Juan Thompson: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know Published 9:56 am EST, March 3, 2017 Updated 5:03 pm EST, March 3, 2017 46 Comments By Stephanie Dube Dwilson 29.9k Share 1.3k Tweet Share Email Follow (Twitter/JuanMThompson) A 31-year-old disgraced journalist has been arrested in connection with eight bomb threats made against Jewish Community Centers and organizations across the country, federal authorities say. Juan Thompson, of Missouri, is accused of making the threats as part of an extensive cyber-stalking “campaign” against his ex-girlfriend to “harass and intimidate” her, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced on March 3. Thompson was fired by The Intercept last February after he was accused of fabricating sources in a story about the Charleston church shooting. On Twitter, Thompson claimed that the threats were made by his ex-girlfriend, the FBI said in court documents. The FBI has been investigating more than 100 bomb threats made to Jewish Community Centers, schools and the Anti-Defamation League, along with other Jewish organizations, since early January. There have been at least five waves of attacks, with multiple threats coming on the same day. Police do not believe Thompson is the main suspect behind the majority of the threats, ABC News reports. Police sources told ABC News that Thompson appears to have taken advantage of national news coverage of the threats to continue his ongoing harassment against his ex-girlfriend in revenge for her breaking up with him. Here’s what you need to know. 1. During 2 Threats, Thompson Claimed There Were Bombs in a Middle School & There Was Going to be a ‘Jewish Newtown’ This is how Thompson’s account appeared in 2015 while he worked at The Intercept. Many tweets from that time have since been deleted. (Internet Archive/Twitter) In the complaint against Thompson, the FBI said he made at least eight threats against Jewish organizations. Some where made in his ex-girlfriend’s name, and others were made in Thompson’s name. He later claimed that those made in his name were part of his ex-girlfriend’s plot to have him arrested, according to court documents. However, many more threats than that have been made since January. Threat have been made against JCCs in at least 17 states. This means that there may have been other, unrelated people also making many of the bomb threats. Thompson’s arrest only represents a small portion of those threats. ABC News reports the investigation into the majority of the threats is ongoing and Thompson is not the main suspect. The court document said that in one of the threats, made on February 1 against a Jewish school in Farmington Hills, the caller said he placed two bombs in the school and was “eager for Jewish newtown.” This was likely a reference to the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, where six school employees and 20 students were killed. A similar reference to Newtown was made in a threatening call to a Jewish school in Manhattan. You can read the complaint below or by clicking here. According to a press release, Juan Thompson was charged with one count of cyberstalking, which can bring a maximum of five years in prison. The threats he made in the woman’s name were part of a cyberstalking campaign against her, the FBI said. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “Today, we have charged Juan Thompson with allegedly stalking a former romantic interest by, among other things, making bomb threats in her name to Jewish Community Centers and to the Anti-Defamation League.” In the complaint against Thompson, FBI special agent Christopher Mils said: “Based on the FBI’s investigation, Juan Thompson, the defendant, appears to have made some of the JCC Threats as part of a sustained campaign to harass and intimidate Victim-1… Thompson’s harassment of Victim-1 appears to have begun shortly after their romantic relationship ended.” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney said, ““Thompson’s alleged pattern of harassment not only involved the defamation of his female victim, but his threats intimidated an entire community. The FBI and our partners take these crimes seriously. I would also like to thank the NYPD and the New York State Police, who continue to work shoulder to shoulder with us as we investigate and track down every single threat and work together to achieve justice for our communities that have been victimized by these threats.” New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill said, “We will continue to pursue those who peddle fear, making false claims about serious crimes. As alleged, the defendant caused havoc, expending hundreds of hours of police and law enforcement resources to respond to and investigate these threats. I’m grateful for the collaboration between the NYPD detectives, FBI agents, and prosecutors whose cross-country investigation led to this morning’s arrest.” Thompson was taken into custody in Missouri and is expected to appear in court there on March 3 for the first time. 2. Thompson Is Also Accused of Sending Nude Photographs of His Ex-Girlfriend to Her Boss Thompson also sent several emails to his ex-girlfriend’s boss during his harassment “campaign,” the FBI says in court documents. The emails included nude photographs of her and fake news stories saying she had been arrested and was being sued for spreading a sexually transmitted disease, according to court documents. Those emails began to arrive in July 2016, shortly after Thompson’s ex-girlfriend broke up with him, the FBI says. They dated from 2015 to 2016. Thompson also sent his ex-girlfriend text messages, claiming to be one of his friends, saying Thompson was not responsible for the harassment toward her. The FBI says she also received text messages saying Thompson had been robbed and shot, was dying of his injuries and would be taken off life support. Investigators found he was never the victim of the shooting. His ex-girlfriend obtained a restraining order against him in New York. She is represented by attorney Carrie Goldberg, who was profiled in the New Yorker recently for her fight against revenge porn and harassment. 