Posting on social media could garner a knock on the door from an FBI agent, according to two users who said agents went to their homes seeking “conversations” over statements they made online.
The FBI agents in both instances said the users had not said or done anything “illegal” in their posts on social media platform X, but still wanted to talk further about the content of their social media feeds, the two users told The Epoch Times.
Kam Martin, a wife and mother from Texas, said an FBI agent knocked on her door on Feb. 22 while her husband was home with their children.
The post criticized the recent probation sentencing of a man whom investigators had charged with unlawful disposal of remains and obstruction of justice in the death of Ms. Martin’s cousin, Macy Peebles, after the pair left a casino together in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in February 2023.
The coroner’s report said the woman died of an accidental overdose of amphetamine, fentanyl, and methamphetamine, but her family pushed to reopen the case due to no prior history of drug use and what they perceive as “suspicious” circumstances surrounding her death.
Ms. Martin contacted the agent on the phone.
“It’s starting to feel like the scrutiny is on me,” Ms. Martin told the FBI agent.
The agent said she had done nothing illegal in her post—which was seen by more than 8 million X users—but that others had found the name of the judge involved in her cousin’s case and sent the judge a death threat.
He asked her if she knew anyone who could have made the threat, and she said no and asked the agent to call her lawyer. She hasn’t heard from the FBI agent since that exchange.
However, Ms. Martin was not alone in receiving a home visit from the FBI over her social media feed.
Zack Bonfilio, a home remodeling business owner also from Texas, said two FBI agents showed up at his front door on March 8 while he was away. He spoke with them briefly through his doorbell monitoring camera, where they showed their identification cards before agreeing to call Mr. Bonfilio on the phone.
The agents informed Mr. Bonfilio that he had not done or said anything illegal in his posts but that they simply wanted to have a conversation about his social media activity.
He asked the agents if there was a specific post, like in Ms. Martin’s case, that prompted their visit to his home. However, the agents said there was no specific post that alerted them to Mr. Bonfilio’s X feed. He then told them his lawyer would reach out.
While the agent who visited Ms. Martin said they were looking for information on alleged threats to the judge involved in the case of her cousin’s death, Mr. Bonfilio is still unsure why the FBI was interested in him.
He said some of his posts might be perceived as “politically incorrect” or “offensive” to some, but he has never made threats to anyone nor encouraged any kind of illegal behavior while on social media or elsewhere.
“I have not said anything that has warranted an FBI visit because I’m not stupid,” Mr. Bonfilio told The Epoch Times.
The Epoch Times asked the FBI how individual users appear on the bureau’s radar for home visits.
Sentencing Criticism
Ms. Martin, still reeling from her cousin’s unexpected death in February 2023, took to X on Feb. 20 to criticize the probation sentencing of the man investigators caught on camera illegally dumping her cousin’s body after they say she died from a drug overdose.The district attorney handling the case told local Baton Rouge reporters in February that there was “no evidence whatsoever that we could even ethically present this case to a grand jury for homicide charges.”
But Ms. Martin says her cousin had no prior history of drug use and had never met the man before the night of her death. Authorities found her cousin half-naked with her underwear inside out, something Ms. Martin finds to be “suspicious,” but there were no signs of injury or trauma to the woman’s body, they said.
Investigators believe she left with the man willingly and then took the drugs that led to her overdose, but her family wants the case reopened after drawing attention to the man’s previous criminal history, which includes aggravated assault and illegal use of weapons relating to a 2007 shooting at the Mall of Louisiana.
“How can this be possible that all he gets is probation?” Ms. Martin asked.
“So, I posted that on Twitter [social media platform X], and it started going crazy. It just sort of went viral. And then I guess Elon Musk put an exclamation point [in response to the post]. How it got to him, I have no idea,” she said.
The FBI first visited her cousin’s immediate relatives in Louisiana to ask about the X post.
She said her family “naively thought that the FBI was like, ‘Hi, we’re here to help.’” regarding her cousin’s death, but instead, the agents brought up the X post.
Her family asked if they should tell Ms. Martin to remove the post from X or if she had done “something wrong,” but they declined and said, “Absolutely not.”
“They wanted to know if [the family] knew anyone who could have made a threat or something,” to the judge presiding over her cousin’s case.
When her family said they knew nothing, the FBI then showed up at Ms. Martin’s door on Feb. 22 while her husband was home alone with their children. He asked her husband the same question about the threat, and that’s when she called the agent on the phone.
The agent confirmed that he visited Ms. Martin’s house because of a threat made against the judge. He asked if she knew anything: names, leads, or any tips that could help locate the perpetrator, whose threat had reached the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center (NTOC) in West Virginia.
When the agent said the IP address for the threat was tracked to a foreign country, Ms. Martin said she was “very confused” as to why the agent knocked on her door in the first place.
“He’s like, ‘Well, we just wanted to know if you knew, or heard, or saw anyone who could have made a threat?’ And I’m like, ‘Absolutely not.’” she said.
That’s when Ms. Martin said she would have her lawyer call the agent directly, but he didn’t answer the phone when her attorney reached out. She is still confused by the visit.
Political Speech
Meanwhile, Mr. Bonfilio told The Epoch Times, “If you look at my content, I’m very outspoken, and I’m very uncensored. I swear a lot. There are some offensive things. [But] I can almost assure you that nothing I post is illegal.”The home contractor believes he might have been targeted for his political speech against President Joe Biden but did not know what specific social media post could have alerted the FBI to visit him at home.
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m not saying radical things,” Mr. Bonfilio added.
However, he said he has been targeted for years by left-leaning online users who report his statements to platforms such as TikTok and Facebook to get him “canceled” or banned from their platforms.
“So, it’s possible that this could have been an anonymous complaint from somebody who maybe stalks me, but after seeing the multiple stories on the news of them doing this to other people, I’m leaning more towards it was a knock and talk, maybe some intimidation tactics,” Mr. Bonfilio surmised.
He was contacted by a former FBI agent who believes an anonymous tip was likely sent to the bureau’s reporting system.
“What these agents most likely did was they were supposed to either just push [the tip] to the bottom of a pile, or at maximum, he said, make a phone call. And instead, they wanted to get out of the office,” the former agent told him.
