Jakob Marcoulier, a 22-year-old American soldier at Fort Polk, was charged with threatening to kill Jews in a synagogue and faces up to five years in federal prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Louisiana said on Monday.
“Threats against synagogues and Jewish Americans are threats to the religious freedom promised to every single one of us,” stated Zachary Keller, the U.S. attorney for the district. “This office and our law enforcement partners are committed to protecting those freedoms.”
Marcoulier was arrested and charged on April 23 with making the thread on the messaging platform Discord, according to the Justice Department.
Jonathan Tapp, the FBI special agent-in-charge in the New Orleans field office, stated that a “concerned citizen” contacted the FBI to report the message. Tapp said that the bureau the U.S. Army acted “swiftly.”
“This is a perfect example of how the public is law enforcement’s greatest partner,” Tapp stated.
The anonymous tipster told the FBI in February that the user “El Bostino” on Discord “made threats toward synagogues,” according to the Justice Department.
“FBI secured recorded audio from Discord in which the individual, later determined to be Marcoulier, made these threats, stating among other things that ‘after this deployment, if the Jews still have reign over our government, I am going to walk into a synagogue with my AK, with a 75-round drum mag, and all of my extra mags, with my level four plates, and my haka helmet that’s three plus, and I am going to kill every single Jew I know inside of that synagogue, and that’s my goal in life.”
The suspect allegedly added that “you guys will never do anything about but I will. I just have to finish this. I have to go back overseas and do what I have to do and then you’ll see me in the news. I promise you.” He is accused of also saying that “you guys don’t want to do anything for the f***ing cause when it actually needs to happen” and “I’ll still kill these mother****ers in order to make sure the white youth is f***ing secured.”
