This Nov. 1, photo shows a van with windows covered with an assortment of stickers in Well, Fla. Federal authorities took Cesar Sayoc into custody on Friday and confiscated his van, which appears to be the same one. | Lesley Abravanel via AP Bomb Threat Mail bomb suspect appeared to be fervent Trump supporter The president made another call for unity, but also complained that the attacks were sapping GOP momentum ahead of the midterms.

Authorities on Friday charged a man who appeared to be an emphatic supporter of President Donald Trump with sending suspicious packages to prominent Trump critics, while the president expressed frustration that the attacks were distracting from the midterms.

The FBI arrested Cesar Sayoc, a 56-year-old Florida man, and charged him with five federal crimes — from mailing explosives to threatening former presidents — that carry a sentence of up to 58 years in prison.


The federal complaint included 13 explosive devices that were bound for high-profile Democrats and CNN. It also detailed how misspellings on Sayoc's pro-Trump social media posts matched with misspellings on the suspicious packages.

When asked during a news conference about Sayoc's apparent fervor for Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he does not know whether Sayoc was specifically targeting Democrats.

"He may have been, it appears to be a partisan, but that will be determined by the facts as the case goes forward," Sessions said.

All of the devices were similarly packaged, with return addresses listing the Florida office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.). They all contained “energetic material,” according to the complaint, suggesting the devices were not meant to be fakes. Several of the packages included pictures of the targets market with a red “X.”

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The FBI found a fingerprint on one of the envelopes that matched Sayoc’s, who had a criminal record for various offenses.

Sayoc's Twitter account also included posts critical of several of the packages’ targets. Footage on Friday captured authorities examining and seizing a white van that was covered with pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Clinton stickers in Plantation, Fla. The van also had a number of images critical of CNN, including a sticker that said "CNN SUCKS."

Trump, while speaking to reporters on the South Lawn on Friday evening, said that he did not see his face on Sayoc's van, but "heard he was a person that preferred me over others."

He argued, though, that "there's no blame."

"There's no blame, there's no anything," he said. "If you look at what happened to Steve Scalise, that was from a supporter of a different party," he added, referencing the 2017 congressional baseball practice shooting.

Trump earlier Friday urged officials to prosecute the attacker "to the fullest extent of the law" while also saying that political violence has no place in America.

"The events are despicable and have no place in our country, no place," the president said during the 2018 Young Black Leadership Summit at the White House. "We must never allow political violence to take root in America. We cannot let it happen. We are committed to do everything to stop it."

But Trump also expressed frustration that the media’s coverage of the potential explosives overshadowed his pre-midterms messaging, including a proposal to lower Medicare drug prices that he rolled out on Thursday.

"It didn’t get the kind of coverage it should have" because "we're competing” with the suspicious packages story, he said, also musing that the coverage “can start to disappear rapidly," since a suspect was arrested on Friday.

Trump also vented on Twitter on Friday morning, suggesting that the wave of suspicious packages sent to his most prominent critics are an attempt to slow Republican early voting.

"Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this 'Bomb' stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics," the president tweeted. "Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!"

The president continued to express his frustration on Friday evening.

"The Republicans have tremendous momentum, and then, of course, this happened where all that you people talked about was that," he said. "And rightfully so. It was a big thing. Rightfully so, but now we have to start the momentum again."

Sayoc’s identity is a mystery to his fellow Miami Republicans. He wasn’t a regular at protests, and party officials in Miami-Dade County didn’t recognize him. His social media accounts — including one that was suspended by Facebook — don’t show that he interacted with GOP leaders or activists.

Sayoc’s Twitter handle indicated he was a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, but the tribe said he wasn’t and had never worked for them.

County voting records show he registered to vote 11 days before the GOP presidential primary in 2016, too late to cast ballots for that election under Florida law. He then voted in the regular primary that year, the general election and the GOP primary this year.

Sayoc’s Twitter feed shows he’s a strong supporter of Republican Ron DeSantis for governor and a fervent critic of his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum.

Gillum and DeSantis condemned his actions, with DeSantis saying on Twitter that Sayoc “needs to be in a place where mail can't be sent and [he needs to be] prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

But Democrats say Republicans can’t just disavow Sayoc’s apparent radicalism.

“When the president of the United States keeps repeating false and inflammatory rhetoric and doesn’t think how dangerous it is … and now this arrest, and it looks like people are becoming radicalized in the party,” said Miami-Dade’s Democratic Party chair, Ricky Junquera. “I don’t believe this is all Republicans. This is a fringe. But now it’s hitting home. It’s dangerous.”

Sayoc has been arrested multiple times and, in 2002, pleaded no contest to making a bomb threat. He was placed on probation for the felony charge.

The state said it “received no records to indicate this individual is ineligible to vote in Florida,” an indication that Sayoc had adjudication withheld and was therefore not a convicted felon.

Authorities revealed on Friday morning that more packages had been intercepted, including ones that were addressed to Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).

Billionaire Tom Steyer also had a suspicious package addressed to him that was intercepted on Friday at a mail facility in Burlingame, Calif., although it is unclear whether it is similar to other packages that were intercepted this week.

Earlier in the week, suspicious packages were sent to other vocal Trump critics, including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and former CIA Director John Brennan.

The packages to Brennan and Clapper were both address to CNN's New York offices.

Trump said that he is going to "pass" in reaching out to those who were targeted.



During a phone interview on CNN on Friday morning, Clapper said that "it's not a surprise" that a suspicious package was addressed to him. He added that those who have been critical of Trump should be on "extra alert and take some precautions."

"Whether or not this is just only intended to sow fear, intimidate, that sort of thing or they are for real," Clapper said, "I do want to just echo one thing that John Brennan said, and that is this is not going to silence the administration's critics."

Biden on Friday also called for the country to "come together" and not label political opponents and the media as enemies.

"The country has to come together, this division, this hatred, this ugliness, it has to end," he said. "And words matter, words matter."

The former vice president added that he hopes "our leaders are gonna work to lower the temperature in our public dialogue."

"Before we’re Democrats, or Republicans, or Independents, before that, and it sounds corny, but we’re Americans," Biden said.

All packages also had a return address to Wasserman Schultz's office in Sunrise, Fla., which was evacuated Wednesday after a package addressed to former Attorney General Eric Holder was returned there.

The Florida congresswoman in an interview on Friday said that no one "should be treating our opponents like they are the enemy."

"An attack on any one of us, the use or potential use of any of us that are serving the public or anyone for that matter, to attempt to harm people, it is horrific and not something that we will tolerate," Wasserman Schultz said.

Critics of the president have cast blame for the flurry of suspected pipe bombs on Trump's incendiary rhetoric directed against the media and his political opponents, suggesting that it could have encouraged someone to target the president's opponents. The White House and Trump's allies have dismissed such theories and some have suggested that the packages were sent by someone intending to make the president look bad in the weeks leading up to next month's midterm elections.

In a tweet posted just after 3 a.m. Friday morning, Trump bashed CNN's coverage of the suspicious packages and complained that he is held to an unfair standard as president that his critics are not subject to.

“Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing,” Trump said in a tweet posted just after 3 a.m. “Yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, ‘it’s just not Presidential!’”

Marc Caputo, Ryan Hutchins, Caitlin Oprysko, Nolan McCaskill and Matthew Choi contributed to this report.

