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Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler says his security team is aware of him getting Twitter threats from the Florida man who allegedly sent bombs to a range of President Trump's critics earlier this week.
Tech website the Verge first reported on "veiled death threats" by a Twitter account associated with mail-bomb suspect Cesar Altieri Sayoc.
The Verge says Sayoc "sent veiled death threats to liberal 'slime scum,' including Vice President Joe Biden, former New York attorney general candidate Zephyr Teachout; actor Jim Carrey; Portland, Oregon mayor Ted Wheeler; MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte; and New York Times journalist (and former Verge writer) Sarah Jeong." (Jeong is also based in Portland.)
WW first reported earlier today that Sayoc had shared right-wing memes attacking Oregon Gov. Kate Brown.
Mayor Ted Wheeler announced via Twitter that he learned the news of the veiled threat from the Verge story.
Learning from the @verge that the alleged Florida bomber may have sent threats to even more people, including me. Our security team is aware. https://t.co/YWqYCC35pG
— Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) October 26, 2018
He later updated with another post. "As of an hour ago," Wheeler wrote, "our security team reported no suspicious packages have been received."
Wheeler has been a target of right-wing media since this summer, when he told Portland police not to intervene in a protest blockade of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. The rancor against him intensified when several ICE employees claimed police, acting on Wheeler's orders, didn't respond to their calls for help. (Wheeler denies this.)
The bomber's Twitter account was suspended today, but an archive of his tweets shows him responding to one of the mayor's tweets in early August by calling Wheeler "slime scum" and insulting the the state as "meth head Oregon."
The alleged threat includes an "air boat tour" into the Everglades.
Sayoc’s account was responding to a Wheeler tweet on July 30 supporting sanctuary cities for immigrants. “Portland is and will remain a sanctuary city committed to the protection of all residents,” the mayor had tweeted in Spanish. “No family in our community should have to live in fear of separation or be discriminated against.“
In later replies to Wheeler on Twitter (which can be found here), Sayoc sent photos of a snake, a bloodied corpse in a swamp, a decapitated sheep, and a still of the adolescent heroes from the Netflix series Stranger Things. (The dad in that series is also named Ted Wheeler.)