Inset: Nicholas Gallo (Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office). Background: President Donald Trump pauses while speaking in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
A Florida man with autism was arrested last year for allegedly threatening President Donald Trump. His family is calling foul.
Nicholas Gallo, 33, stands accused of one felony count of electronic threats to kill, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
The suspect was taken into custody on December 6 after TikTok alerted Florida authorities about alleged threats he made in late November 2024, claiming he would “shoot Donald Trump with a gun.”
Since then, the case has spiraled out of control, in some ways literally, according to Gallo’s parents and his defense attorney.
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Gallo is currently facing a possible 15-year prison sentence on the single charge. However, the legal proceedings are taking place in a mental health court, where public access is restricted. This circumstance also adds challenges to Gallo’s defense, as per his attorney.
“It was bad to arrest him,” defense attorney Scott Skier told The Palm Beach Post this week. “It was worse to charge him. It was egregious to move him into mental health court, and it is tragic what the cumulative effect is here. The state is complicit in Nick’s medical demise.”
The ordeal has effectively traumatized the defendant, who is on the autism spectrum, mentally disabled, has an IQ of 50, and can neither read nor write, according to his mother, who is also his caregiver.
“He’s a 32-year-old man who wants to sleep in my bed, because he’s scared someone is going to come and get him,” Tina Gallo told Tequesta-based ABC affiliate WPBF earlier this year.
While Nicholas Gallo was quickly released back to his mother after his arrest, he has since lost his job at Goodwill, cannot access the internet, and now spends most of his time crying, his mother told the Post.
Tina Gallo does not believe her son could have made the threats in question.
“It’s heartbreaking to see him suffering like this, especially that he doesn’t understand,” his mother told the TV station.
The defendant’s attorney, for his part, does not think it matters even if his client did make the threats.
“He doesn’t appreciate the nature and the consequences of pretty much anything,” Skier told WPBF.
In body-worn camera footage from the defendant’s arrest, deputies explain the situation – and it does not go well.
“I’m not going nowhere! I don’t want to!” Nicholas Gallo screams. “I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t do nothing. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
The man’s attorney also noted an evidentiary oddity of the case: there is not a screenshot or recording of the alleged threat in question that the defense has been provided. Rather, the entire case is based on an email TikTok provided to law enforcement which purports to detail the shooting threat and an associated claim that “Donald Trump to die.”
Skier has called the prosecution’s evidence, so far, inadmissible hearsay – but fighting the charge using typical defenses, like a motion to dismiss, has been frustrated by the case being moved to mental health court, the attorney said. Skier told the Post he believes that was an intentional procedural ploy to get the dismissal motion away from the trial judge.
“As this case is pending, any statements from our office will be made in court or through filed pleadings,” a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office told the newspaper this week.
Skier said he believed prosecutors would drop the case once they learned the extent of Nicholas Gallo’s mental issues.
“I was surprised. That’s a fair word,” the attorney told the TV station. “But I was angered and dismayed by what I perceive to be just a complete lack of common sense.”
In the interim, the motion to dismiss has been rendered inoperative by the move to mental health court, Skier said. A competency evaluation has left the case in legal limbo.
A psychologist appointed by the state recently found the defendant was not mentally competent to stand trial – but held out the possibility that such a determination could change if he was subjected to social and behavioral training in a group home. Gallo’s mother and attorney rubbished the thought.
“If I could give him a pill and make him better and be able to get married and have a life and love somebody, I would give it to him,” Tina Gallo told the Post. “My son will never know happiness.”
Skier added: “You can’t restore something that was never there.”
Still, the defense attorney said he was considering going through with the “absurdity of him being found competent” – but only as a procedural ploy of his own, in order to refile the motion to dismiss.
“The people in the position of power should do the right thing,” Skier told WPBF. “And the right thing here is to recognize that they made a mistake.”
