Man busted in death threats made to Boston Globe workers

A Californian man was accused Thursday of threatening to kill employees of The Boston Globe – calling them “enemy of the people” for leading a national editorial campaign critical of President Trump.

Robert Darrell Chain, 68, was arrested when a SWAT team stormed his Encino home and charged with making a threatening communication in interstate commerce, the Globe reported.

He will eventually be arraigned in US District Court in Boston, prosecutors said. If convicted, Chain could face up to five years in the slammer and a $250,000 fine.

On Aug. 10, the privately owned Globe called for papers around the country to use their opinion pages to counter Trump’s description of the media as an “enemy of the people” and condemn what it called “a dirty war against the free press.”

The day the editorials were published Aug. 16, Chain told a Globe staffer that he was going to shoot employees in the head at 4 p.m., according to court documents.

That threat prompted a police response and ramped up security at the newspaper’s offices.

“In the calls, Chain referred to the Globe as ‘the enemy of the people’ and threatened to kill newspaper employees,’’ prosecutors wrote in a statement.

“In total, it is alleged that Chain made approximately 14 threatening phone calls to the Globe between August 10 and August 22, 2018.”

Chain said he would continue threatening the Globe, The New York Times and “other fake news” as long as they continued their “treasonous and seditious acts” against Trump, authorities said.

Globe spokeswoman Jane Bowman told The Post that the paper is grateful for law enforcement’s efforts to protect its staffers and track down the source of the threats.

“While it was unsettling for many of our staffers to be threatened in such a way, nobody – really, nobody – let it get in the way of the important work of this institution,” she said in an email.

Andrew Lelling, the US attorney for Massachusetts and a Trump appointee, said in a statement that “anyone – regardless of political affiliation – who puts others in fear for their lives will be prosecuted by this office,” Reuters reported.

“In a time of increasing political polarization, and amid the increasing incidence of mass shootings, members of the public must police their own political rhetoric. Or we will,” he said.

The editorials defending the First Amendment prompted the president to lash out on Twitter, saying: “THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS THE OPPOSITION PARTY. It is very bad for our Great Country….BUT WE ARE WINNING!”

He did not offer specifics on how the news media are bad for the United States.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Trump continued his offensive against the press, slamming NBC News and one of his favorite targets, CNN.

“Everyone has a right to express their opinion, but threatening to kill people takes it over the line and will not be tolerated,” said Harold Shaw, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Division, the local Boston CBS affiliate reported.

“Today’s arrest of Robert Chain should serve a warning to others, that making threats is not a prank, it’s a federal crime,” he added