A Kansas man who told a Secret Service agent he was “coming for” President Biden was charged on Friday with making threats against the president, according to federal court documents.
The man, Scott Ryan Merryman, made the threats over three days, starting on Tuesday, when he called the police in Independence, Kan., and said he was heading to Washington, D.C., to see the president, according to an affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
The U.S. Secret Service called Mr. Merryman on Wednesday and he told an agent that he had been instructed by God to visit Mr. Biden and to lop off “the head of the serpent in the heart of the nation,” according to an affidavit written by Lisa Koerber, an agent with the Secret Service.
Mr. Merryman said he was not referring to Mr. Biden and that he was not making a threat against the president, the affidavit said.
It was not clear if Mr. Merryman had a lawyer and he did not respond to messages for comment on Saturday. The White House did not immediately respond to a message for comment, and the Secret Service deferred questions to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland, which did not respond to a message.
Later on Wednesday, agents met with Mr. Merryman at the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in Maryland where they searched him and found three rounds of .45-caliber ammunition and a spotting scope, a type of small telescope, the affidavit said. The agents did not find a weapon and Mr. Merryman told them he did not have one. They did not specify where they found the scope and ammunition.
Mr. Merryman “stated that the purpose of the spotting scope was for ‘doing recon,’” Ms. Koerber wrote. When asked why he was going to the White House, Mr. Merryman said “he had to deliver a message to President Biden,” the affidavit said.
That message, the affidavit said, was to advise Mr. Biden “that people were fed up with the divisiveness in the country and to turn back to God.”
Mr. Merryman called an agent later that day and said, “‘I have a bullet with your name on it,’” Ms. Koerber wrote.
On Thursday, he called the White House switchboard and said he was coming to “cut off the head of the snake/Antichrist,” Ms. Koerber wrote. When an agent called him later that day, Mr. Merryman said he was “coming for” Mr. Biden, according to the affidavit.
In the affidavit, Ms. Koerber also posted images from a Facebook account that she said belonged to Mr. Merryman.
The affidavit quoted several posts from the account that described Secret Service members as “agents of darkness” and said he had threatened one agent with a bullet.
Mr. Merryman was also charged with one count of interstate communication containing a threat to harm.
