Bombing suspect Cesar Sayoc, Jr. was more than just a fan of Donald Trump, his lawyer claims.
The man dubbed “MAGABomber” for his alleged attacks against political figures that are frequent targets of Trump was described as a “sick individual” who saw Trump as a stand-in for the father who abandoned him at a young age. As the New York Post reported, Miami lawyer Ronald Lowy said Sayoc had a strained relationship with his family, and Donald Trump filled the void.
“This was someone lost, he was looking for anything and he found a father in Trump,” Lowy told CNN .
Lowy also described the MAGABomber suspect as someone who is not connected to reality.
“He doesn’t seem to recognize reality. He lives in a fantasy world,” Lowy said to local outlets. “The signs of mental illness are clearly there.”
Shortly after federal officials announced they had arrested a suspect in the alleged bombings, media outlets showed images of a white van that reportedly belonged to Cesar Sayoc, Jr., one plastered in right-wing paraphernalia. The van had stickers praising Donald Trump and deriding Trump’s frequent targets, including many of the people he is now accused of sending pipe bombs to in the mail.
In a statement to reporters on Friday, Trump claimed that he had not seen the images of Sayoc’s van or his face adorning many of the bumper stickers that covered the windows.
‘I did not see my face on the van’: Trump says he’s not responsible for ‘MAGAbomber’ Cesar Sayoc https://t.co/uW185yAsBY
— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) October 26, 2018
As The Intercept found, Sayoc had apparently been making public threats against Trump’s critics in recent weeks.
“In what appears to be Sayoc’s Twitter account, the alleged bomber tweeted pictures of alligators that had eaten humans to Biden and movie director Ron Howard,” the report noted.
The report added that Cesar Sayoc, Jr. is not the first person to allegedly take their devotion of Donald Trump into violent acts against his frequent targets. The leader of a mosque bombing last year believes that Trump was secretly battling something known as the “Deep State,” which Trump backers say is a secret group of government insiders plotting to take him down.
Other information has been trickling out about Cesar Sayoc, Jr., including his past as a male stripper. As the Washington Examiner reported, he once traveled the country in the 1990s appearing at strip clubs, and reports claimed he was obsessed with fitness and hooked on steroids. Sayoc’s cousin told NBC News that Sayoc was “all buffed up” and “built like a rock.”
