Maine man accused of making threat against President Trump, federal court documents say
Bell's attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.
On April 5, a Maine Department of Public Safety senior investigator was having lunch at a restaurant in Bridgton, Maine when Bell allegedly made the threat, according to an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint filed in federal court this week.
Advertisement
The officer was sitting at the bar and noticed a person, later identified as Bell, looking through the windows of the officer's unmarked vehicle in the parking lot of the restaurant. When Bell came into the restaurant he allegedly struck up a conversation with the officer, the affidavit stated.
'At some point in the conversation, Bell made a threat to the President of the United States ('POTUS'), by stating, 'I wanted to shoot Bush but didn't, but now Trump is in and I don't care for him,' and then continuing to say either, 'I'll try to shoot him' or 'I'll just shoot him,'' the affidavit stated.
After making those comments, Bell said he needed 'to stop making comments about killing the President,' because he was going to get in trouble, according to the affidavit.
Advertisement
'Bell continued to discuss his hatred for Former POTUS ('FPOTUS') George W. Bush but indicated he never acted on those thoughts,' the affidavit said.
Bell allegedly made other comments to the officer, including that he '... is able to take over a plane and crash it, hurting a lot more people,' the affadavit stated. 'Bell reiterated to the officer that he was surprised he is still able to fly and that the government still trusts him with a plane, stating he can fly undetected out of 'Eastern Slopes' to do anything he wants, 'like fly to DC.''
Eastern Slopes is a regional airport located in Fryeburg, Maine, according to the affidavit.
Police obtained a state warrant for Bell's arrest and he was arrested without incident later that day.
Following his arrest, Bell agreed to speak to special agents from the FBI and US Secret Service and he denied making any threats to the President during his conversation with the officer, the affidavit stated.
He also told them that in January 2025 he was fired from his job at a company based out of Kansas City, Missouri because of threats, the affidavit stated.
'Bell, a software engineer, indicated the threats were that he was going to put 'bugs in his code,' as well as leak information should he ever acquire a security clearance,' the affidavit stated.
The company Bell said he worked for 'is an aviation company that works with avionic displays, navigation and communication platforms, among other products, in the commercial, corporate, and defense markets,' the affidavit said.
Emily Sweeney can be reached at
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
22 plead guilty in Wichita Falls drug conspiracy case
WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — A two-year-long investigation by the Wichita Falls Police Department's Special Operations Division and the FBI's Wichita Falls Agency ended with 22 defendants pleading guilty to drug charges. The investigation began in October 2022 for illegal narcotics being distributed throughout Wichita Falls and North Texas. The FBI's Wichita Falls Resident Agency joined the investigation in March 2023. PREVIOUS STORY: List of suspects arrested in major federal operation Police said over the next year, hours of surveillance, interviews, search warrants, and controlled buys were conducted to build a successful Federal conspiracy case. 6,789.2 grams of methamphetamine, 719 grams of powder cocaine, 55.1 grams of crack cocaine, 2,197 counterfeit M-30 pills laced with Fentanyl, 50 grams of powder Fentanyl, nine firearms, and $80,714 were seized. On May 16, 2024, WFPD, the FBI, Texas Department of Public Safety, Wichita County Sheriff's Office, and the United States Marshals conducted a large-scale arrest operation in Wichita Falls and Vernon. Twenty-two subjects were arrested on Federal Conspiracy drug charges. All 22 people were prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Montes and pleaded guilty. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Washington Post
38 minutes ago
- Washington Post
FBI charges man with helping to plan Palm Springs fertility clinic bombing
The FBI has charged a man with helping to bomb a Southern California fertility clinic last month, an attack authorities have described as terrorism. Daniel Park, 32, of Washington state, was arrested Tuesday night at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, U.S. attorney for central California Bill Essayli said Wednesday at a news conference. Park was charged with providing material support to a terrorist, accused of supplying 270 pounds of ammonium nitrate, an explosive precursor commonly used in homemade bombs, to 25-year-old Guy Edward Bartkus, Essayli added.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
What Happened When the FBI Asked for Dirt on Docs Treating Trans Kids: ‘F-ck Off Nazi Dickheads'
As President Donald Trump and his administration continue their systematic attack on trans Americans, both activists and unaffiliated individuals are targeting the FBI's latest attempt to prosecute doctors giving trans youth gender-affirming care. On Monday, the FBI asked for tips on doctors or hospitals 'who mutilate under the guise of gender-affirming care,' which refers to surgical intervention for trans youth. But the 'criminals' the Trump administration is hunting may not even exist — every major American health organization is firm that surgical intervention does not happen for children under 12, and is incredibly rare for minors between 15 and 17. Since this tip line seems most likely to target providers and programs helping trans youth with non-invasive therapies — even as the Trump administration threatens to remove funding — people are onrushing the line with incredibly demeaning and foul-mouthed comments, according to two sources familiar with the matter and a recording shared with Rolling Stone. The Trump administration's return to the White House has been marked by the dogged targeting of transgender youth and their health care. In January, Trump issued an executive order calling gender affirming care the 'chemical and surgical mutilation' of children and threatening to remove federal funding from hospitals that performed it. In April, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi — who served as one of the lawyers on President Trump's first impeachment defense team — issued a memo stating the Justice Department's intention to use several existing U.S. laws to investigate providers of trans health care, including those prohibiting female genital mutilation. So on June 2, the FBI asked anyone who had tips of doctors or practitioners performing gender affirming 'surgical procedures' to report them directly to the FBI tip line. (It doesn't feel coincidental that this request was sent on the second day of Pride month, typically a celebration of the LGBTQ+ community.) 