Prosecutors claim that more than a month before he charged into Hanukkah celebrations with a machete, Grafton Thomas used his mobile phone to search the internet: “Why did Hitler hate the Jews?”

That query – entered three more times over the following weeks – was just one red flag authorities found when they combed Thomas’s belongings, officials said. There were more online searches, for temples “near me”. There were journals with the words “Nazi Culture” on the same page as a Swastika and a Star of David.

The discoveries detailed by an FBI agent would bring Thomas to court on Monday on federal hate-crime charges, a day after he was charged with attempted murder over the stabbing that wounded five people at a rabbi’s home in New York’s Rockland County. The 38-year-old answered routine questions, telling a judge he was “coherent”, before shuffling away, feet shackled, to be held without bail.

Thomas’s family have said he has “no known history of anti-Semitism” and attributed any responsibility in Saturday’s rampage in the New York suburb of Monsey to “profound mental illness”.

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But the federal criminal complaint points to his handwritten journals and online history as evidence that he sought to target Jews in the attack.

Thomas, a resident of Greenwood Lake, New York, did not enter a plea to the latest charges at his court appearance in White Plains, where he faces five counts of obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs by attempting to kill with a dangerous weapon and causing injuries. He pleaded not guilty on Sunday to five state counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary.

Even before Monday’s charges brought a potential motive into focus, many community leaders had expressed concern about a spate of attacks on Jewish residents.

Saturday’s stabbing was the 13th anti-Semitic incident in three weeks in New York state, the governor said, calling the Monsey attack “domestic terrorism”. On December 10, four people were shot dead in an attack on a Jersey City kosher grocery store. (© Washington Post)

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