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Each device, Sayoc said, consisted of a plastic pipe with a digital alarm clock and attached wires. He packed all of them with a potentially deadly mix: powder from fireworks, fertilizer, a pool chemical and glass fragments.
Sayoc, 57, paused his explanation and broke into sobs, finally collecting himself and speaking softly just before he pleaded guilty to the attack. “I know these actions were wrong, and I’m extremely sorry,” he said.
It was his first public explanation of the bombing campaign that gripped the nation just before the midterm elections in October. Sayoc mailed 16 devices to his intended victims around the country, who also included actor Robert De Niro and CNN. After a four-day manhunt, he was arrested in Florida, where he appeared to be living in a white van plastered with conservative slogans and images.
Prosecutors had called his bombing campaign a “domestic terror attack.”
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Sayoc pleaded guilty to 65 counts, which included using a weapon of mass destruction and interstate transportation of an explosive. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.
“Thankfully no one was hurt by these dangerous devices, but his actions left an air of fear and divisiveness in their wake,” Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said after the plea.
Sayoc was arrested Oct. 26 outside an auto-parts store near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The pro-Trump stickers that covered the nearby van condemned liberals and the media; one contained an image of Clinton under red cross hairs.
Sayoc was originally indicted on charges in connection with five devices sent to victims in Westchester County, a New York City suburb, and Manhattan. The 65 counts to which he pleaded covered all the devices he sent to victims around the country. He listed for the judge his intended victims.
The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of U.S. District Court, is expected to sentence Sayoc on Sept. 12.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.