Verr-rr-rr-y long profile by Miami Herald on Cesar Sayoc. Turns out the rally pic of Sayoc was at a 2016 Trump rally, not anything recently.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article220672300.html
Cesar Sayoc was a stripper, a club manager, a dry cleaner and, cops say, a mail bomber
By Kyra Gurney, Jay Weaver, Alex Harris And David Ovalle
October 26, 2018 01:13 PM
Updated 9 hours 18 minutes ago
Before he was arrested for mailing more than a dozen pipe bombs to prominent critics of President Donald Trump — some of which included pictures of the intended targets with a red “X” over their faces — Cesar Sayoc lived a scattered and bizarre life in South Florida.
He was an avid bodybuilder who trained in mixed martial arts and a former exotic dancer and strip club manager who held a string of odd jobs, among them a Papa John’s pizza deliveryman and a DJ. He bought a house in Fort Lauderdale, which was foreclosed on in 2009, lived with his parents in an Aventura condo, and most recently slept in a white van papered with pro-Trump and right-wing stickers.
Along the way, Sayoc racked up a long rap sheet for everything from grand theft and battery to making a bomb threat against Florida Power & Light. He was also accused of domestic violence by a woman who appears to have been his grandmother.
But of all of his diverse interests, 56-year-old Sayoc’s fervent support for Trump appears to have been his greatest passion in recent years. Sayoc’s social media accounts were filled with photos of him wearing a red Make America Great Again baseball cap, videos of a Trump rally he attended in 2016 and pro-Trump news stories. He also shared racist memes and spouted conspiracy theories.
His Twitter timeline was a greatest-hits collection of right-wing conspiracy theories: that Parkland survivor David Hogg is a government plant, that Oprah Winfrey wants “this whole generation of white people” to die and that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is secretly Adolf Hitler’s daughter.
Sayoc’s heritage is less clear than his political beliefs. In a 2014 deposition for a federal lawsuit, Sayoc identified himself as Native American, Italian and Filipino. Born in Brooklyn to a Filipino father, according to Ancestry.com, Sayoc grew up in Florida and attended North Miami Beach Senior High. He also said in the deposition that he went to Miami Country Day, but the school could not immediately be reached to confirm his attendance.
Although a sticker on Sayoc’s van reads “Native Americans For Trump” and his Twitter feed included several references to the “Unconquered Seminole Tribe,” Seminole spokesman Gary Bitner said there are no records of Sayoc having ever been a member of the tribe.
Sayoc’s arrest on Friday morning was the latest in a long list of run-ins with law enforcement. He was formally charged Friday afternoon with five felonies, including interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives, threats against former presidents, threatening interstate communications and assaulting federal officers. He could spend decades in prison if convicted.
At the time of his arrest, Sayoc was working as a part-time DJ and weekend bouncer at a West Palm Beach strip club, according to the Palm Beach Post. Although FBI agents were already deep into the hunt for the person who mailed the pipe bombs on Thursday afternoon, Sayoc still showed up at his DJ gig at Ultra Gentlemen’s Club, the Post reported.
This isn’t the first time Sayoc has been connected to a bomb threat. In 2002, he called FPL because he was upset about the amount of his bill, court records show. “The defendant then stated that he didn’t deserve it and that he was going to blow up FPL,” according to files released by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.
“FPL will get what they deserve and will be worse than 9/11,” Sayoc said, according to the case notes.
Sayoc also told an FPL employee that he “was going to blow her head off,” according to the case file. The call was recorded and Sayoc was later arrested by state law enforcement agents. He was sentenced to one year of probation.
In the 2014 deposition, Sayoc played down the arrest as “stupidity” when he called to complain about multiple charges from the utility to his Hallandale business, One Price Dry Cleaning.
"I got on the phone and I said, ‘What do I have to do, blow up a building to talk to somebody?’ ” he said in the deposition. “Then the bomb squad showed up to my store and I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ”
[Much more at website]