Cambridge man pleads not guilty in Twitter threat vs. ICE agents

A 33-year-old Cambridge man pleaded not guilty yesterday to offering a $500 bounty on Twitter to anyone who would kill a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.

Brandon J. Ziobrowski was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Boston on one count of use of interstate and foreign commerce to transmit a threat to injure another person, a crime punishable by up to a $250,000 fine, five years in prison and three years of supervised release.

After Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Perez-Daple said Ziobrowski has a history of recreational drug use, Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler released him until his next court date — Oct. 23 — on the condition that he refrain from using any controlled substance and submit to random drug tests.

Perez-Daple said he plans to call five to 10 witnesses to testify at the trial of Ziobrowski, who amassed more than 400 followers on Twitter and whose tweets became “more violent and threatening” since he created his account in March 2009, using the display name adobe_flash_player.dmg, according to his indictment.

He repeatedly tweeted his desire to “slit” Sen. John McCain’s throat, prosecutors allege, and in February, he began posting tweets promoting violence against law enforcement.

On Feb. 24, Ziobrowski tweeted: “Guns should only be legal for shooting police like the second amendment intended,” the indictment said. About two weeks later, on a different online platform, he wrote: “(Expletive) this police state shooting a cop should get you a medal,” prosecutors allege.

On March 1, in response to an ICE field office director’s tweet that ICE officers put their “lives on the line to arrest criminal aliens,” the indictment said, Ziobrowski tweeted: “Thank you ICE for putting your lives on the line and hopefully dying I guess so there’s less of you?”

On July 2, prosecutors allege, he tweeted: “I am broke but I will scrounge and literally give $500 to anyone who kills an ice agent. @me seriously who else can pledge get in on this let’s make this work.” Two people liked his “murder-for-hire solicitation,” the indictment said.

Three days later, the Department of Homeland Security’s Current and Emerging Threats Center found that tweet, prosecutors said, and a warning was disseminated to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, including ICE field offices, throughout the country.

On July 11, after identifying Ziobrowski as the subscriber of his Twitter account, which had the username @Vine_II, and confirming that he had posted the murder-for-hire solicitation, the indictment said, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force asked Twitter to remove the tweet from its website “because it posed a threat to the public safety of ICE agents around the country.” Twitter suspended his account.

Ziobrowski was arrested last month in New York City, where, his lawyer said, he is now living and looking for a job.