Social media site Gab.com a hub for Pittsburgh synagogue shooter's antisemitism, investigation showed

One by one, FBI tactical specialist Evan Browne read the posts.

That Jews are evil.

About sending Jews to the ovens.

How Hitler was right.

The hate-filled, antisemitic words and images were collected by agents from Robert Bowers’ posts on the alt-right social media platform Gab.com between Sept. 8 and Oct. 5, 2018.

On Monday, dozens of the posts were displayed on monitors throughout the federal courtroom where he is on trial for killing 11 Jewish people as they worshipped at a Squirrel Hill synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018.

It is the third week of trial for Bowers, who is charged with 63 federal counts in connection with the attack at the synagogue that housed the Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha, Dor Hadash and New Light congregations.

Those killed included Rose Mallinger, 97; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Dan Stein, 71; Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Joyce Fienberg, 75; Melvin Wax, 87; Irving Younger, 69, and Richard Gottfried, 65.

The government is seeking the death penalty against Bowers, 50, of Baldwin, alleging that he committed a hate crime by attacking Jews while they attended religious services.

During opening statements, the defense admitted that Bowers attacked the synagogue but claimed he did not kill the victims because they were Jewish. Instead, they said Bowers was motivated by his anger that Jews were assisting HIAS, a refugee resettlement group.

Browne’s testimony, which will resume Tuesday morning, painted an image of someone obsessed with hatred for Jews.

Among his activity on the site, Browne said, Bowers posted pictures of 109 books in a Nazi-themed reading list, pictures of a politician walking on a city street holding a sign reading “Jews rape kids” and multiple pictures of cats with Adolf Hitler-style mustaches giving a Nazi salute.

An image from Sept. 20, 2018, showed firing-range targets and referred to a Jewish person as “an oven dodger.” Bowers also repeatedly used derogatory language to refer to Jewish people.

Bowers created his Gab account on Jan. 5, 2018, with the username “one dingo.”

He was active on the site. A spreadsheet column for posts liked by Bowers on the social media platform was more than 19,000 rows long, Browne told the jury. He had 385 followers and was following 394 accounts.

Shortly before Browne took the stand, the prosecution called Gab’s CEO, Andrew Torba, who testified that he created the platform because he “saw the need for a free speech platform online in light of censorship” on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Gab.com had about 800,000 unique accounts as of October 2018, Torba said. Antisemitism is allowed on the site “if it’s protected by the First Amendment,” he said.

Torba, 32, said his company notified law enforcement of Bowers’ activity on Gab the day of the synagogue shooting and immediately shut down his access to the account.

But the content lived on — and Torba confirmed that other users were able to voice support for it, or repost it, even after Bowers lost access.

During an often-contentious cross-examination by the defense, Torba confirmed that he had posted more than 70,000 times on Gab, sharing information about Christian nationalism and “The Great Replacement,” which posits that American natives are being replaced by immigrants crossing open borders.

“Our government is not doing anything to stop it, I know that,” Torba said.

He denied posting antisemitic content or anything that was proven false.

“All that content is protected by the First Amendment,” he said. “I’m a Christian, sir. I don’t lie.”

Also Monday, the government called the president and CEO of HIAS, the refugee resettlement agency, to testify.

Mark Hetfield said that HIAS was founded in 1903 as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society to help Jews fleeing pogroms and persecution in Eastern Europe.

Now, he said, HIAS assists refugees regardless of who they are or where they come from.

“Today, we welcome refugees because we are Jewish,” Hetfield said.

He cited the expression “Love the stranger as thyself,” which he called a Jewish principle, as HIAS’ guiding mission toward refugee resettlement. The teaching is mentioned 36 times in the Torah, more than any other commandment, Hetfield said.

HIAS works with about two dozen communities — and hundreds of Jewish congregations — across the United States.

It self-identifies as “a global Jewish organization,” and is one of nine refugee resettlement agencies working in the United States, Hetfield said.

Six of the nine are faith-based, with groups such as Catholics, Protestants and Evangelicals all represented. HIAS is the only Jewish organization, and it works with various government departments, including the U.S. Department of State and Health and Human Services.

In 2018, HIAS sponsored its first National Refugee Shabbat, scheduled to take place on Shabbat, the Jewish holy day.

The Dor Hadash congregation, one of two Jewish groups involved with HIAS in Pittsburgh, held the event Oct. 19-20, 2018, a week before the synagogue attack.

The morning of the attack, Bowers posted on Gab: “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

Earlier Monday, retired FBI firearms examiner Brett Mills said 67 cartridge casings found at the synagogue after the attack were fired from an AR-15 rifle that Bowers carried into the building.

They included five casings outside the large, plate-glass window in the front; 13 in the building’s lobby; 16 in the mezzanine; 13 in the synagogue’s Pervin Chapel; and 10 each in the New Light congregation’s sanctuary and a basement kitchen.

Mills, who has since retired from the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., examined more than 850 pieces of evidence. Now a contractor with the Department of Justice in Somalia’s Mogadishu, Mills methodically went through the scores of bullet and bullet fragments found in multiple rooms at the synagogue.

He described the various parts of a round of ammunition, and how the lands and grooves inside the barrel of a weapon imprint marks on bullets that help investigators identify the gun from which they were fired.

Mills said the synagogue shooter chose bullets made by the small manufacturer Lehigh Defense in Quakertown, Pa., that are intended to “penetrate deeper” into human tissue. The bullets have a head that looks like the tip of a Phillips-head screwdriver or a plus sign.

“These are supposed to create maximum cavitation,” he said.

As part of the lab’s work, Mills said they removed two Lehigh Defense bullets from Pittsburgh police SWAT Officer Timothy Matson’s olive-toned tactical vest. Mills also examined a tactical helmet Matson wore that morning in the synagogue.

The side of the helmet showed a bullet entered through the layers of Kevlar, and a layer of stiff plastic and foam inside.

“It did its job to try to prevent the bullet from picking up enough speed,” Mills said.

Matson was critically wounded during a shootout with Bowers in an upper-level classroom as he and other members of his team tracked the suspect through the synagogue. One of his colleagues testified earlier in the trial that when he saw Matson’s head wound as they rescued him, he wondered how he could have survived.

Matson sat in the back of the courtroom during Monday’s testimony as he has done almost every day of the trial.