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November 12, 2020
Federal agents with New York’s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Brian Maiorana, 54, of Staten Island on November 10, 2020, charging him with making threatening interstate communications. According to the criminal complaint, Maiorana recently used social media accounts to threaten violence against Democratic politicians, law enforcement officers and social justice protestors.
While Maiorana does not appear to have fully committed to an extremist ideology, and many of his threats were directed at Democrats generally, a number of elements in his social media posts suggest at least an interest in white supremacist, antisemitic beliefs.
According to the criminal complaint, on November 8, 2020, Maiorana tweeted the following about U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY): “As the Jew Senator from Jew York said, ‘nothing is off the table.’” Later that day, he tweeted, “The Turner Diaries must come to life. We blow up the FBI building for real. All the alphabet agencies assassination will become the new normal now…that the electoral process is finished.” The Turner Diaries is a racist novel written by white supremacist leader William Pierce about an Aryan revolution and race war that topples the U.S. government.
In addition to the threat charges, Maiorana will likely also face weapons charges, as a search of his property yielded a handgun -- as well as parts for another handgun. Maiorana is a convicted sex offender for a 2007 statutory rape conviction in Pennsylvania, and as a felon, he is prohibited from owning firearms.
Over the last several months, Maiorana had been posting to mainstream social media platforms like Twitter, as well as to more extreme forums like mymilitia.com, which he joined in June 2020. In a June post to mymilitia.com, Maiorana wrote about his growing need for weapons. “…just joined, and right now i [sic] have no implement of war. Other than a steel police baton...... i ordered a poly80 lower and an aluminum.... waiting on a milling drilling machine thats [sic] very expensive to purchase. To start manufacturing implements of war.”
In a September 2020 tweet, Maiorana expressed support for Kyle Rittenhouse, who is accused of murdering two social justice protesters on August 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and included an antisemitic reference to alleged Jewish control of world affairs.
Maiorana’s posts became markedly more violent immediately following the November 7, 2020 announcement that President-elect Joe Biden was the projected winner of the 2020 presidential election. On November 7, 2020, Maiorana tweeted from a now-deleted Twitter account, "Soap Box, Ballot Box…that was fraudulently stolen from us, Now Cartridge Box” (a refrence to an ammunition box).
In response to the scenes of people reveling in the streets of American cities celebrating the news of Biden’s victory, Maiorana wrote, “All right thinking people need to hit the streets while these scumbags are celebrating and start blowing them away.”
An alternative Twitter account, apparently belonging to Maiorana, remains active as of November 11, 2020.
This secondary profile was created in September 2020 and has only posted a handful of tweets, some of which are explicitly racist and violent in nature. For example, in response to a video of a white woman arguing with a police officer, Maiorana tweeted, “her womb is all thats [sic] useful to continue the white race. Her brain can be removed and the body kept on life support for breeding purposes.” This echoes a longstanding white supremacist belief that women’s primary function is to produce “white warrior babies” and keep house for their race warrior husbands.
Referring to a Black Lives Matter marcher, Maiorana tweeted, “These leftists, communist, Democrats contradict themselves every 2 seconds with their non stop [sic] bullshit. They need to be silenced in a final solution.” The last phrase is a reference to the Holocaust.
