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Federal prosecutors in Boston plan to seek an 18-month prison
term for Nicholas Zuckerman, 25, who pleaded guilty in February
to charges related to comments he posted on Harvard's Instagram
account in May 2017.
Prosecutors said he made the online comments in response to news
reports that the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Ivy League
school would hold a special commencement ceremony on May 23,
2017, to celebrate the accomplishments of black graduates.
"If the blacks only ceremony happens, then I encourage violence
and death at it. I'm thinking two automatics with extendo
clips," Zuckerman wrote in an Instagram post 10 days before the
ceremony, according to prosecutors.
That same day, prosecutors said, Zuckerman under the username
"russian_goalkeeper94" posted another online comment, which
read: "#bombharvard and end their pro-black agenda."
The ceremony went forward as planned with a heightened law
enforcement presence. The FBI eventually tracked Zuckerman down
in Arizona, and in an interview he admitted making the threats,
prosecutors said.
They said Zuckerman, who is white, picked his victims
specifically because they were black and during an FBI interview
also discussed the "difficulty" of being a Republican after U.S.
President Donald Trump's election.
He was arrested in June 2018 and pleaded guilty in April to two
counts of transmitting a threat to injure another person.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Scott Malone
and Tom Brown)
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