3. He Said on Twitter a ‘Nasty/Racist #WhiteGirl’ He Dated ‘Sent a Bomb Threat in My Name & Wants Me to be Raped in Jail’ Meanwhile, Juan Thompson has a Twitter account where he claims his ex-girlfriend sent a bomb threat in his name. He tweeted a number of messages, including a mention that he disagreed with the bomb threats. The FBI complaint against Thompson mentions some of these tweets. Thompson claimed on his Twitter account that Francesca had made one threat in his name, but he couldn’t prove it. He also made claims on his Twitter that she had threatened to kill President Donald Trump and he was worried he was being set up. He also tweeted about what he believed was “his (Trump) and the white establishment’s effort to remove black ppl from the southside of Chicago.” He was strongly against Trump and his presidency. He followed politics closely, tweeting about the Democratic Chair debate in February: He also was against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock: According to Riverfront Times, he “took imaginary trips to Cuba and Senegal” and “dubiously claimed” he was with the Standing Rock protesters in North Dakota. (But note: many people at one point were claiming they were with Standing Rock protestors in order to make it tougher for police to track who was really there.) Riverfront Times also noted that a kombucha meal he posted about on Twitter actually used a stolen photo from a blogger. The journalist for Riverfront Times also recounted how Thompson had gotten angry about his previous reporting and after that, he became the victim of cyberattacks and fake Twitter profiles claiming he was guilty of crimes like rape. 4. Thompson Fabricated a Cousin of Dylann Roof in a Story About the Charleston Church Shooter for The Intercept The same Juan Thompson who claimed on Twitter that he was being framed for the JCC bombings was also fired by the Intercept in February 2016 for fabricating quotes and making up sources. Betsy Reed, editor-in-chief, wrote in February 2016: The Intercept recently discovered a pattern of deception in the actions of a staff member. The employee, Juan Thompson, was a staff reporter from November 2014 until last month. Thompson fabricated several quotes in his stories and created fake email accounts that he used to impersonate people, one of which was a Gmail account in my name.(Gawker reported that the Juan Thompson who was fired had used the @JuanMThompson Twitter account. According to a reporter from The Hill and Breaking911, this appears to be the same person who was arrested for the bomb threats.) According to Betsy Reed, they found three instances when Thompson made up quotes and attributed them to people who hadn’t been interviewed. There were additional instances when “quotes were attributed to individuals … whose identities could not be confirmed.” He also used quotes from “unnamed people” who couldn’t be verified. “Thompson went to great lengths to deceive his editors,” Reed wrote, “creating an email account to impersonate a source and lying about his reporting methods.” She wrote that he had even created a Gmail account in her name, impersonating her. One of the fabrications came in a report about Charleston Church shooter Dylann Roof. According to The Intercept, Thompson claimed he had spoken to a cousin of Roof, named Scott Roof. Thompson said Scott Roof speculated his cousin may have been driven to attack the historically black church because “kind of went over the edge when a girl he liked started dating a black guy two years back.” Here’s a tweet he made about it, which he has since deleted, but was captured by Internet Archive: (Internet Archive/Twitter from June 2015) The Intercept later added an editor’s note to the story saying that after talking to two Roof family members, they found Scott Roof does not exist. After he was fired from The Intercept, he got a new job at Media Blackout USA on September 9 and was fired on September 11 after writing just six stories, River Front Times reported. The site said he hadn’t done anything wrong, but they couldn’t be affiliated “with someone who writes fake reports.” Thompson was hired by The Intercept’s founding editor-in-chief, John Cook, in November 2014. (Reed later replaced Cook when he moved on to Gawker.) At the time, the Intercept introduced him as a new staff reporter, who had been a production assistant and reporter for Chicago’s NPR station WBEZ, and had worked as a reporter for DNAinfo Chicago. He often reported about police brutality and hate crimes against African Americans. Here are some tweets he made while reporting for the Intercept. He later deleted these tweets, but they were captured by Internet Archive. Tweets from June 2015 (Internet Archive/Twitter) Tweet from October 2015 (Internet Archive/Twitter) Since the arrest, The Intercept has released an official statement about Thompson: We were horrified to learn this morning that Juan Thompson, a former employee of The Intercept, has been arrested in connection with bomb threats