The man who was arrested last week for threatening to kill CNN employees had once said he identified with Adolf Hitler, a former classmate told The Washington Post.
The classmate, Anthony Luongo, said that Brandon Griesemer, who was reported on Monday to have been arrested for saying he would kill CNN employees, once claimed “the Holocaust was exaggerated” and said he identified with Hitler’s ideology, according to the Post.
The FBI opened an investigation into Griesemer after he called CNN’s Atlanta headquarters nearly 22 times earlier this month, calling the organization “fake news” in the first call and saying “I’m coming to gun you all down.”
Before threatening CNN, Griesemer also made “disparaging remarks regarding Jewish individuals,” the FBI said of one phone call in court documents from the investigation, and “made derogatory comments relating to the mosque and Muslims” in a call to a mosque in his native Michigan.
In another call the day after his initial threats, the man reportedly said, “You are going down. I have a gun and I am coming to Georgia right now to go to the CNN headquarters to f—ing gun every single last one of you.”
The man was reportedly released on bail bond last week.