Chandler police: Secret Service investigating death threat against President Trump

CHANDLER, Ariz. (KSAZ) - A local Twitter account has caught the attention of the Secret Service. The person who launched the account appears to live in Chandler and has been using Twitter to make death threats against President Donald Trump.

Even if the tweets are a joke, threatening the President and Vice President is still against the law. The Chandler Police Department was alerted and they've forwarded all of their information to the feds.

Police say they were made aware of the threat on March 6 and immediately contacted Secret Service, who told Chandler police that they were already aware of the threat that was made via Twitter.

The name on the account is John Silva and since February 27th, he's been tweeting about killing President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.  The first tweet on February 27th read hashtag "kill trump doing it tonight."

Jeff Moriarty used to work cyber security for Intel and is FOX 10's social media manager.  He says the Secret Service has to take every threat seriously.

"Looking at these tweets, I don't know if this is somebody serious or if they're goofing around. The privacy and anonymity people think they have online causes them to do stupid things."

The page also contains doctored photos of the President with gunshot wounds. Moriarty says even if the whole thing is a joke, whoever is behind it has made a big mistake.

"Oh he is definitely in a lot of trouble. What's likely already happened, the Secret Service has already requested internal information from Twitter."

We've reached out to the Secret Service about the threats, but haven't received a response.

The person behind the account could be facing fines or up to five years in prison.