against the ADL and multiple Jewish Community Centers in addition to cyberstalking. These actions are heinous and should be fully investigated and prosecuted. We have no information about the charges against Thompson other than what is included in the criminal complaint. Thompson worked for The Intercept from November 2014 to January 2016, when he was fired after we discovered that he had fabricated sources and quotes in his articles.Thompson denied that he had fabricated the stories. CNN shared this copy of Thompson’s email response to Betsy Reed: 5. He Planned to Run for Mayor of St. Louis in 2017, According to His Twitter On his Twitter account, Thompson outlines his plan to run for mayor of St. Louis. He talked about a 10-point plan he had that he had coined the “St. Louis Deal.” He tweeted, “I’m young, gifted, black and a socialist and I’m running for mayor of St. Louis in 2017.” He set up a GoFundMe account for his campaign. He wrote on his GoFundMe page: “I’m running for Mayor of St. Louis because I believe in people power and I need your help to get on the ballot and get campaign signs. Please donate whatever you can.” He only got $25 toward his $5,000 goal. He wrote, “Now of course I’m not perfect. I’ve made mistakes. We all have. But I know in my heart I will be the best mayor for this city and the leader we need to take us into the next decade.” Thompson associated himself more with Democrat and progressive leanings. He liked Bernie Sanders, according to his Twitter, but in 2003 he loved Hillary Clinton: He later changed his mind about that: Thompson was not a fan of President Donald Trump. He wrote a story for the Intercept about being mistreated at a Trump rally. Much of this story was later shown to be fabricated, including quotes attributed to a woman and her husband whom he claimed were Trump supporters. The source said she did not support Trump and had not attended the rally. The Intercept added that they couldn’t verify other quotes in the story or the existence of a named Black Lives Matter activist. Here’s the Intercept’s original tweet about the article:
Soviet-style abuse of psychiatry is now practiced in the US Red Square 2/24/2017, 4:06 pm Comrade Psychiatrist is unhappy with Mr. Trump's "delusional reformism" By Oleg Atbashian | First published in Bombthrowers American progressives have been enamored with many Soviet ideas in their time, trying to transplant them to the U.S. -- from government diktat and central planning to academic indoctrination and propaganda through entertainment. And while the Soviet Union has gone the way of the dodo, its glorious socialist legacy is still up for the picking. One of these unparalleled Soviet achievements is the use of psychiatry to silence dissent and delegitimize political opposition, allowing the KGB to lock up dissidents in mental hospitals nicknamed psikhushkas. In the United States today hundreds of zealous progressive psychiatrists are similarly diagnosing Donald Trump "in absentia" with a variety of incapacitating diseases, from narcissism to neurosyphilis, demanding that he be deposed (and hopefully locked up in a psikhushka along with his supporters). First, some history. From the 1950s through the 1980s, thousands of Soviet dissenters were incarcerated in mental hospitals. This helped the Communist government to destroy its critics both physically and mentally without the potentially messy trials, while at the same time discrediting all political dissent as the product of ill minds. According to the acclaimed Sovietologist Robert van Voren, the political abuse of psychiatry in the USSR "originated from the concept that persons who opposed the Soviet regime were mentally ill because there was no other logical explanation why one would oppose the best sociopolitical system in the world." In theory Soviet psychiatry was guided by Karl Marx's "dialectical materialism" (as such, it rejected psychotherapy as "American pseudo-science" that stood in the way of scientific progress). In practical terms, its first duty was to serve the Party and the government in building the communist society. To that end leading Soviet psychiatrists fabricated a convenient disease called "sluggish schizophrenia." The "sufferers" didn't necessarily need to be psychotic; they could maintain productive careers and have families without anyone noticing their unusual behavior. The symptoms of the disease were pessimism, depression, delusional rejection of progressive ideas, obsessive criticism of the government, and paranoid thoughts about being watched by the KGB. The government psychiatrists were especially concerned with diagnosing and treating the so-called delusion of "reformism" -- persistent ideas about reforming the Soviet political and economic system. No doubt, American progressive psychiatrists would be only too happy to diagnose "reformist" delusion in Trump and his supporters, who are known for their persistent calls to "drain the swamp." The rationale behind the "mental disorder" diagnosis seems familiar: no sane person who has attended public schools and watched CNN would oppose Obama's "fundamental transformation of America" or the candidacy of the honest, intelligent, healthy, and mentally stable Hillary Clinton. Therefore, only the mentally ill would oppose political correctness, the growth of government, redistribution of wealth, socialized healthcare, man-made climate change, multiculturalism, open borders, the media's trustworthiness, and the Democratic Party in general. American progressive psychiatrists don't necessarily need to copy their Soviet colleagues. Having their minds attuned to the same progressive brainwaves should be enough to produce similar results. