Sept. 24 – Federal authorities have arrested a Sandpoint man accused of making death threats against former President Donald Trump, blaming Trump for the loss of his tribal lands, according to federal court documents.
A grand jury indicted Warren Jones Crazybull on Aug. 20 on charges of making threats against a former president, a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Crazybull, who operates under several aliases, told police he is a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota and blames Trump and John F. Kennedy for broken treaties that resulted in the tribe’s loss of land, documents say. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe filed a lawsuit against Trump in 2019, claiming his approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which spilled thousands of gallons of oil in 2022, violated their treaty and the U.S. Constitution because it crossed tribal lands without consultation or analysis with the tribe.
According to the documents, Crazybull called security at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida in July and told security to “find Trump” because he was coming to Trump’s Bedminster golf club and “personally take him down and kill him.” Eight more calls followed with similar threats, court records say. The alleged statements came just 18 days after Trump’s first assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Trump was shot in the ear, a man in the crowd died and the shooter was killed by police.
The U.S. Secret Service in West Palm Beach alerted its protective intelligence unit to the calls, which led police to search the Internet for Crazybull. They came across his Facebook page under the alias “Tracy Jones” and saw that there were several self-produced videos of him threatening Trump, the records say. The page listed him as living in Sandpoint.
Crazybull made a number of “concerning” statements on his page, including that he would “defeat (Trump) in a fight on two fronts,” according to documents. He also called for the arrest and killing of John F. Kennedy Jr., who died in a plane crash in 1999. The rest of the posts appear sporadic, with a few words and hashtags mixed together — “singularity Flingularity AND MY DNA…” he wrote. “7Q My new home Rushmore hotel TURTLE ISLAND REPUBLIC MY PROPHECY ROCKS.”
“Turtle Island” is a North American term used by some indigenous rights activists.
Investigators traced the phone number from the Mar-a-Lago call and found that the phone was in Idaho at the time the Facebook messages were posted. When they arrested him, he was in Montana, the documents said. Crazybull told police he “posted the video to get law enforcement’s attention,” and that he did not own a firearm, had no special training and had been committed for psychiatric care in the past.
“Crazybull appeared as though his thought processes were rapid and confused,” the officer wrote. He also “appeared paranoid.”
Following his arrest, Crazybull has a lawyer and will exercise his right to remain silent during the remainder of the trial, court documents show.
