A 35-year-old Federal Aviation Administration contractor based in New Hampshire has been taken into federal custody on charges of threatening to assassinate former President Donald Trump, in what marks the fourth high-profile prosecution targeting threats against Trump in just one week, U.S. law enforcement officials announced Monday.
Prosecutors allege Dean DelleChiaie, a mechanical engineer working for the FAA — the federal agency tasked with overseeing U.S. civil airspace — used his government-issued work computer to research how to smuggle a firearm into a federal facility, and directly searched the explicit phrase: “I am going to kill Donald John Trump”. Investigators also say DelleChiaie conducted online searches for personal information about the families of Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
According to a sworn affidavit submitted to the court, the FAA first flagged DelleChiaie’s activity to federal law enforcement after he reached out to the agency’s IT department requesting that his entire search history be erased from his work device. U.S. Secret Service agents interviewed DelleChiaie at his residential property on February 3, where investigators say he confessed to carrying out the concerning internet searches.
The affidavit notes DelleChiaie acknowledged his actions were driven by anger at the current administration over a range of political issues, including the 2024 presidential election results, presidential pardon grants, and the release of documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. DelleChiaie also admitted to law enforcement that he owns three privately held firearms, prosecutors confirmed.
The threat escalated on April 21, when DelleChiaie used his personal email account to send a message to the White House with the subject line “Contact the President,” prosecutors say. In the email, he allegedly wrote: “I, Dean DelleChiaie, am going to neutralize/kill you – Donald John Trump – because you decided to kill kids – and say that it was War – when in reality – it is terrorism. God knows your actions and where you belong.”
DelleChiaie is scheduled to make his first court appearance on Tuesday. As of Monday evening, legal counsel for the accused had not been reached for comment on the charges. If convicted on all counts, he faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
DelleChiaie’s arrest comes amid a sharp uptick in public threats against former President Trump, with three additional separate prosecutions for threats against Trump filed in the seven days prior to his arrest, the U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confirmed.
The most high-profile of these earlier cases involves former FBI Director James Comey, who turned himself in to law enforcement last Wednesday on charges stemming from an Instagram post featuring a photo of seashells that prosecutors allege contained a coded threat against Trump. On Monday, the same day DelleChiaie was taken into custody, a South Carolina man was arrested by Secret Service agents after he wrote a threat to kill Trump on the exterior of his vehicle, stating he was traveling to Washington to “kill the pres.” One week prior, a Florida man entered a guilty plea on charges of making threats against Trump, multiple members of Congress, and other senior public officials.
“Criminal threats directed at public officials are becoming alarmingly more common, and this must stop now,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida John Heekin said during a press conference announcing the Florida man’s guilty plea. “We have zero-tolerance for such criminality in the Northern District of Florida and will seek maximum punishments to keep our public officials safe.”
The string of threat arrests also comes less than two weeks after a gunman forced his way into the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington D.C., in what investigators allege was a planned attempt to assassinate Trump and other senior U.S. government officials.