Newly Minted DOJ Employee Michael Caputo Keeps Posting ‘Antifa’ Death Fantasies Online

The week before last, veteran GOP operative Michael Caputo was hired by one of President Trump’s most controversial nominees to advise him ahead of what is expected to be a tough confirmation fight. It was a surprising pick, in part because Caputo has a history of his own that includes years of conspiratorial rants on social media. And, even in the days since he joined the Trump administration, Caputo has made multiple posts online continuing a long-running bit in which he muses about “antifa” coming to his home to threaten him, and instead being eaten by wild animals. 

In the early morning hours of April 14, Caputo posted a picture of a panther on Elon Musk’s “X” social network along with an ominous caption indicating it was lying in wait for “antifa” near his home. 

“This Florida Panther was in my neighborhood,” Caputo wrote. “Antifa may come again, but this time they won’t leave.”

One day earlier, on April 13, Caputo posted a nearly identical message along with a picture of a black bear. And, on April 12, Caputo made a similar post featuring an image of an alligator and another message indicating “antifa” would meet its end in the creature’s jaws.

The New York Times reported that Caputo was officially hired the week before last to advise Ed Martin, who Trump nominated in February to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and who has held that role in an acting capacity for most of the administration so far. According to the Times, prior to his hiring, Caputo was “informally counseling” Martin, a longtime conservative activist who served as an attorney for some Jan. 6 defendants. Martin’s nomination has attracted controversy for his past work and his conduct since arriving in the U.S. attorney’s office, including sending letters to Democrats in Congress indicating their criticisms of Trump and the Supreme Court could be seen as “threats against public officials.” Senate Democrats have put a hold on Martin’s nomination, slowing down the process, and at least one Republican senator has expressed skepticism about his confirmation. When Caputo’s hiring was revealed, Martin gave a statement to the Times praising him as “a great fighter” with a long personal relationship with Trump.

Caputo certainly does have a reputation as a political brawler. Throughout his career, Caputo specialized in what he has called “smashmouth” politics. His no-holds-barred approach has included sparring — on the internet and in other mediums — with members of the media, including with this reporter. And his combative approach to the internet has been evident in the days since he signed on with Martin. Within just the past week, Caputo has, among other things, issued an ominous warning to a Democratic strategist who criticized Martin and mocked a woman with an OnlyFans page as “fat.” And, on April 19, after journalist John Harwood posted anti-Trump commentary, Caputo declared Harwood had “completely lost his mind” and predicted he would have a “violent outburst that will cause something horrible.”

Yet even among these intense messages, Caputo’s dark musings about “antifa” stand out as particularly dramatic. Caputo’s posts about the animals hunting down “antifa” clearly contain an element of the fantastical and are almost certainly sarcastic. However, even as humor, this type of violent language is unusual coming from an employee of the Department of Justice. Last week, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sent out a letter to agency staff restricting their social media activity amid concerns about political rhetoric posted by some Trump appointees. 

Caputo’s recent comments fit with what has been a running series on his “X” account involving visions of animals taking down “antifa.” In other posts he has referred to the gator as “Victor.” Caputo’s April 13 message about the bear prompted another user of the site to share a picture of another gator and declare that, “Victor has backup.”

“It’s always lunchtime for Victor,” Caputo replied. 

In an email to TPM, Caputo suggested the posts were entirely joking. 

“To comply with the April 15 DOJ policy directive on personal use of social media, I have stopped training attack alligators, bears and panthers and returned to schooling humorless media,” Caputo wrote. 

These tales of the bear and the gator — and the suggestion “antifa” would fall prey to them — have been part of a larger narrative that Caputo has spun on social media in recent years, including descriptions of alleged threats. In Caputo’s telling, he had to move with his family from their home in Western New York to Florida due to “antifa” and others on the left. Since arriving in the Sunshine State, Caputo has made multiple posts suggesting that he felt safer there because local laws would authorize him to defend his home with deadly force against any potential “antifa” intrusion.

“After attacks on me and threats against my children back home in NY, I do not reveal where we live,” Caputo said in a March 2023 post referencing his move. “I searched for this sanctuary for a year. We are now out of reach of the disordered Antifa types in a state where the Castle Doctrine assures I could introduce them to the coroner.” 

And along with his own weaponry, Caputo repeatedly indicated he had backup — from the animals. 

“I know: Antifa is afraid of Florida. Gators find skinny, black-bloc, pimpled weaklings delicioso,” Caputo wrote in April 2023.

