A Texas man has been charged with making online “death threats” against prominent Jewish conservative media figures — including Post columnist Karol Markowicz, Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, Newsweek senior editor-at-large Josh Hammer and Laura Loomer.
Nicholas Ray, of Spring, Texas, was hit with 12 Florida state charges after he posted the threats between Oct. 8 and 10 on X under the username @zionistarescum, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by The Post.
The Oct. 18 affidavit claims Ray threatened to hang Loomer “from the capitol” and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC, because she was a “Mossad Agent.”
He also wildly charged that Hammer had “conspired with foreign govt about killing Charlie” Kirk and used a racial slur before calling the Newsweek editor a “TRAITOR” who “SHOULD LITERALLY BE KILLED BY A FIRING SQUAD.”
“We’re gonna get you I promise maybe not today or tomorrow but you’re living on borrowed time and you know it,” Ray warned.
Dillon and Markowicz were accused of “conspiring with Israel” in the Sept. 10 assassination of Kirk and “genociding” in Gaza, respectively.
Other alleged posts by Ray included warnings that all four were going to “get killed soon” and that “traitors get hung.”
On Tuesday, Loomer posted an image of Ray’s mugshot at the Montgomery County Jail in Texas before his extradition to the Sunshine State.
“He’s accusing me of being a foreign agent and saying that I’m going to be killed,” Loomer told The Post Wednesday. “I’m not a foreign agent. I’m a US citizen. This is the result of radicalization from conspiracy theories online.”
“They think they can get away with inciting political violence because they’re using an anonymous account,” the “Loomer Unleashed” host added, claiming Ray had clearly been “radicalized by left- and right-wing podcasters” who have made “anti-semitic accusations.”
“Working in media should not mean that death threats are part of the job,” Markowicz said in an emailed statement. “The fact that they’ve become so commonplace is a societal problem. I’m very pleased and grateful that [Florida] Attorney General, James Uthmeier, is taking action against these threats.”
Dillon added in a X post Tuesday that he began receiving threats while authoring a piece for The Free Press titled “The Foolishness of ‘No Enemies to the Right.’”
“He’d been infected by bad ideas—the same ideas I write about in this piece,” noted the Babylon Bee humorist. “Some on the right are spreading these ideas. Others, to their shame, are either afraid or unwilling to confront them.”
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Uthmeier announced Monday that Ray would face charges of extortion, unlawful use of a two-way communication device and making written threats to kill the Jewish commentators — with four counts for each charge to cover all the victims.
“This individual — clearly demented — was calling for the death of several in conservative media, using antisemitic verbiage in his threats,” Uthmeier told “The Ben Shapiro Show” Tuesday.
“We’re gonna throw the book at him and send a clear message: If you call for violence, you will be punished, you will do as much time as possible in the state of Florida. We have zero tolerance for it.”
Ray faces up to 140 years in prison if convicted on all 12 counts.
The 28-year-old followed just three accounts on X: one devoted to the Dallas Cowboys, neo-Nazi Paul Miller, and far-right pundit Candace Owens — who left Shapiro’s Daily Wire in March 2024 amid public friction with the founder over her anti-Israel views.
Owens was caught liking a post on X that same month rehashing a centuries-old conspiracy theory about rabbis drinking the blood of Christians.
Loomer also got into an online spat with Owens in March, accusing the influencer of claiming she would “dance for Israel.” A rep for Owens did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The arrest warrant was signed by a Palm Beach County judge on Oct. 18, though a spokesperson for Uthmeier’s office said Ray has yet to be transferred to Florida for an arraignment.
On Oct. 10, US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that another man had been arrested for making death threats against conservative commentator Benny Johnson, in what she described as a chilling attempt at a copycat scheme mimicking Kirk’s murder.
George Isabel Jr. menaced in a letter that he would make “orphans” of Johnson’s children.
Kirk, 31, was fatally shot while debating college students at Utah Valley University and posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Trump.
