FAA employee arrested after allegedly using work computer to threaten Trump
A FAA flag is displayed at the Orville Wright Federal Building which houses the Federal Aviation Administration headquarters on June, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A Federal Aviation Administration employee was arrested Monday after he allegedly threatened to harm the president and used a work computer to research his plans, prosecutors said.
Dean DelleChiaie, 35, of Nashua, New Hampshire, was slated to appear in federal court Tuesday on charges of communicating an interstate threat.
Prosecutors allege DelleChiaie used his government computer to search the internet for how to get a gun into a federal facility.
The suspect allegedly also made other incriminating searches on the device, including previous assassination attempts against Trump, the percentage of the population that wants the president dead and the phrase, “I am going to kill Donald John Trump,” according to the criminal complaint.
The Secret Service met with DelleChiaie in February, and he allegedly admitted to conducting those searches on his work computer, according to the complaint.
He also told the Secret Service he owned three firearms, including a handgun he kept inside a safe at home, prosecutors allege.
On April 21, DelleChiaie allegedly used his personal email to transmit a threat across state lines to the White House’s email address, prosecutors said.
The email had for a subject, “Contact the President,” and said, “I, Dean DelleChiaie, am going neutralize/kill you — Donald John Trump — because you decided to kill kids — and say that it was War — when in reality — it is terrorism. God knows your actions and where you belong,” according to the complaint.
Attorney information for the suspect was not immediately available.
DelleChiaie faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, if convicted.
A man is arrested after throwing a hand-made smoke grenade at a protest near Gracie Mansion, on March 7, 2026, in New York. (Ryan Murphy/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Two improvised explosive devices brought to a counterprotest outside Gracie Mansion in New York City Saturday are being investigated as “an act of ISIS-inspired terrorism,” and the two suspects arrested in connection with the incident are facing federal terrorism charges, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Monday.
According to a federal criminal complaint released Monday, both suspects openly pledged allegiance to ISIS while in the presence of police, and one suspect allegedly told officers they “wanted to carry out an attack bigger than the Boston Marathon bombing,” which the suspect noted “caused only ‘three deaths.’”
The explosive devices contained the volatile substance triacetone triperoxide, known as TATP, and were made to “injure, maim or worse,” Tisch said of Saturday’s incident.
“These were not hoax devices or smoke bombs. They were improvised explosive devices,” Tisch said during a news conference outside the Gracie Mansion mayor’s residence with New York City Mayor Zohran Mandami, the city’s first Muslim mayor.
One of the devices was ignited and deployed at protesters in a crosswalk on East End Avenue and East 87 Street, and the other device was detonated close by, Tisch said.
Tisch said a third suspected IED was found in the car of the two suspects, a black 2010 Honda with New Jersey license plates, parked on the Upper East Side of Manhattan near Gracie Mansion, prompting an immediate evacuation of homes in the area. She said the device did not test positive for explosives.
All of the devices are being sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, for additional testing, Tisch said.
Two Pennsylvania men who are in custody are charged in a five-count federal complaint with attempting to provide material support and resources to ISIS, use of a weapon of mass destruction, transportation of explosive materials, interstate transportation and receipt of explosives, and unlawful possession of destructive devices.
The suspects were identified as Emir Balat of Langhorne, Pennsylvania, and Ibrahim Kayumi of Newton, Pennsylvania, according to Tisch and the federal complaint.
The suspects were ordered to be held without bail after they made their initial appearances, both in shackles, in Manhattan federal court on Monday afternoon. They did not enter a plea to the charges.
“They’re suspected of coming here to commit an act of terrorism,” Mamdani said Monday. “Let me say this plainly: Anyone who comes to New York City to bring violence to our streets will be held accountable in accordance with the law.”
The explosives were deployed at an anti-Muslim protest outside Gracie Mansion that was organized by far-right, anti-immigrant provocateur Jack Lang, officials said. The event was called “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City.”
The anti-Muslim protest drew counterprotesters who called their response “Run Nazis Out of New York City,” according to the criminal complaint.
“FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating the matter with our partners at NYPD as well as the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York,” the FBI said in a statement Sunday.
Balat and Kayumi are suspected of attending the event as part of the counterprotest to the anti-Muslim demonstration, authorities said Monday.
