West Valley man charged with making terroristic threats against Trump, Biden

A West Valley man is facing charges accusing him of leaving suspicious packages at local churches addressed to Presidents Trump and Biden.

A West Valley man is facing charges accusing him of leaving suspicious packages at local churches addressed to Presidents Trump and Biden. (Andrey_Popov, Shutterstock)


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Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • James Totten, 37, faces charges accusing him of threatening Trump and Biden with packages.
  • Two packages labeled with 'FBI' and 'ISIS' were found at churches in Utah.
  • Fingerprints linked Totten to the packages, and he allegedly posted about them online.

WEST VALLEY CITY — A Utah man is facing criminal charges accusing him of threatening both President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden.

James Totten, 37, of West Valley, was charged Friday in 3rd District Court with two counts of making a terroristic threat using a weapon of mass destruction, a second-degree felony.

On Jan. 12, police were called to a church at 6755 W. 3800 South, where a suspicious package was left near the front door. The package had the words "FBI" and "ISIS" written on it, according to charging documents, and was labeled: "Not a bomb ... but still handle with care" and was addressed to Biden at the White House from "Prince of ISIS."

A bomb squad was called and then detonated the package, which "contained miscellaneous items, including used spark plugs," investigators said.

Then on Feb. 16, another package was found at a church at 4251 S. 4800 West that also had the words "FBI" and "ISIS Safe" on it, and was addressed to "Donald Trump at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, DC 20500," according to the charges.

A bomb squad also detonated that package and found it contained "miscellaneous items, including a letter to Donald Trump from 'Eagle Eye.'"

Using fingerprints collected from the packages, detectives linked both incidents to Totten, the charges state.

West Valley police checked Totten's Facebook page "and found he made several posts stating he couldn't believe he wasn't arrested yet, a picture of the same items that were found in the packages and said he 'shipped some stuff to Donald Trump,'" according to charging documents.

Police also found posts where Totten allegedly refers to himself as "Prince of Isis" and "Eagle Eye."

"(He) also wrote a letter stating he would turn himself in, gave specific coordinates of a military installation and the results would be cataclysmic," the charges state.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Pat Reavy interned with KSL NewsRadio in 1989 and has been a full-time journalist for either KSL NewsRadio, Deseret News or KSL.com since 1991. For the past 25 years, he has worked primarily the cops and courts beat.

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