A Texas Trump supporter who allegedly tweeted a flashing gif at an epileptic Newsweek journalist has been indicted on a 'deadly weapon' charge.

John Rayne Rivello, 29, of Salisbury, Maryland, has been indicted on an aggravated assault charge enhanced as a hate crime for sending the image to journalist Kurt Eichenwald in December.

The tweet, allegedly sent by Rivello in response to Eichenwald's criticism of then-president-elect Donald Trump, read 'You deserve a seizure for your posts.'

Indicted: John Rayne Rivello (left), 29, has been indicted for the aggravated assault of Kurt Eichenwald (right). He allegedly triggered an epileptic seizure in Eichenwald using a tweet

'Dangerous': Authorities said this gif, which flashed quickly and caused Eichenwald's seizure, was sent by Rivello, who objected to the openly epileptic journalist's criticism of Donald Trump

Rivello used 'a Tweet and a Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) and an Electronic Device and Hands, during the commission of the assault,' the indictment read, according to CBS News.

Those constituted a 'deadly weapon' aimed at the openly epileptic journalist, the jury decided.

It also said that Rivello targeted Eichenwald, who writes critical opinion pieces on Trump for Newsweek, because he was a person of 'Jewish faith or descent.'

The account used to send the offending tweet was titled '@jew_goldstein' and named '(((Ari Goldstein)))'.

Alt-right web users place three parentheses around the names of people they believe are Jewish.

The tweet was sent after an interview on Fox News when Eichenwald was grilled over a tweet he posted last September claiming Donald Trump suffered a nervous breakdown in 1990 and was institutionalized.

Eichenwald deleted the tweet soon after but was criticised over its lack of supporting evidence.

According to an unsealed criminal complaint highlighted by Heat Street, Eichenwald suffered an eight-minute-long full bodily seizure and loss of consciousness after seeing the flashing image.

His wife was able to put him in a safe position on the floor before calling police, the document said.

She also tweeted using his account: 'This is his wife, you caused a seizure. I have your information and have called the police to report the assault.'

'Assault': Eichenwald's wife replied to the account - '@jew_goldstein' - that sent the tweet, threatening police. Prosecutors say Rivello was also motivated by antisemitism

The effects of the seizure also continued to 'impair his bodily functions and mental faculty' for months afterward, the report said.

Rivello, who was arrested on Friday, is a military veteran with PTSD, his lawyers said. They also said he had apologized to Eichenwald.

His arrest came after a months-long investigation that began when the Dallas Police Department sent a warrant to Twitter demanding Rivello's account information.

They sent cops his email address, the IP address that created the account and the phone number associated with the account, among other details, according to the unsealed report.

Warrant: Police used warrants to access Rivello's Twitter, AT&T and Apple iCloud information. His iCloud contained this photo as well as the offending gif and other evidence, cops said

They also opened up Rivello's private direct messages (DMs) to the police, allegedly revealing that he had plotted the attack with others.

Those messages were: 'I hope this sends him into a seizure,' 'Spammed this at [victim] let's see if he dies,' and 'I know he has epilepsy,' the report said.

Also in the information Twitter sent over was the ID of the phone used to send the tweet, and its carrier: AT&T.

Cops contacted AT&T and discovered that while the tweet was sent from a disposable temporary phone, the company had metadata about Rivello that included his Apple iPhone's serial number.

CAN A GIF CAUSE AN EPILEPTIC SEIZURE? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1.8 percent of American adults (about 4.3 million) have epilepsy, a brain disorder that causes seizures. A much smaller percentage of that group has experienced seizures triggered by lights or patterns. Called photic or pattern-sensitive seizures, these occur when people with epilepsy see a series of images or video that fall into a certain range of color, pattern and frequency. Patients with epilepsy have reported having seizures from watching a wide range of things, the team found, from a spinning potter’s wheel to TV commercials that feature strobe-like lights. But they warned that photo-sensitivity and its relation to epilepsy is not very well understood. This is due in part to the fact that it’s not exactly ethical to gather patients with epilepsy and expose them to images that could trigger a seizure—especially since seizures can be deadly. But the mechanisms by which seizures occur in humans are not yet fully understood. Right now, scientists think that one of multiple areas of the cerebral cortex —the part of the brain that transmits visual information to the rest of the brain can be stimulated by flashing or striped patterns, triggering abnormal, wave-like electrical activity inside the neurons of the cortex. Source: Smithsonion.com Advertisement

They then got another warrant to search his iCloud account, which the report says contained not only a photo of Rivello holding up his driver's license, but also the very image sent to Eichenwald.

The documents also claimed that Rivello's iCloud account contained screenshots of a list of epilepsy triggers from epilepsy.com and articles from dallasobserver.com about Eichenwald's attempts to find his alleged tormentor.

Perhaps most chillingly, the account contained a mocked-up Wikipedia obituary for Eichenwald listing his death as December 16, 2016, the documents said.

None of the companies - including Apple, which famously went to court to protect the iPhone used by the San Bernardino hackers - fought the warrants, Heat Street said.

In the aftermath of the event, Eichenwald tweeted that 'more than 40' people had also sent him potentially epilepsy-causing strobing gifs.

He said he had sent their details to the FBI, and warned others not to follow suit.

Stefano Seri, a professor of neurophysiology at the UK's Aston University in the UK told the BBC that it isn't easy to make an epilepsy-causing tweet.

'Abrupt changes in light intensity, or luminance, can trigger seizures,' he said. 'The most sensitive range is about 15-25 flashes per second.

'The picture would need to occupy most of the visual field. It would take some very sick people to do this, but technically, it is possible.

'Modern LED screens are not as provocative as older ones. It takes a very carefully designed stimulus to induce a seizure.'

Rivello's case will be heard in Texas, where Eichenwald is based.