An Encino resident is facing federal charges for allegedly threatening to shoot Boston Globe employees whom he called an “enemy of the people” after the Globe launched a national newspaper campaign in support of the free press and the First Amendment.
Robert Darrell Chain, 68, of Encino was arrested Thursday at his home by law enforcement, including a SWAT team, and is charged with a single count of making a threatening communication in interstate commerce, the Boston Globe reported. He is scheduled to appear in a Los Angeles courtroom Thursday and will eventually be arraigned in U.S. District Court in Boston at a later date, prosecutors said.
According to federal prosecutors, when the Globe called for newspapers around the country to use their opinion pages to counter President Donald Trump’s description of the news media as an “enemy of the people, Chain started calling the Globe and making threats to newsroom employees.
In the calls, Chain referred to the Globe as “the enemy of the people” and threatened to kill newspaper employees, prosecutors wrote in a statement cited by the Globe. “In total, it is alleged that Chain made approximately 14 threatening phone calls to the Globe between August 10 and August 22, 2018,” according to prosecutors.