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Cesar Sayoc at a Donald Trump rally. |
Donald Trump superfan Cesar Sayoc, who mailed explosives to his hero's critics, turned violent on a steady diet of Fox News, Trump tweets, and Facebook, claim his lawyers.
According to his lawyers, the 57-year old Filipino American who apparently had identity issues, Sayoc is a sexual abuse survivor who viewed Trump as a "surrogate father."
The question is not one of guilt since Sayoc admitted he sent the mail bombs to perceived enemies of Trump, wrote Sayoc's attorneys in a New York federal court on Monday (July 22).
On social media, Sayoc promoted far-right conspiracy theories and threatened people who were critical of Trump. He faces the possibility of life in prison for the mail bombings.
But Sayoc’s lawyers painted a picture of their client as a man struggling with “cognitive limitations and mental illness” who was manipulated by conservative media and the Trump's Twitter feed.
Already an admirer of Trump, Sayoc's lawyers said their client “began watching Fox News religiously,” started following political news on Facebook and and “threw himself into” Trump’s campaign once he announced his candidacy because he “came to view Trump as a personal champion—someone who had helped him through the most difficult periods of his life and who could do the same for other people across the country.”
“By 2018, he was living alone in a decrepit and cramped van that had been his home for more than a decade,” the lawyers wrote. “A typical day saw Mr. Sayoc waking up in his van, showering at the gym, and cooking crockpot meals while inside the DJ booth of a strip club before heading off to his second job delivering pizza. As he grew older and more isolated, excessive steroid use increased his feelings of anxiety and paranoia.
“In this darkness, Mr. Sayoc found light in Donald J. Trump.”
Sayoc, his lawyers wrote, “began watching Fox News religiously at the gym, planning his morning workout to coincide with Fox and Friends and his evenings to dovetail with Hannity.” With his use of steroids, they said, he became paranoid and delusional about the false news stories that clogged his social media feeds.
“Because of his cognitive limitations and mental illness, he believed outlandish reports in the news and on social media, which increasingly made him unhinged. He became obsessed with ‘attacks’ from those he perceived as Trump’s enemies. He believed stories shared on Facebook that Trump supporters were being beaten in the streets. He came to believe that he was being personally targeted for supporting Trump: Mr. Sayoc thought that anti-Trump forces were trying to hurt him and they were to blame when his van was vandalized,” they wrote.
“A rational observer may have brushed off Trump’s tweets as hyperbole, but Mr. Sayoc took them to heart,” according to Sayoc’s attorneys.
Sayoc’s mother has called on Trump to tone down his rhetoric. “Our political leaders, like our President Donald Trump, need to recognize that there are many sick people in this country who take their rhetoric and words of ‘War with the Media’ and ‘War with the Democrats’ to heart,” Madeline Sayoc said in a statement last year.
Sayoc's Facebook account is almost exclusively pro-Trump content, including pictures and videos Sayoc purportedly filmed at one of the president’s political rallies. And the Twitter feed is littered with far-right conspiracy theories or violent threats aimed at some of President Trump’s most outspoken critics.
“Because of his cognitive limitations and mental illness, he believed outlandish reports in the news and on social media, which increasingly made him unhinged. He became obsessed with ‘attacks’ from those he perceived as Trump’s enemies. He believed stories shared on Facebook that Trump supporters were being beaten in the streets. He came to believe that he was being personally targeted for supporting Trump: Mr. Sayoc thought that anti-Trump forces were trying to hurt him and they were to blame when his van was vandalized,” they wrote.
“A rational observer may have brushed off Trump’s tweets as hyperbole, but Mr. Sayoc took them to heart,” according to Sayoc’s attorneys.
Sayoc’s mother has called on Trump to tone down his rhetoric. “Our political leaders, like our President Donald Trump, need to recognize that there are many sick people in this country who take their rhetoric and words of ‘War with the Media’ and ‘War with the Democrats’ to heart,” Madeline Sayoc said in a statement last year.
Sayoc's Facebook account is almost exclusively pro-Trump content, including pictures and videos Sayoc purportedly filmed at one of the president’s political rallies. And the Twitter feed is littered with far-right conspiracy theories or violent threats aimed at some of President Trump’s most outspoken critics.
Sayoc's Filipino father left the family when he divorced his Brooklyn-born wife, died in 2009. In his social media posts, Sayoc claimed to be a member of the Seminole Nation but the Native American tribe say Sayoc is not on any of their rolls.
Sayoc mailed pipe bombs to numerous Democrats, including former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, several members of Congress and actor Robert De Niro. He also sent explosives to CNN. None of the IED's exploded.
Judge Rakoff set the he would announce the Sayoc's sentence on Aug. 5.
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