Caputo elaborated on the theme in a March 2024 post after he noted “Our alligator Victor is sneaking up on a bird.”

“Victor’s too lazy to attack. He tried to scare the bird into dropping the fish for him to eat. He’s like a hunter waiting for a deer to fall dead in front of his tree stand,” wrote Caputo, before adding, “Unless it’s Antifa. We’ve been training him for that eventuality.”

In multiple other “X” posts, Caputo has warned that Democrats are in league with “antifa.” And while Caputo’s visions of bears and gators are striking, he isn’t alone among right-wing commentators and Trump administration officials in his fascination with “antifa” — or his concern they are working with Trump’s political opponents. 

“Antifa,” which is short for “antifascist,” has been a persistent fixation for many on the right during the Trump era. While some activists who identify as “antifa” have participated in protests and vandalism in recent years, the group is not a single, defined organization. Many Trump allies have baselessly tried to tie his political opponents to “antifa” and even promoted a false narrative suggesting the group, rather than the president’s supporters, was responsible for January 6. Caputo’s personal focus on “antifa” also fits with a pattern of his perceiving threats that notably preceded his decision to take leave from a prior government post. 

Caputo, who describes Trump’s longtime adviser, Roger Stone, as akin to a “big brother” and mentor, has known the president since the 1980s. During that decade, he worked for the DC lobbying firm headed by Stone and Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. Caputo’s career also took him abroad. A veteran, Caputo worked for a USAID-funded endeavor that consulted on the election process in Russia in the 1990s. He ended up living in the country and working on public relations for various politicians and businesses in Russia and Ukraine through the early 2000s. 

These various connections helped Caputo secure a place in Trump’s orbit as the president began his political career. He worked on Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020. And, during the first Trump administration, Caputo served as an assistant secretary for public affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services. Caputo’s ties to Russia also helped attract the interest of investigators with the House, Senate, and special counsel Robert Mueller who were examining the Kremlin’s interference into the 2016 election. 

Caputo has vehemently denied any wrongdoing in conjunction with that campaign and framed the results of the Mueller probe as vindication. He has also written publicly about how being “ensnared” in what he has called a “bogus” investigation kicked off a wave of danger. According to Caputo, the attention led to what he described as over 50 violent threats against him. 

Since then, social media controversies and descriptions of anticipated “antifa” violence have both played a prominent role in Caputo’s career. In April 2020, shortly after he was tapped to serve as the top spokesperson from Trump’s HHS during the COVID pandemic, CNN reported that Caputo had deleted almost all of his old tweets. Prior to that deletion, Caputo’s posts contained what the network described as “racist and derogatory comments about Chinese people” and conspiratorial assertions both Democrats and the press were trying to benefit from the virus. 

A lengthy Politico profile noted that, soon after, in May 2020, Caputo’s wife called police in their Western New York town to report a man had driven past their home shouting obscenities. The next month, as false rumors swirled in far-right circles that antifa was staging attacks on “white neighborhoods,” Caputo, according to the Politico profile, called police to say he was “advised that antifa will be targeting small towns tonight” and “concerned” that “they will target East Aurora and his residence.”

All of this culminated in a September 2020 incident where Caputo made a 26 minute broadcast on Facebook Live where, without providing any evidence, he warned that government scientists and others in the federal bureaucracy were plotting “sedition” against President Trump. Caputo also claimed that there were anti-Trump “hit squads being trained all over this country.” At the time, Caputo had just been diagnosed with head and neck cancer. While he did not reveal that on the broadcast, Caputo said he was not in good physical health and declared that his “mental health has definitely failed.” He went on to describe feeling “alone” in Washington where there were “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment.”

“There alone, shadows are so long,” Caputo said. 

After the streaming session made headlines, Caputo apologized to HHS staff for bringing them negative attention. He attributed his statements on the broadcast to combined stress from his physical health issues and alleged death threats. He subsequently took a leave of absence. 

Caputo went on to drop out of the public eye to undergo cancer treatment. In the Politico profile, which was published in August 2021, Caputo indicated he turned to religion during this time and expressed a belief his disease was “stress-induced” after the Russia probes and his work on the pandemic response. Caputo also indicated the experience had led him to “really turning away from smashmouth politics.”

However, a few years after that story of survival and redemption, Caputo is back in government and clearly back to brawling on social media. And, despite insisting he remains under threat of violence, Caputo shows no interest in retreating. On April 17, Caputo shared an “X” post mocking the author Stephen King for criticizing Trump. He included a dramatic vow.

“I’m never deleting this app,” Caputo said.