'Help the FBI protect children,' the Trump FBI — fronted by the president's uber-loyalists Kash Patel and Dan Bongino — posted to X on Monday. 'As the Attorney General has made clear, we will protect our children and hold accountable those who mutilate them under the guise of gender-affirming care. Report tips of any hospitals, clinics, or practitioners performing these surgical procedures on children at 1-800-CALL-FBI or These assessments of trans healthcare as 'mutilation' go directly against the opinions of every major medical body in the U.S. — including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. According to reports from both the National Institute of Health and Harvard's School of Public Health, researchers could not find any evidence of children under 12 receiving any kind of surgical intervention. For minors 15 to 17 years old, almost all who underwent surgery had procedures focused on their chests — but at a lower rate than cisgender males. But in May, a 400-page report released by the Department of Health and Human Services recommended treatment plans entirely similar to conversion therapy. So it didn't take long for this social-media post and the accompanying contact information to make its way into the group chats of numerous pro-LGBTQ allies and advocates. The two sources say that various concerned citizens, activists, and other individuals immediately began making calls — including anonymous VoIP ones — to the 800 number, delivering profane tirades and insults. At times, pissed-off callers were frustrated they couldn't seem to leave a voicemail and were left chastising what appeared to be just a human operator for the bureau. One caller tells this magazine that they called the hotline so that they could recommend that the second Trump administration 'eat my entire asshole.' An audio file shared with Rolling Stone featured a gay former federal employee, who requested anonymity, simply screaming into the federal tip line: 'Fuck off, Nazi dickheads!' The other source familiar with the matter says that 'more than a dozen' of their friends and advocates they know in pro-LGBTQ political circles were actively crashing the FBI tip line with angry remarks or notes of protest denouncing the administration's targeting of trans Americans and demonization of trans health care. However cathartic any spamming of the FBI hotline may be for any number of trans rights supporters, some activists and legal experts warn that callers or pranksters should be incredibly careful about what they say on a recorded federal tip line — especially given the uniquely lawless administration that has shown an eager willingness to crack down on Trump's enemies when there's no evidence of any wrongdoing. 'There are absolutely a lot of people who want to clog up the snitch line,' this person says. 'My advice is: Don't make anything that can be construed as a threat. Just speak your mind, be short and sweet about it, hang up.' The FBI did not provide comment on this story. This isn't the first time this new Trump administration has been subjected to heavy bombardments of mean spam. In late February, top Trump adviser Elon Musk demanded that federal employees reply to 'an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,' or face a forced 'resignation.' As Rolling Stone reported at the time, after copies of the email were leaked online, the government inbox was predictably flooded with pranks and what one Trump administration official described as 'very rude' and foul-mouthed emails. As journalist Jael Holzman, who has covered the Republican Party's vigorous crackdown on trans people for this magazine, has warned, efforts to launch investigations of the parents of trans kids were incubated at the state level. In recent years, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton emerged as a high-profile proponent of wielding state power against these families. More recently, some of Paxton's team have filtered into the new Trump administration. 'These decades of established research standards of care that have been empirically validated are now relegated to junk science, and the legitimate science is whatever they want to make up — but that's the Trump administration for you,' Douglas C. Haldeman, PhD, a clinical psychologist who's worked with people recovering from conversion therapy, told Rolling Stone in May. Of course, the attempts to clutter up the feds' anti-trans tip line will not stop the Trump administration's multi-pronged onslaught on trans Americans, healthcare providers, and others. But it's not nothing. Raquel Willis, co-founder of the Gender Liberation Movement, tells Rolling Stone that building a practice of defiance is an important part of making sure communities don't become complacent to Trump-era harassment attempts — especially those that seem to be attempts at control couched in safety language. 'Even though this FBI tip line and the discourse around it seem maybe innocuous to a lot of people, it does speak to the desire to criminalize bodily autonomy for young trans people and also criminalize private decisions that they're making with their parents and qualified physicians about their care,' Willis says. 'It's very interesting that conservatives have taken on this crusade to infringe on private decisions when for so long they claimed they didn't want state intervention in everyday life. This is not actually about some deeper desire to protect anyone. It's just a desire to control people.' More from Rolling Stone Colorado Attack Suspect Charged With Federal Hate Crime Eight Injured in What FBI Calls 'Act of Terrorism' in Colorado 'Transphobia Is Not Victimless': Online Queer Communities Remember Charlotte Fosgate Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
