By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, April 1 (Reuters) – A Massachusetts man accused of making threats on Facebook to kill U.S. President Donald Trump was arrested on Wednesday after a stand-off with law enforcement in which the man began brandishing a sword.
Andrew Emerald, 45, was charged in an eight-count indictment filed in federal court in Springfield, Massachusetts, over a string of threatening posts he allegedly made last year, including one in which he vowed to travel to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida if the president was not dead by 2026.
“Either Trump is dead and in the ground by 2026 or I am hunting him down and putting him there,” Emerald wrote in another social media post in May 2025, according to the indictment.
Emerald pleaded not guilty during an initial court appearance and was ordered held without bail pending a detention hearing on Monday. A lawyer for Emerald did not respond to a request for comment.
His Facebook posts came to the FBI’s attention as a result of a tip from a citizen who had warned Emerald that it was a crime to threaten the life of the president, according to documents prosecutors filed seeking to have him detained.
Emerald replied that he had been threatening Trump online for a decade and that, if law enforcement came after him, “I’ll kill them until they kill me,” according to an affidavit from an FBI agent.
When the FBI on Wednesday went to his residence in Great Barrington, Massachusetts to execute an arrest warrant, Emerald refused to come out before eventually stepping into view brandishing a long, metallic sword, the affidavit said.
The FBI agent said Emerald had previously referenced his sword in Facebook posts threatening Trump, including in July 2025, when he said he would stick it through the president’s throat.
Emerald told agents they would need to shoot him before locking his door, the FBI agent recounted.
Local police and an FBI crisis negotiation team were called in. He finally agreed to be arrested after a police officer reached him on his phone, the FBI agent’s affidavit said. Prosecutors said agents subsequently seized multiple bladed weapons following a search of Emerald’s home.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alistair Bell and Deepa Babington)
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