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DOJ investigates dozens of threats to election workers

This Monday, justice sentenced an Ohio man to 30 months in prison for intimidating a public official during the elections.

Fotografía de un hombre votando en las elecciones de 2020.

Voter in Des Moines, Iowa, in 2020. / (Flickr: Phil Roeder)

Published by
Rosana Rábago Sainz

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced this Monday that it is investigating dozens of threats suffered by election workers during the 2020 and 2022 elections. A measure that, assured the federal prosecutor for the District of Arizona, Gary Restaino, they will continue to carry out until they end the danger for public officials: "These are the first responders of democracy and we will continue to investigate and prosecute those who would threaten to do them harm."

An allegation with which Attorney General Merrick B. Garland agreed. He assured, through a statement published by the DOJ, that anyone who threatens public officials working during the elections will face the consequences of their actions:

If you threaten violence against the public servants who administer our elections, there will be consequences. The right to vote, which is the cornerstone of our democracy, relies on the ability of election workers and election officials to perform their duties without fearing for their lives. The Justice Department will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute those who threaten these public servants.

Specifically, the agency said, at least 20 people have been accused of intimidating public officials. Of them, the DOJ said, thirteen have been convicted and seven of them must serve more than 18 months in prison. A move that, Justice Department official John Keller told NBC News, "signaling how serious federal courts are taking this conduct":

This new era in which the election community is scapegoated, targeted, and attacked, is unconscionable and in addition to the obvious toll taken on individual victims, risks depleting the ranks of experienced election officials vital to the effective administration of our elections.

DOJ sentences two men for intimidating Katie Hobbs

One of the people who received the most threats was the now governor of the state, Katie Hobbs. Two men were convicted of intimidating her, one of them having to spend up to 30 months in prison.

His name is Joshua Russell and the court sentenced him for leaving threatening voicemails in Hobbs' office during 2022. In them, Russell intimidated the current governor with the following message:

We will not wait for you to be dragged through court. A war is coming for you. The entire nation is coming for you. And we will stop, at no end, until you are in the ground. You’re a traitor to this nation. You’re a [expletive] piece of [expletive] communist, and you just signed your own death warrant. Get your affairs in order, cause, your days are very short.

A Massachusetts man, James Clark, is the other man charged with intimidating Hobbs. In his case, he was convicted of making a bomb threat against the politician in 2021, which caused a partial evacuation of the building in which she was located.

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