A Black man from New Jersey who was until recently a U.S. Marine has been charged with threatening to kill white people — “as many as I possibly can” — in a ranting message posted online, federal prosecutors said on Monday.
The man, Joshua Cobb, acknowledged to F.B.I. agents in an interview last month that he had written the threatening message, admitted posting other ominous comments and described in detail several sites he had considered as potential targets, a criminal complaint says.
During the interview, the complaint says, Mr. Cobb also discussed his affinity for other mass shooters, including the gunman who killed 17 people at a Florida high school in 2018 and the white teenager who killed 10 Black people in a racist attack at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022.
Mr. Cobb, 23, of Trenton, was charged with one count of transmitting a threat in interstate and foreign commerce. He was scheduled to make an initial appearance before a magistrate judge in Federal District Court in Trenton Monday afternoon, the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey said. It was not immediately clear whether he appeared in court.
Mr. Cobb faces up to five years in prison if convicted. Saverio Viggiano, a federal public defender representing him, declined to comment.
Mr. Cobb posted the message that led to the charge against him on an unidentified social media platform in December 2022, the complaint says, starting with the statement: “I want to cause mayhem on the white community.”
“The reason i specifically want to target white people is because as a black male, they will NEVER understand my struggles,” he continued, according to the complaint. “Same way I will never understand their struggles, but I don’t care to.”
He added: “I want to erase them. All of them really, but in this case as many as I possibly can.”
Mr. Cobb wrote in the message that he had “officially” begun to plan his attack; that he had acquired two of the four guns he planned to use; that the attack would take place in 2023 in New Jersey; and that he expected it to happen “close to an important holiday to their race.”
In several subsequent messages posted on another social media site in the first half of 2023, the complaint says, he discussed his hopes of transforming into a serial killer.
“There is no way out for me,” he wrote in one message, according to the complaint. “The only way out is bloodshed.”
Investigators traced the posts to at least one email account and internet protocol, or I.P., address associated with Mr. Cobb, according to the complaint, which does not say whether Mr. Cobb had obtained the guns he claimed to have or when federal agents began to investigate his activity.
Mr. Cobb joined the Marines at some point last year, according to the complaint. He began his basic training in South Carolina last June, completed it in October and was then assigned to a military base in California, the complaint says.
When F.B.I. agents interviewed him at the base in April, he “provided detailed information on three locations he chose as possible targets for his attack,” according to the complaint.
The sites included a branch of a New Jersey gym chain and a supermarket in Robbinsville, N.J., a Trenton suburb, the complaint says. Mr. Cobb also discussed the best time “for his entry and exit plans based on his research and surveillance of the locations,” the complaint says.
Mr. Cobb was discharged from the Marines on or about last Friday, the complaint says.