Neither Mamdani nor his wife, Rama Duwaji, were in Gracie Mansion when the incident occurred, the mayor said Monday.
Immediately following his arrest, Kayumi was asked by someone in the surrounding crowd why he allegedly attempted to bomb the protest, according to the complaint.
“Kayumi responded in part and as captured on NYPD body-worn camera footage, ‘ISIS,'” the complaint states.
Balat waived his Miranda rights to remain silent following his arrest, according to the complaint, and allegedly provided a written statement in which he “pledge[d] [] allegience [sic] to the Islamic State,” the complaint states.
Balat also allegedly told police that “they wanted to carry out an attack bigger than the Boston Marathon bombing, which Balat noted caused only ‘three deaths,'” according to the complaint.
The April 15, 2013, Boston Marathon bombing also left more than 500 people injured.
Kayumi, whom the complaint said also waived his Miranda rights, allegedly “stated, in substance and in part, that he was affiliated with ISIS; watched ISIS propaganda on his phone; and was partly inspired to carry out his actions that day by ISIS,” according to the complaint.
“Anti-Muslim bigotry is nothing new to me, nor is it anything new for the one million or so Muslim New Yorkers who know this city as our home,” Mamdani said at Monday’s news conference.
“While I found this protest appalling. I will not waver in my belief that it should be allowed to happen. Ours is a free society, where the right to peaceful protest is sacred. It does not only belong to those we agree with. It belongs to everyone,” Mandani added.
Many of the counterprotesters on Saturday confronted the “display of bigotry,” the mayor said. He also praised NYPD officers who swiftly responded to the incident and arrested the suspects, saying they were “faced with a chaotic situation that quickly could have become far more dangerous.”
The mayor specifically cited the “courageous and selfless” acts of two NYPD officers, Assistant Chief Aaron Edwards and Sgt. Luis Navarro, who attended Monday’s news conference. Mamdani said the officers “ran towards the danger so that others could run safely.”
Tisch said the last incident in New York City in which an IED was deployed occurred in December 2017, when Akayed Ullah detonated a homemade bomb he had strapped to his torso in a pedestrian underpass connecting the Port Authority Bus Terminal to the Time Square subway station.
Ullah, a permanent resident of Bangladesh who was living in Brooklyn at the time, was the only person injured in the act, which federal prosecutors said was committed on behalf of ISIS of Iraq. Ullah was convicted in April 2021 by a federal jury on all six counts of the indictment and was sentenced to life in prison.
(MINNEAPOLIS) — Minnesota prosecutors on Monday announced charges against a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the nonfatal shooting of a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis earlier this year.
The federal agent, Christian Castro, was charged with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis, according to the Hennepin County attorney.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Group Chairman & CEO, DP World Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem speaks during the 2023 Concordia Annual Summit at Sheraton New York on September 19, 2023 in New York City. Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Concordia Summit
(NEW YORK) — The billionaire CEO of logistics giant DP World has resigned following the disclosure of his communications with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, an Emirati billionaire, stepped down from the company on Friday, “effective immediately,” the massive global supply chain and logistics company said in an announcement.
The move comes after financial groups in Canada and the U.K. earlier this week announced a pause in their investments with DP World on the heels of the U.S. Justice Department’s release of Epstein files.
A company spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
For years, before and after Epstein became a convicted sex offender in 2008, Bin Sulayem and Epstein maintained a free-flowing exchange of emails that ran the gamut from workshopping financial proposals to rating sexual conquests, according to the DOJ files.
“Are you going to the Clinton Forum?” Epstein asked Bin Sulayem in one email exchange. “I see that the Secretary General is scheduled to attend. If so, we can go to my island after the forum. Call me so we can discuss the details.” Bin Sulayem replied that his meetings were “flexible” and could be rearranged around Epstein’s.
Later on in the exchange, Epstein wanted to know from Bin Sulayem “what time you would like your massage today in new york.”
In April 2009, Epstein emailed, “where are you? are you ok, I loved the torture video.” There is no further explanation or context of the video mentioned. Bin Sulayem said he was in China and would return in a couple of weeks. “Hope to see you,” Epstein said.
Bin Sulayem was among six names read out on the floor of the House of Representatives Tuesday by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, one of the authors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, who has criticized the DOJ and Trump administration for what he and others have regarded as a lack of transparency when it comes to the Epstein files saga.
