John Rivello, a 29 year old Maryland man, was indicted by a grand jury Monday in Dallas, Texas for inducing an epileptic seizure in Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald in December by tweeting a strobing gif to Eichenwald. The Dallas Morning News reported that Rivello, "is charged with one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The charge carries a hate crime enhancement. Rivello, a resident of Salisbury, MD was booked into the Dallas County Jail Monday night and released around 2:00 a.m. Tuesday after posting bail. Last week Rivello was arrested at his Maryland home on a federal cyberstalking charge in connection with the case."
In charging Rivello with cyberstalking, the FBI concluded that the tweet was sent "with the intent to kill, injure, harass, and intimidate."
A Dallas County grand jury indicted Rivello on Monday morning, saying that he knew Eichenwald was susceptible to epileptic seizures and used a deadly weapon — the animated image in the tweet — to assault him.
A hate-crime enhancement was added to the charge because of Rivello's "bias or prejudice against a group identified by race, ancestry, or religion, namely: persons of Jewish faith or descent," the indictment says.
Dallas police served Twitter with a search warrant for the user's account, @jew_goldstein, and recovered a number of direct messages that referred to Eichenwald.
"I know he has epilepsy," "I hope this sends him into a seizure," "let's see if he dies," they read. Another said that Eichenwald "deserves to have his liver pecked out by a pack of emus."
Authorities reported finding a number of other files on the iCloud account that linked Rivello to Eichenwald:
- The animated image sent to Eichenwald.
- A screenshot of the tweet and the reply from Eichenwald's wife.
- A screenshot of Eichenwald's Wikipedia biography, with his date of death listed as Dec. 16 — the day after the tweet was sent.
- A screenshot of a list of triggers for epileptic seizures.
- A screenshot of a Dallas Observer article about Eichenwald trying to find his attacker.
- A screenshot of a Dallas County courts webpage that showed Eichenwald's home address.
On December 15th Kurt Eichenwald appeared on Fox News' Tucker Carlson show. Carlson and Eichenwald had a lively discussion, debating each other's political biases and shortcomings as journalists. Afterwards, Eichenwald received a tweet from a “@jew_goldstein” which contained a strobing gif. The gif triggered a seizure in Eichenwald, who suffers from epilepsy. Eichenwald told Newsweek more:
According to the federal criminal complaint, Eichenwald's seizure on Dec. 15 lasted for eight minutes. Eichenwald was in bed for 24 hours after the attack and expected to be unable to drive for months.
Eichenwald's wife walked into the room during the seizure and placed Eichenwald safely on the floor and called 911. She also took a picture of the tweet and responded to it, saying that she had reported the incident to police. "This is his wife, you caused a seizure. I have the information and have called the police to report the assault."
Eichenwald said in an interview with George Stephanapolous two weeks later that the gif was,"a multi colored strobe designed to cause a seizure and they succeeded, they knew what they were doing. A lot of people find this very funny. A lot of people are loading up my twitter feed with strobes. I have people with epilepsy follow me on twitter and now my twitter feed is dangerous to these people. We have become so sick and twisted in this country that just because I report politically on Donald Trump people think that they have the right and obligation to inflict potentially serious injuries."
“What Mr. Rivello did with his Twitter message was no different from someone sending a bomb in the mail or sending an envelope filled with anthrax spores,” Steven Lieberman, attorney for Eichenwald, says. “It wasn’t the content of the communication that was intended to persuade somebody or make them feel badly about themselves; this was an electronic communication that was designed to have a physical effect.”
“We’re very gratified that the government has worked hard and promptly to make sure that the person who was responsible for this attack is held to account,” Liberman says. “it sends an important message that there is no free shot against journalists in this country.”