Federal authorities arrested a North Carolina man accused of mailing antisemitic threats to Jewish organizations and leaders, including a Holocaust memorial and officials with the American Jewish Committee and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Brian Charles was charged with mailing threatening communications, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court. The FBI alleges that Charles mailed the letters from Charlotte, N.C., to recipients in Florida and Washington, D.C., in June and July.
The letters included statements such as, “I am going to destroy many Jews” and “Many shall die by my wrath,” according to the complaint.
JNS reported exclusively in July that leaders at the AJC and AIPAC had received graphic, handwritten letters containing threats, including at their homes. An AJC spokesman told JNS at the time that the organization was cooperating with law enforcement.
According to the FBI, investigators identified Charles through a latent fingerprint found on the letter sent to AJC Palm Beach. Several envelopes also bore his name and a Charlotte return address. The complaint says forensic examiners identified a fingerprint belonging to Charles on the AJC letter, while comparisons involving other letters were still pending.
The FBI said the Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach received a letter addressed to two members of its board of directors. AJC Palm Beach received another, while an AIPAC executive received letters at a former home address in Palm Beach County and at AIPAC’s Washington office. Another letter was sent to two U.S. Secret Service protectees at an address in Jupiter, Fla., according to the complaint.
Charles previously pleaded guilty in 2018 to five counts of mailing threatening communications in a case brought in New Mexico. He was sentenced to 542 days in prison and three years of supervised release, which he violated multiple times, according to the complaint.
Vlad Khaykin, head of global advocacy at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told JNS that “the allegations in this case are chilling.”
“Multiple Jewish institutions and individuals, including a Holocaust memorial, were sent letters threatening death and collective punishment against Jews,” Khaykin said. “Such threats are intended not merely to offend, but to terrorize: to make Jewish Americans afraid to open their mail, enter their institutions or live openly as Jews.”
“Antisemitism is not simply a prejudice remembered from history,” he told JNS. “Sadly, it is an urgent American reality. This incident must be understood within the broader context, as it comes amid a sustained and historically elevated wave of antisemitism across the United States, and around the globe.”
The FBI’s 2024 hate-crime data showed that Jews were targeted in 69% of reported religiously motivated hate crimes, according to the bureau’s data. The FBI recorded 1,938 anti-Jewish hate-crime incidents that year, the highest number since it began collecting such data in 1991.
“Behind every statistic are families, students, worshippers and institutions forced to consider security before they can consider community,” Khaykin told JNS. “The unmistakable message is that Jewish Americans remain disproportionately targeted, and that the danger is not confined to any one city, institution or ideology.”
He thanked law enforcement, adding that “accountability begins with demonstrating that threats against Jewish lives will never be dismissed as harmless rhetoric.”
“The moral test of a society is not whether hatred exists, but whether decent people and responsible institutions confront it before words become violence,” Khaykin said. “A threat against Jews is also a challenge to America’s promise that every person may live and worship in safety. Hate seeks silence and surrender. Our answer must be vigilance, solidarity and the equal protection of the law.”
