A Kent State University professor known for his anti-Israel views was charged in federal court with lying to the FBI.
Julio Pino, 58, of Kent, was charged via a criminal information with one count of making a false statement to law enforcement.
The charge was announced by U.S. Attorney Justin E. Herdman and FBI Special Agent in Charge Stephen D. Anthony.
According to the criminal information filed in U.S. District Court in Cleveland:
Pino was a Facebook friend of a St. Louis resident identified in the information at J.E. Pino posted numerous statements and images on social media regarding J.E. and J.E.’s child custody issues between May 2015 and January 2016.
Among these conversations, on or about September 11, 2015, Defendant and J.E. had the following communications:
J.E. wrote, “I’m playing the game backwards. and winning! . . . I will kill 100s of people if they take my rights as a father away!”
Pino stated, “Yes, in military terms this is known as ‘the Parthian shot’.”
J.E. wrote, “hell, 10000’s! . . . It’;s [sic] time for Men to act like men again. . . . See the thing I’ve got on my side is God. That allows me certain rights. One of those rights is to strike down evil with furious vengeance! . . . People don’t even know how crazy I am yet! That’s because no ones ever tried to take my [relative]. They’re about to meet to [the] Monster they’ve created.”
Pino responded, “Devour them, [J.E.].”
J.E. wrote, “Thank You! I will! 🙂
J.E. wrote on his Facebook wall a series of threatening communications in December 2015 through January 2016 directed against a St. Louis Family Court Judge adjudicating J.E.’s child custody case. On Jan. 11, 2016, J.E. also wrote on his own Facebook wall, “I (expletive) love Julio Pino, even if he does eventually do something that most consider horrible, I’ll still love him because I know him in a deeper way than most of you even could.”
Law enforcement authorities in St. Louis arrested J.E. on Jan. 11, 2016, for making threatening communications against the judge.
The FBI was involved in investigating J.E.’s threats against the judge. FBI agents on Jan. 18, 2016, interviewed Pino in Miami about his social media posts and comments concerning his interactions with J.E. and discussions with J.E. about J.E.’s child custody issues. The FBI agents recorded this interview in connection with an ongoing investigation concerning, among other things, Pino’s interactions with J.E. as described above.
Federal grand jury subpoenas from the Northern District of Ohio were issued during the course of that investigation. In response to questions from FBI agents concerning whether he ever had conversations with J.E. on the social media accounts, Pino, knowing full well the content of his social media interactions with J.E., stated he “never heard of [J.E. or] maybe I heard of him through the news,” he did not recall conversations with J.E. and that his conversations with J.E. were “invented conversation[s].” When asked again if he remembered the conversation with J.E., Pino responded, “I never heard of him, well maybe I heard of him through the news,” and then later stated, “the other way around it is certainly possible that he could have heard of me and made up this conversation, invented it.”
Cleveland.com reported: Pino shouted “death to Israel” during a speech by a former Israeli diplomat in October 2011.
In 2007, he was cited on websites as being linked to an extremist Islamic website that espoused a holy war. Kent State officials at the time said the extremist site had no connection to Pino or to the university.
Pino also wrote a column in 2003 in the Kent Stater, the campus newspaper, that explored the motives of a Palestinian suicide bomber.