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. There is an old Soviet joke about a man who worked at a secret military plant which was disguised as a sewing machine factory. He stole some parts hoping to build his wife a sewing machine at home, but every time he assembled the parts he ended up with a machine gun. Similarly, progressivism disguised as psychiatry (or as any other science for that matter) will only end up with more psikhushkas. It started with a trickle. Back in 2009, a conference of British "eco-psychologists" argued that "climate change denial" should be classified as a form of "mental disorder" -- a notion cheered on by American progressives. In 2012, a professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Oregon addressed a major international science conference in London with a message that any "resistance" to the man-made climate change theory "must be recognized and treated." In 2014 Psychology Today published an article by a "therapist turned advocate" who listed symptoms of climate-change denial to help identify this "disorder," and thought that her job was to induce climate-change-related terror and anxiety in her patients who didn't already exhibit these conditions, openly bragging about breaking the Hippocratic oath to "do no harm." In July 2015, Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman already applied the idea of psychiatric treatment of political dissent in the sentencing of the well-known conservative author and filmmaker, Dinesh D’Souza. Enter Donald Trump. In November 2015, as Trump became a frontrunner in the GOP primaries, Vanity Fair ran with this story: Is Donald Trump Actually A Narcissist? Therapists Weigh In! "As his presidential campaign trundles forward, millions of sane Americans are wondering: What exactly is wrong with this strange individual? Now, we have an answer." In June 2016, when it became clear that Trump had a clear path to the Republican nomination, the Atlantic published a long "research" piece titled, The Mind Of Donald Trump: "Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity -- a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency." Almost simultaneously, the Huffington Post weighed in with Too Sick To Lead: The Lethal Personality Disorder Of Donald Trump. In August 2016, Politico amplified Mika Brzezinski's plea: A psychiatrist needs to examine Trump. In January this year, the New York Daily News quoted a number of progressive psychiatrists in President Trump exhibits classic signs of mental illness, including 'malignant narcissism,' shrinks say. The same month, the Independent published 'Malignant narcisissm' [sic]: Donald Trump displays classic traits of mental illness, claim psychologists: "More and more mental health experts are sharing their diagnoses to warn the public." This February has seen a deluge of articles with repetitive headlines accusing Trump of psychiatric and personality disorders -- from Common Dreams to Scientific American to U.S. News. There have been at least two online petitions regarding Trump's mental health. One such petition bears a title in the unmistakable style of Soviet government psychiatrists: Mental Health Professionals Declare Trump is Mentally Ill And Must Be Removed. It was posted by John Gartner Ph.D., who claims, without ever meeting the president in person, that "Donald Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States." Another petition by Dr. Lance M. Dodes, M.D., written in the form of an open letter to the editors of the New York Times, stated that "Mr. Trump’s speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behavior suggest a profound inability to empathize. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them." The letter, as published in theNew York Times, concludes that all of the above "makes him incapable of serving safely as president." The petition was signed by 35 medical professionals, who had never seen Mr. Trump in person. Their diagnosis could only be based on observing their progressive patients who couldn't stop ranting about Trump's derangement and whose maniacal obsession with Trump contributed so much to the therapists' bank accounts that the doctors were compelled to "give back to the community" and signed the anti-Trump petition as a way to relieve their guilt. (We've never met these people, which makes our psychoanalysis of them just as credible as the psychoanalysis of President Trump published in the New York Times.) With so many psychiatrists suddenly arriving at a "scientific consensus," it seemed that the world was ready for another award-winning Inconvenient Truth movie declaring that "the science is settled" and that "97 percent of psychiatrists believe that Trump's mental illness is real." Their opponents were this close to being labeled as flat-earthers and science-deniers. Soviet citizens had reached a consensus that they were on a bus heading towards a beautiful communist future (an example of sane behavior). Just then the eminent psychiatrist Allen Frances, who wrote a book on psychiatric disorders, dumped a bucket of cold water on his colleagues, calling them "amateur diagnosticians" who "disregarded professional ethics." In a letter to The New York Times, published under the title, An Eminent Psychiatrist Demurs on Trump’s Mental State, the snarky Dr. Frances gave Trump a clean bill of health, saying that "he may be a world-class narcissist, but this doesn’t make him mentally ill," and noting that "It