Three University of South Alabama students will stay in federal custody at least until Monday on charges that they threatened President Trump on social media in the days before his rally on their campus in Mobile, Ala.
Amare Jemal Woods, Cameron Lamark Lewis and Kayla Leaann Smith were arrested and appeared in federal court on Friday as the president was traveling to the city for an evening rally at the university's Mitchell Center. Each was charged by criminal complaint in a separate case. The cases, kept under seal until then, were made public that afternoon at the prosecutor's request, hours before Trump was scheduled to take the stage. Magistrate Judge Katherine P. Nelson ordered all three held until detention hearings on Monday, Oct. 5. Woods waived a preliminary hearing, and the judge found probable cause for his case to go forward.
According to an FBI affidavit, Woods commented "he gotta die bro" on Sept. 27 beneath a TikTok post about the president's visit. Smith is accused of answering another TikTok post about the visit with "We only got one chance let's take it," then posting an image of a person pretending to hold a gun. Lewis allegedly wrote on X that people would "remember the University of South Alabama the same way they remember Utah Valley University," the campus where the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed last year. The court records describe the three alleged threats as separate rather than part of a coordinated plot, 1819 News reported.
Investigators traced the posts to the students in the days leading up to the rally. Agents came across them during social media intelligence searches ahead of the visit and identified the people behind the accounts through emergency disclosure requests and information from university police, according to an account of the affidavits by Lagniappe, a Mobile news outlet. Mobile County Sheriff Paul Burch had said earlier in the week that his office was helping federal authorities monitor social media activity tied to the president's appearance.
Threatening the president is a federal crime punishable by a fine, up to five years in prison or both.
Jason Darley, the court-appointed lawyer for Woods, told the Mobile television station WALA that the Secret Service takes threats extremely seriously. "The problem is that the president is on campus and Woods is a student," he said. Darley said he does not believe his client meant to harm Trump. "If this kid is a threat, then everybody pecking on a keyboard is a threat," he told the station. He acknowledged that the law takes a hard line, noting that it does not require that a person be capable of carrying out a threat, and said he understood why the judge ordered the students held while Trump was in town. He plans to argue that Woods poses no danger. "I don't honestly think any of these three are threats," Darley said.
The university condemned the threats in a statement, saying it "unequivocally condemns any form of threats directed at elected officials or any individual with whom we disagree" and that "there is a clear line between exercising free expression and engaging in intimidation or unlawful conduct."
Trump took the stage as scheduled on Friday evening for a midterm campaign rally in the arena, which the Republican National Committee had rented; the university had said beforehand that it was not sponsoring the event. Back in Mobile about 11 years after a 2015 rally there early in his first campaign, he told the crowd, "It sort of all began here."
None of the three students has been convicted, and the complaints remain accusations. Lewis and Smith are due back before Nelson at 2 p.m. Monday for preliminary and detention hearings, and Woods's detention hearing is set for 3:30 p.m.