Cesar Sayoc was a broke and marginalized man until President Donald Trump gave him a purpose, court records and online archives suggest. The FBI arrested Sayoc in Florida today and charged him with five counts for his alleged role in mailing pipe bombs to an array of Democratic Party politicians and Trump critics, including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, and former Attorney General Eric Holder, among others. Pipe bombs addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were addressed to CNN’s headquarters in New York. The FBI also impounded Sayoc’s white van, whose windows were covered with pro-Trump stickers and others that labeled CNN “dishonest media,” and showed target symbols over the faces of filmmaker Michael Moore and Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic Party opponent in the 2016 election. The counts against Sayoc include the interstate transportation of explosives, making threats against former presidents, and the illegal mailing of explosives.

Sayoc’s online activity suggests that he was a fervent Trump supporter , who in recent weeks was unafraid to taunt and even threaten Trump’s critics on social media. In what appears to be Sayoc’s Twitter account, the alleged bomber tweeted pictures of alligators that had eaten humans to Biden and movie director Ron Howard How and why Sayoc went from online troll — he has posted dozens of tweets per day for months — to the accused serial bomber who grabbed the world’s attention are still unknown. But if his bombs, none of which detonated, were sent because he was inspired by Trump’s violent rhetoric at campaign rallies, Sayoc would not be the first domestic terrorist inspired by conspiracy theories associated with Trump. Three men in August 2017 bombed a mosque in Minnesota. Their de facto leader, Michael Hari, believed that Trump was engaged in a secret war with the deep state. In July of this year, a Nevada man named Matthew P. Wright, an unemployed Marine veteran, blocked traffic on the Hoover Dam using an armored vehicle. Armed with an AR-15 rifle, handgun, and a flash-bang device, Wright had sent letters to Trump and other elected officials, in which he referred to “QAnon,” a conspiracy theory that suggests that Trump and Special Counsel Robert Mueller are secretly working together to expose a sex trafficking ring operated by Democrats and Hollywood celebrities.