is a stigmatizing insult to the mentally ill (who are mostly well behaved and well meaning) to be lumped with Mr. Trump (who is neither)." We can only add that in the Soviet book of Political Psychiatry, Dr. Frances would be denounced as a revisionist bootlicker and a pseudo-scientist, and rewarded with an involuntary stay in a psikhushka for deviating from the Party doctrine. The festival of psychiatric progressivism still culminated with the left-wing New Republic's publication of A Medical Theory for Donald Trump’s Bizarre Behavior: "Many mental health professionals believe the president is ill. But what if the cause is an untreated STD?" Its author, Dr. Steven Beutler, M.D., an infectious disease specialist who must have missed the memo from Dr. Frances, refers to the above "scientific consensus" and offers a theory that Trump may be suffering from untreated syphilis -- a sexually transmitted disease that can destroy the human mind and personality. The logic is bulletproof: "[Trump] was sexually promiscuous in the 1980s, a period when syphilis cases were rapidly increasing in the U.S." No word on whether Trump could have contracted syphilis from sexual contacts with Vladimir Putin, but given the number of media headlines exposing the alleged Trump-Putin "bromance," a Pulitzer Prize is in the cards for a journalist-turned-psychiatrist (or vice versa) who can prove that both Trump and Putin exhibit the same symptoms of mental derangement stemming from a sexually transmitted disease they gave each other during a past secret "bromance" (dates and locations to be provided by a self-described former British intelligence officer). Perhaps progressive psychiatrists can also explain the sudden, psychologically improbable switch from admiration of Russia to fear and paranoia of Holy Mother Russia that surpasses the cartoonish Red Scare. Our own diagnosis suggests that what the progressives loved most about Russia was not its people but the socialist system the Russians lived under, experiencing all the sluggish schizophrenia and delusional reformism conjured up by government psychiatrists. On that grandiose scale the people were unimportant; they might as well be monkeys or penguins. Now that the Russians have torn down socialism, their country is suddenly ripe for demonization. Putin's authoritarianism alone can't explain such disgust; the progressives have embraced worse monsters in the past. A more likely explanation is that Putin's regime is much less progressive than the old Soviet one. No socialism, no love. And Putin likes Trump. The horror. "Trump isn't crazy," argues Dr. Frances on his blog in Psychology Today. "The urge among amateur diagnosticians to mislabel Trump as mentally ill is perfectly understandable," he writesin another blog post. Dr. Frances understands the motives of his progressive colleagues because he resents Trump just as much as they do. The difference is that he has been able to keep his sanity, while his colleagues' obsession with Trump has caused them to lose touch with reality, along with their ability to distinguish between opinions and facts. It is logical to ask then, why doesn't the good doctor diagnose the obvious insanity of his colleagues, at least in generic terms, as a medical phenomenon? He might even discover a link to the sluggish schizophrenia of the progressive movement. Such a proposition isn't all that unthinkable. In the Los Angeles Times, of all places, there appeared an op-ed titled, Do you suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome? with helpful descriptions of the symptoms and stages of the disease. The template for diagnosing TDS is readily available. Take, for example, the petition Dr. Dodes references in the New York Times and replace "Mr. Trump" with "Dr. Dodes": Dr. Dodes's speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behavior suggest a profound inability to empathize [with fellow Americans]. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them. We believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Dr. Dodes's speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as a psychiatrist.Without a doubt the efforts of the remaining few sane psychiatrists in America would be best spent on trying to find treatment for this debilitating mental disorder.
That one has probably gone right over the head of our bigot. You're wasting your time there Death Hamster I doubt this one has the intellectual capacity to understand the subtlety of your post. Bigots rarely see beyond the end of their noses.
Red Square 1/11/2017, 3:59 pm Remember this very serious group of outstanding citizens supporting Hillary? This isn't a Photoshop. Perhaps BuzzFeed and CNN can send a correspondent to the Bunny Ranch - unless some of them already write for CNN or BuzzFeed. Or Snopes. I wouldn't be surprised if they do.
The vast majority of scientists say that humans are causing warming of the climate and we need to stop. We have to listen to the scientific community because they are the experts and we are not. Disagreeing with the experts just makes you wrong. Being wrong is not a thought crime or a mental disorder. So all that tl;dr about psychiatry is silly. Mods, please move this post to the derail thread when you get around to moving all the derail posts.
LRH was a con man who made many fraudulent claims. He was not a scientist, no. Critics of $cientology are not bigots, nor are critics of any other cultic movements utilizing the cloak of religion to conceal a great deal of continuously unresolved problematic issues which can be rooted in an specific ideology.
