A retired California lobbyist accused of shooting at an ABC affiliate last week was ordered to remain in custody without bail on Thursday after prosecutors said that he had continued to pose a threat in a nation rattled by political violence.
The former lobbyist, Anibal Hernandez Santana, faces state and federal charges related to a shooting at the Sacramento-area ABC affiliate, KXTV, in which three rounds were fired into the station’s lobby on Friday afternoon. No one was injured in the shooting.
In a brief hearing at the federal courthouse in Sacramento, Magistrate Judge Chi Soo Kim denied bail to Mr. Hernandez Santana after federal prosecutors argued that he had posed an unreasonable danger.
The shooting came a day after activists demonstrated outside KXTV to protest ABC’s removal of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and the Trump administration’s role in pressuring the network and affiliates to cancel the show. (The show resumed on Tuesday, nearly a week after it was removed.)
Thien Ho, the Sacramento County district attorney, said in an interview that he believed the shooting “was politically motivated.” He said that in the S.U.V. belonging to Mr. Hernandez Santana, investigators found a copy of “The Cult of Trump,” a book that argues President Trump uses mind control techniques to ensure loyalty.
Law enforcement officials also found a handwritten note in the vehicle that accused the Trump administration of “hiding Epstein and ignoring red flags,” and then referred to two top F.B.I. officials and Attorney General Pam Bondi, stating, “They’re next.” The officials said that Mr. Hernandez Santana had a note on a weekly planner that said “Do the Next Scary Thing” on the day of the incident.
Mr. Hernandez Santana, 64, of Sacramento, has been charged 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. He also faces state charges of assault with a deadly weapon, shooting into an occupied building and negligent discharge of a firearm.
Mr. Hernandez Santana had worked for more than 20 years as a lobbyist for health care, tribal and labor interests, as well as other organizations. He is a Puerto Rico-born Army veteran who earned a law degree, according to his defense lawyer, Mark Reichel.
In their request to hold Mr. Hernandez Santana without bail, federal prosecutors pointed to the notes found in Mr. Hernandez Santana’s vehicle and planner as signs that “he may have been planning additional acts of violence.”
Mr. Reichel criticized the federal government’s involvement in the case as itself being politically motivated. He said that state courts would usually handle the charges of firing a weapon in a school zone.
“This was a state court crime as originally charged, but in typical Trump D.O.J. fashion, they have brought it to federal court because they don’t like the fact that he does not support the MAGA party,” Mr. Reichel said in a statement this week.
On Thursday, Mr. Reichel said that Mr. Hernandez Santana attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and mental health therapy, as well as takes medication. He also said that the phrase “Do the Next Scary Thing” was nothing more than a “common motivational self-help mantra,” one that Mr. Hernandez Santana had at his house years earlier.
As for Mr. Ho’s accusation that the shooting was politically motivated, given the Trump book, Mr. Reichel said in a text message, “Owning books is not a crime.”
Mr. Reichel declined to address the shooting itself.
Sacramento Police Department officers arrested Mr. Hernandez Santana after linking surveillance footage from the shooting to a car that he owned. He was released on bail by the local authorities but then arrested again by F.B.I. agents over the weekend after they searched his car.
In a motion seeking to deny bail, the district attorney’s office said that at least one person was in the station’s lobby at the time of the shooting and that the shots were fired at a height that would have struck a person had someone been in the line of fire.
Mr. Ho said there was no evidence that anyone else was involved in the episode. He described the broad-daylight shooting at the TV station as an “attack on a free press” that sent chills through the local media.
“Public safety is not about going right or going left,” he said. “People deserve not only to be safe but to feel safe, and they did not on that particular day.”
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