A St. Paul man faces a federal felony charge for allegedly putting a $45,000 hit on U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in a TikTok post.
Tyler Maxon Avalos, 29, is charged in U.S. District Court of Minnesota with making a threat with the intent to injure in connection with his alleged post, which included a caption that read, “WANTED: Pam Bondi / REWARD: 45,000 / DEAD OR ALIVE (Preferably Dead).”
It included a photo of Bondi with a sniper-scope red dot on her forehead. Under the photo, Avalos allegedly wrote: “cough cough / when they don’t serve us, then what?”
A TikiTok user from Detroit saw the post and reported it to the FBI National Threat Operations Center on Oct. 9.
Avalos’ TikTok page, which has since been deleted, included an anarchist FAQ book and the spelling of “wacko” with an anarchist symbol for the second letter, the complaint said.
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Avalos was arrested Oct. 16 and went before a judge Oct. 22. He was released the same day on a personal recognizance bond, with conditions including wearing a GPS monitoring device and staying off computers and the internet.
Avalos is “not guilty of any crime,” his attorney Daniel Gerdts said Tuesday, adding he has yet to be indicted by a grand jury, which in federal court is required for felonies to move forward. “Our hope is that the grand jury would reject this frivolous charge.”
When asked about the post, Gerdts said, “No reasonable person would consider that a true threat.”
Minnesota court records show Avalos has been on supervised probation since July 2022 after pleading guilty to felony harassment for assaulting his then-girlfriend in Eagan. In April 2016, he was convicted of misdemeanor domestic assault.
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