Welcome to Rabbit Hole, a breaking news analysis that helps you get smart on the one story everyone’s obsessing over—for Beast Inside members only.
The feds say Cesar Altieri Sayoc is the rabidly pro-Trump mailer behind a string of bombs sent to prominent critics of his beloved Donald. From the moment the press got a look at his bumper sticker-clad van, it was clear the alleged bomber was a little out there. A deeper look into his background and social media trail reveals a conspiracy-obsessed man trying to hide his financial and legal problems behind a thin veneer of social media dolce vita.
MAGA maniac: The Secret Service already had enough on its hands when Sayoc allegedly sent bombs to the Clintons and Obamas. But photos and videos posted by the alleged attacker also show he tried to get close to another one of its protectees—Donald Trump. Photos posted by Sayoc on a now-deleted Facebook page show he attended an October 2016 Trump campaign rally in Florida to witness his beloved Trump in person. The pics shows Sayoc posing for selfies with African-American Trump supporters holding “Blacks For Trump” signs and posing with the then-Republican Congressional candidate Paul Spain.
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Foreshadowing: While at the Trump rally, Sayoc took a handful of photos—and one video that may have been innocuous at the time but seem ominous in hindsight. Amid the many photos of rally-goers and footage of Trump himself, at one point Sayoc sidled back to the press pen to take close-up snaps of a reporter doing a liveshot and cameramen at work. From the campaign through today, Trump supporters have used the press pen as a convenient place to deposit their rage at the media, cursing and harassing reporters often with the encouragement of the president himself. Sayoc’s post could’ve been nothing more than a bit of curiosity but it feels altogether creepier in light of the fact that he chose CNN as a target.
Suspicious package: Sayoc’s career reportedly included a stint as a male stripper. Promoter Tony Valentine told the The Daily Beast that “fuck-all stripper Cesar” had stripped in the '90s. In the mid-2010s, Sayoc appears to have run Facebook pages for male stripper promotion companies he claimed to have run, Chippenfellas and Hardrock IntlChippendolls (since deleted). One picture posted in 2015 shows Sayoc posing alongside Valentine, but it’s unclear when the picture was taken.
Failure: Failure appeared to loom large in Sayoc’s imagination, as did the need to hide it and present himself as living in a cartoon version of the good life. Court records show that Sayoc declared bankruptcy in 2012 and had a string of charges and convictions f,or theft from 2013 through 2015. At one point he was living with his parents and later moved out and lived out of the sticker-clad van seen on TV. Locals in Hollywood, Florida recall him working as a pizza delivery man at one point.
Potemkin businesses: Across a host of Facebook profiles, Sayoc posted pictures of himself in suits, making the rounds on the club scene, sidling up next to young, attractive women, and desperately trying to come off as rich. Despite the many accounts with large numbers of Facebook friends, no one appears to have liked, commented, or engaged much with Sayoc on social media.
One Facebook account connected to Sayoc used the alias Cesar Altieri Randazzo and posted content from a page named “Randazzo’s Minneapolis.” The Daily Beast could find no evidence of a restaurant of that name in Minneapolis, much less one run by Sayoc. The avatar for the page, “Randazzo’s Family Restaurant, Since 1994,” is taken from a restaurant in Metairie, Louisiana. When reached by phone, the manager said she had never heard of Sayoc and had no clue why he had passed off the restaurant’s sign as his own.
But one answer seems likely: Sayoc may have been trying to cobble together the appearance of owning a legitimate and successful business. Pictures of Italian food posted on the restaurant page are taken from popular recipe sites. The account featured collages of pictures showing Sayoc eating in kitchens and posing at different restaurants with attractive women. Sayoc’s selfies are mixed in with pictures of celebrities like Robert Downey, Jr and Sylvester Stallone attending the Iron Man 2 premiere in what appears to be an attempt to pretend the fake restaurant hosted famous diners.
Trump ties: Sayoc appears to have been a Trump fan, at least in the sartorial sense, as early as May 2015. On May 1, 2015, he posted pictures of himself at a retail store alongside a $650 Trump suit on a since-deleted Facebook account. “Top Designer Suits, Trump, Boss, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hill, etc $50.00 a piece stop paying retail. We are liquidating one of our stores,” he wrote. There’s no evidence that Sayoc ever owned a retail outlet. The fact that the post—and the low price accompanying the suit—came just three weeks before he was charged with retail theft makes it likelier the Trump suit fire-sale was just another attempt at a pretend life.
Conspiracies: As a literal card-carrying Trumpalo (at one point he posted an advertisement for the "Official Trump Campaign Membership Card”), Sayoc was deep in the fever swamp of anti-Hillary and pro-Trump media. He posted a video from the Russian propaganda channel RT about an anti-immigration rally in Italy and shared content from rabid right-wing media personalities like Sean Hannity and Dinesh D’Souza.
But Sayoc also dabbled in different flavors of conspiracy. A Facebook account for ChippenFellas, one of his purported male stripper businesses, included a handful of posts about chemtrails. “Google chem trails US government dropped poison chemical on U everyday in Unman planes U are not aware of. When u google site government will be watching U what they don't want u to know.”
Another post featuring a picture of Sayoc with his arm around a random assortment of people featured a rambling diatribe about an apocalyptic Russian dirty-bomb plot.“900 dirty bombs disappear from Russia planted on US soil. Hug your loved ones tight the end will be soon. Anyone in prison even on suspended license in jail all over country when Marshall is passed order is to poison gas all in jail prison population murder all prisoners.”
Social ghosting: Shortly after Sayoc’s name was released following his arrest, either Facebook or someone with access to Sayoc’s account information went through a handful of his social media accounts and deleted most of them. His two flagship named Facebook accounts, Cesar Altieri and Cesar Altieri Randazzo, were yanked, as well as a Cesar Altieri Instagram account.
