidents and certain other persons, threatening interstate communications and assaulting federal officers.

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The document also gave details of how and where each device was located, as well as the names of all the intended targets, including the senators Cory Booker (New Jersey) and Kamala Harris (California), the Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Obama administration officials John Brennan, Eric Holder and James Clapper, and Obama’s two-term vice-president, Biden.

On Friday night, Trump used a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, to accuse the media of using “the sinister acts of one individual to score political points against me and the Republican party”. It was a marked contrast from his stance in midweek, when he called for unity to “send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America”.

Ron Lowy, an attorney who has represented Sayoc, told CNN his former client had no interest in politics prior to 2016 and “was attracted to the Trump formula of reaching out to these types of outsiders, people who don’t fit in, people are angry at America”.

Sayoc, he said, was a “sick individual” searching for an identity and stung by his father abandoning him as a child.

“This was someone lost,” Lowy said. “He was looking for anything and he found a father in Trump.”

