A retired California lobbyist was in federal custody on Monday after he was accused of shooting into the lobby of a television station in Sacramento, and prosecutors said that investigators had found a note in his vehicle that criticized the Trump administration’s handling of the case against Jeffrey Epstein.
The lobbyist, Anibal Hernandez Santana, 64, of Sacramento, was scheduled to be formally charged Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court with possessing a firearm within a school zone, discharging a firearm within a school zone and interfering with a licensed broadcaster.
The charges were in addition to more serious state charges of assault with a deadly weapon, shooting into an occupied building and negligent discharge of a firearm in connection with the incident on Friday. No clear motive was specified by authorities.
Mr. Hernandez Santana had worked for more than 20 years as a legislative advocate for health care, tribal and labor interests, as well as other organizations. He was free on bond on Saturday when he was arrested again, this time by F.B.I. agents outside his apartment, according to the federal complaint.
In between the arrests, prosecutors said, investigators found the handwritten note in his Nissan sport-utility vehicle.
“For hiding Epstein & ignoring red flags,” the note said, according to prosecutors, apparently referring to the financier and former friend of the president who was found hanged in a jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The note also appeared to refer to two top F.B.I. officials, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino; Attorney General Pam Bondi; and Charlie Kirk, the right-wing political activist who was assassinated the prior week.
“Do not support Patel, Bongino, & AG Pam Bondie,” the note added. “They’re next. — C.K. from above.”
The Sacramento police arrested Mr. Hernandez Santana on Friday after a local ABC affiliate, KXTV, reported that a shooter had fired at least three rounds into its building around 1:30 p.m. No one was injured, but after surveillance footage and license plate readers matched his white vehicle with one spotted at the scene, the local authorities searched his home.
There, court documents say, investigators discovered a gun and a satchel matching those used by the shooter, along with a whiteboard planner on a refrigerator with a handwritten reminder, for that Friday, to “Do the Next Scary Thing.”
Mr. Hernandez Santana posted bail on the state charges and returned home, according to his lawyer, Mark Reichel, only to be surprised by federal agents hours later.
“He and I were working on his case over the telephone,” Mr. Reichel said. “He went outside to go get a Coke or something and got taken back into custody by the F.B.I.”
Mr. Hernandez Santana is ineligible for bail on the federal charges, according to a Sacramento County jail record.
Mr. Reichel said it was unclear why the local case had necessitated federal involvement. He noted that the shooting at the television station had occurred in the midst of a crackdown on the news media by the Trump administration in the wake of Mr. Kirk’s highly publicized murder.
Days earlier, Jimmy Kimmel, the ABC late night host, had been suspended from the airwaves after criticizing the Trump administration for seeking to distance itself from the person accused of killing Mr. Kirk.
One day before the shooting, protesters held a demonstration outside KXTV’s offices in Sacramento. The station is not owned by Sinclair or Nexstar, the two owners of television affiliates that had said they would take Mr. Kimmel’s show off the air before ABC temporarily halted its production. But KXTV is owned by Tegna, a separate company that Nexstar is seeking to purchase in a deal that would require approval by the Federal Communications Commission.
Mr. Kimmel’s suspension is to end on Tuesday, ABC officials said Monday.
Mr. Hernandez Santana, a Puerto Rico-born Army veteran with a law degree from the school now known as University of California Law San Francisco, has been retired since 2022, according to his social media profile. In a lawsuit filed in 2019 against a former employer for wrongful termination, he indicated that he cared for a young disabled son.
“There’s just no dispute that this state court charge of shooting at an occupied building was grabbed by the Trump Department of Justice to be used as Exhibit A in their argument that ‘radical left extremists’ are violent,” Mr. Reichel said. “They would not overlook this opportunity to grab this case and bring it to federal court for political reasons.”
According to Kyle Roberts, a detective with the Sacramento Police Department currently assigned to the F.B.I. Joint Terrorism Task Force, the note in the S.U.V. was not found until after Mr. Hernandez Santana had posted bail on Saturday.
It was unclear how the local television station might have been connected with Mr. Epstein, or why the note was not discovered until after the release of Mr. Hernandez Santana.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California declined to comment on the timing or the reason for federal involvement.
Shawn Hubler is The Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, reporting on the news, trends and personalities of Southern California.
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