Trans activist & cyber expert says anti-LGBTQ+ “hoax bomber” keeps cc’ing her on bomb threats

Alejandra Caraballo, a civil rights attorney and Harvard Law School instructor well known among LGBTQ+ activists for her work tracking hate, has been cc’d on at least three dozen emails containing bomb threats since February, she tells the Daily Beast.

The threats have shut down entire school districts and neighborhoods and have targeted large and small allied businesses and individuals, even as authorities have yet to find evidence of an explosive device associated with the messages.

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Since April, Caraballo has been sharing the emails with the FBI but says she’s frustrated with the agency’s lack of action.

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“I don’t know how seriously they’re taking this,” Caraballo said. “It’s absolutely terrorism, that’s exactly what this is. Even though they’re not going through with it, people can be traumatized.”

In December, Caraballo shared a thread on Twitter, now called X, revealing a connection between posts by Libs of TikTok and other online hate peddlers to an earlier series of bomb threats against Boston Children’s Hospital. She says that’s why she believes the “hoax bomber,” as the Daily Beast calls the person, is notifying her of their actions.

For the last year, bomb threats have been connected to anti LGBTQ hate.

In particular, there are multiple verified instances of correlation between bomb threats and Libs of Tiktok's tweets within a broader epidemic of bomb threats tied to anti LGBTQ hate.

A thread: 🧵

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) December 22, 2022

“It’s either one person or maybe three or four people on a Discord,” Caraballo speculates. “You can’t rule out that it’s not some kind of foreign operation either.”

The latest series of threats have been directed at Tulsa, Oklahoma schools, sparked by far-right outrage over a now-viral satirical video about “woke ideology” posted by a Tulsa librarian in August.

That episode prominently featured Libs of TikTok and anti-LGBTQ+ activist founder Chaya Raichik spreading false information about one Tulsa school’s weekend event held for all students “except the white kids.”

Following Raichik’s post, the school district received bomb threats on six consecutive school days over the last two weeks.

“The innonence [sic] of children is sacred, that is a fact that has been known for the entirety of human history,” one emailed threat read. “I’m not going to stand by as you bastards continue to indoctrinate and prey upon our children.”

An Aug. 28 email claimed the sender had placed “homemade pipebombs and pressure cooker bombs” at an elementary school and library. “We will not stop bombing your city until the right thign [sic] is done,” it read.

Two emails sent on Aug. 29 both used the phrasing, “We are fed up with the incompetence of Union Public schools and we are here to send a f***ing message. You will evacuate the the [sic] school so nobody dies.”

Caraballo says she’s been copied on the threats since February, when she was cc’d on an email threatening a Maine school district with a bomb after a 13-year-old told the National Review she’d been offered a chest binder at school. Around the same time, she was also cc’d on another targeting a Democratic House delegate in Maryland who supported gun control.

In the dozens of emails since then, Caraballo says much of the same language is employed, and most feature the same typos. Many originate from the same “@mail.ru” email account, a provider based in Russia.

In June, Carabello was cc’d on a bomb threat to trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney for partnering with Bud Light, and another threatening the beer brand’s parent company Anheuser-Busch.

She was copied on threats to an animal rescue in Kentucky hosting a Drag Queen story hour, a feminist bookstore in Chicago, an LGBTQ+ Community Center in New York City, and a junior high in Iowa that was evacuated twice in two days.

“We placed bombs in the following locations,” read an email from March directed at New York County Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court – Southern District of New York, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“Pipebombs, fertilizer bombs, tannerite,” the email read, “Placed in cars, backpacks, sewage systems. Evacaute [sic] before the bombs go off. You people are destroying America so we will destroy you.”

While the “hoax bomber” has so far not followed through on any of their physical threats, Caraballo calls the actions another kind of danger. 

“It’s corrosive to democracy and it corrodes public institutions and public trust. Beyond the immediate terror and fear and anxiety, the wide-scale campaign of this is corrosive to public institutions, and that’s what worries me long-term,” she said.