Copyright independent
A Minnesota man has been arrested after allegedly uploading a “murder-for-hire” post to TikTok calling for the assassination of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and offering a $45,000 reward. Tyler Maxon Avalos, 29, was picked up at his home in St Paul on October 16 and accused of posting the offending content to the social video site, according to an FBI affidavit. The wanted poster-style meme included a photograph of Bondi with a red dot from a sniper rifle’s scope superimposed on her forehead with the words: “WANTED: Pam Bondi/REWARD: 45,000/DEAD OR ALIVE (PREFERABLY DEAD).” A caption below posed the question: “Cough cough. When they don’t serve us, then what?” Avalos is charged with interstate transmission of a threat to injure another person. His attorney, Daniel Gerdts, told Law&Crime that his client “is not guilty of any crime.” The Independent has reached out to the FBI and Justice Department for comment. The affidavit reports that another TikTok user from Detroit, Michigan, submitted a report to the FBI National Threat Operations Center on October 9, alerting the bureau to the post, which had appeared on their feed. It was attributed to a TikTok user with the handle @liminalvoidslip and the username WACKO – the “A” of which was replaced with an anarchist symbol – and whose page included a pinned post linking to a book called An Anarchist FAQ. The special agent who prepared the filing went on to explain that federal authorities had submitted an emergency disclosure request to TikTok, which revealed that the poster owned a Samsung Galaxy phone, along with their sign-up email and IP addresses. The information enabled agents to work with Google and Comcast in pinpointing the suspect’s current IP address and track him down to his home in St Paul, whereupon a local magistrate issued an arrest warrant. The agent alleges that the suspect was subsequently found to have a “multistate conviction history” that included a felony stalking conviction in Dakota County, Minnesota, in July 2022, a felony third-degree domestic battery conviction from Polk County, Florida, in August 2016, and a misdemeanor domestic assault from Dakota County dating from April 2016, “which appears to have been reduced from a felony domestic assault by strangulation charge,” they noted. Subsequent court documents cited by Law&Crime reveal that a U.S. magistrate judge has since granted Avalos' release from custody under several conditions, including that he does not travel outside Minnesota, continues to receive mental health treatment, refrains from drinking alcohol or possessing weapons, observes a curfew, agrees to be monitored by GPS, and does not use the internet without approval. In prosecuting Avalos, the onus will be on the federal government to prove that the post constituted a “true threat” against Bondi’s life and was not merely hyperbolic political speech, which could be protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution, which safeguards free speech.
