The Secret Service arrested a Chicago woman on Monday after prosecutors alleged she sent multiple menacing emails to a Florida school in which she threatened to kill former President Donald Trump and his teenage son, Barron, a law enforcement official confirmed to CBS News.
"I will shoot Donald Trump Sr. AND Barron Trump straight in the face at any opportunity that I get," the suspect, Tracy Fiorenza, allegedly emailed the headmaster of a Palm Beach school on May 21, 2023, according to a criminal complaint filed earlier this month in Florida.
Days later, court documents allege Fiorenza, 41, again emailed the unnamed school official and wrote, "I am going to slam a bullet in Baron Trump's head with his father IN SELF DEFENSE!"
Secret Service agents in Chicago interviewed her on June 14, court records reveal, during which time she admitted that she had written the threatening messages from her Illinois home.
A senior law enforcement official said that Fiorenza has been "on the US Secret Service's radar for several years" and that recently, the "nature of her threats escalated to become more specific."
Fiorenza appeared in Chicago federal court Monday and will likely be transferred to Florida, where the charges against her were filed. A detention hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
The Secret Service referred requests for comment to the US attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.
A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last week, a Canadian woman was sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison in Washington in the mailing of a threatening letter containing the poison ricin to Trump at the White House, while he was serving as President in 2020.
Pascale Ferrier, 56, pleaded guilty in January to violating biological weapons prohibitions in letters sent to Trump and to police officials in Texas, where she had been jailed for several weeks in 2019.