A Chicago woman accused of threatening to kill former President Donald Trump and his teenage son Barron in June had traveled to the boy’s Florida school months earlier, where she was questioned outside by law enforcement, court and police records show.
Tracy Marie Fiorenza, 41, was arrested in Chicago this week following the unsealing of a federal criminal complaint in Florida charging her with transmitting threats to kill another person, which carries up to five years in prison.
At a detention hearing at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on Monday, prosecutors revealed that Fiorenza traveled in March to the Palm Beach County school where Trump’s son attends and “had an encounter with a sheriff.”
In asking that Fiorenza be held without bond, Rosenbloom cited her encounter with police in Florida, saying it showed “these are not idle threats from a behind a keyboard.”
Police reports obtained by the Tribune through an open records request revealed a security guard at the Oxbridge Academy in unincorporated Palm Beach County called 911 at about 7:30 a.m. on March 7 and reported that a woman named “Tracy” was standing outside the front gate asking about Barron Trump.
The security guard told police the woman was a “known stalker of a high-profile student,” according to the Palm Beach County sheriff’s reports. She had previously harassed people at the school by phone in October, claiming in a string of calls that “President Trump’s son attends the school” but that officials “were not following protocol,” according to the documents.
Fiorenza told a sheriff’s deputy at the scene that she wanted to talk to the headmaster because she’d “conducted her own investigation” into whether Barron was at the school, according to the report.
School officials said she was trespassing and would be arrested if she returned to the school, according to the report. Fiorenza was issued a warning and left the property. Later that afternoon, agents with the U.S. Secret Service responding to the incident found her at a nearby gas station and drove her back to her hotel, the report stated.
Two months later, on May 21, Fiorenza emailed the headmaster of the school and wrote, “I will state that I will shoot Donald Trump Sr. AND Baron Trump (sic) straight in the face at any opportunity that I get!” according to the five-page criminal complaint.
She allegedly sent a similar email to the same headmaster threatening the younger Trump’s life in early June, according to the complaint.
In June, a U.S. Secret Service agent reached out to Fiorenza and arranged a meeting at the agency’s Chicago headquarters, where Fiorenza was shown copies of the emails, according to the complaint.
Fiorenza “confirmed that she intentionally wrote them and sent them via email” from her then-residence in southwest suburban Plainfield, the complaint stated.
At Wednesday’s detention hearing, Rosenbloom said Fiorenza “poses a real danger” and should be denied bond. He acknowledged there may be mental health issues underlying the conduct, but said there were no conditions of release that could guarantee the safety of the community.
“The threats here are extremely violent in nature,” Rosenbloom said. He said in addition to the emails mentioned in the complaint, Fiorenza has sent numerous other communications to “a large group” of others, including government officials and celebrities, claiming she was being attacked by “bad actors.”
Another letter obtained by the Secret Service showed Fiorenza was trying in 2018 to “reach people who worked in White House,” Rosenbloom said.
The hearing was marred by several outbursts from Fiorenza, who started shaking her head during the prosecutor’s argument and then spoke directly to the judge, even as her attorney beseeched her to stop.
“I have been contacting the school for years trying to get them to follow mandated reporting protocol,” Fiorenza said. “People are not trained in the technology involved… I was going to pass out flyers to parents warning them before school started because no one was listening to me.”
She also claimed that Donald Trump is the leader of a pedophile ring and said that when she was a Chicago Public Schools teacher, the government followed her students and used “remote sexual stimulation” on them.
A Facebook page linked to Fiorenza and still publicly viewable stated she is a former social studies teacher and attended Carl Sandburg High School in Orland Park. The profile contains numerous violent and anti-Trump images and claims, as well as references to the “elite organization” of the Illuminati.
Her court-appointed attorney, Daniel Hesler, said that while the allegations are “pretty alarming,” there was “really no evidence she’s a threat to anyone in the real world.”
“There is nothing suggesting she is actually an aggressive person,” Hesler said.
Hesler also said that Fiorenza told him “psychotronic weapons are communicating directly into her head and she’s just trying to stop it.”
“She would never actually get close to Barron Trump because she’s afraid of him,” he said. “This is all a little wacky but it doesn’t say that she’s a danger.”
Fiorenza objected to the comment from her attorney, saying “I have a masters degree in psychology. I am not delusional!”
U.S Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cummings ordered Fiorenza remain in custody pending transfer to the Southern District of Florida. She’s currently being held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, records show.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
