Jarrett Maki, who works for a local soccer team, had been under police investigation since July
Hasan Piker featured a Detroit man on his live Twitch stream just a week before he was charged with nearly a dozen counts of making terroristic threats.
Jarrett Maki on Aug. 30 toured Piker—who is set to appear at the New Yorker Festival—and his crew around the Detroit City Football Club, where the 25-year-old works as the sports information director, handing the streamer merchandise and media passes to attend that day’s soccer game.
Apparently, Maki had been under police investigation since July. According to police, Maki called in threats to nearly a dozen restaurants in the East Alton, Illinois, area, including local McDonald’s and Taco Bell franchises, between July 28 and Aug. 27—just three days before appearing on Piker’s stream. He allegedly told staff he was going to shoot up the businesses and “blow their heads off.”
On Sept. 6, Maki was arrested and accused of making a bomb and active shooter threats. In Illinois, making terroristic threats is a Class X felony, punishable by up to 30 years in prison. He was released on “pretrial conditions” since the state forbids cash bonds, with a preliminary hearing set for Oct. 3.
Piker, for his part, has long pushed radical rhetoric. He once said “America deserved 9/11” and denied Hamas’s atrocities during Oct. 7.
His meeting with Maki in Detroit followed his speech at the People’s Conference for Palestine, which featured Palestinian terrorists. He encouraged attendees to continue the anti-Israel movement out of “spite” and “anger.”
“Whenever you feel like change is not coming, and you feel like nihilism is kicking in, remember if you can’t find it in your heart to see a better future, do it out of spite to continue this movement,” Piker said. “Find that anger within your heart to continue.”
“As long as you continue pushing, the dam will inevitably break,” he added. “We are closer than ever before in arriving at justice for the Palestinian population.”
Earlier in August, Piker was featured at the Democratic Socialists of America biennial convention in Chicago, which the Washington Free Beacon attended. He sat down for a livestreamed conversation with socialist “Squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.).
“Zionism is an exterminationist ideology built around ethno-religious supremacist values,” Piker told Tlaib during the interview.
