By Tyler Clifford
(Reuters) – Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said on Thursday she was one of the potential targets of a man who was charged by federal prosecutors with threatening to kill state employees who are Jewish.
Jack Eugene Carpenter III, a 43-year-old Michigan man who was in Texas at the time, is accused of threatening to cause injury and death to Jewish officials “if they don’t leave, or confess,” according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
“The FBI has confirmed I was a target of the heavily armed defendant in this matter,” Nessel, who is in her second term, said in a Twitter post.
Carpenter, who was taken into custody, has been charged with violating interstate communications laws with a Feb. 17 social media post, the complaint says. He was in Texas when he made his post, it said. The court filing did not name any officials who may have been a potential target of the alleged threat.
The charges come months after several men were sentenced in state and federal courts for a plot to kidnap the Michigan governor in 2020. The complaint did not discuss a motive for Carpenter’s alleged threats.
The defendant, a resident of Tipton, about 65 miles southwest of Detroit, is scheduled to appear in court on Friday afternoon.
Carpenter said in another tweet that any attempt to subdue him “will be met with deadly force in self-defense,” according to the complaint.
Carpenter possessed three handguns, two hunting rifles and a shotgun, the complaint said. He was previously arrested in December by Michigan State Police for assault.
A public defender for Carpenter could not be immediately reached for comment.
The U.S. attorney office did not immediately respond to a request for more details.
(Reporting by Tyler Clifford in New York City; Editing by Frank McGurty and Daniel Wallis)
