Virginia Man Threatened to Kill Kamala Harris, Authorities Say

A Virginia man has been charged with posting repeated death threats against Vice President Kamala Harris on social media in the days after she became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, the authorities said on Monday.

The man, Frank Lucio Carillo, of Winchester, Va., was arrested on Friday and appeared in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, Va., on Monday to face a charge of making threats against the vice president of the United States. The felony charge carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison.

The arrest came after the F.B.I. discovered nearly 20 threats against Ms. Harris from an account linked to Mr. Carillo on the social media site GETTR, according to filings in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia.

The threats included promises to kill Ms. Harris and her family, to pluck out her eyes with pliers and to burn her alive. “Kamala Harris needs to be put on fire alive I will do it personally if no one else does it I want her to suffer a slow agonizing death,” Mr. Carillo said in one post on July 27.

Ms. Harris’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Carillo also threatened other officials and groups, prosecutors said. In an affidavit supporting Mr. Carillo’s arrest, the F.B.I. cited “4,359 posts/replies made by ‘joemadarats1’ targeting various public officials” over the past year, including President Biden, Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, and Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County, Ariz., recorder who became known for rejecting claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from former President Donald J. Trump. Investigators tied the account belonging to Joe Madarats to Mr. Carillo.

In a statement on Monday, Christopher R. Kavanaugh,