Over a dozen people have been arrested and nine convicted for sending threats to election workers, the United States Justice Department said.
On Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the sentencing of two more people for threatening poll workers, including threats of to ‘lynch’ or ‘hang’ election officials.
The convictions are the result of a Justice Department task force convened in 2021 to examine more than 1,000 ‘hostile or harassing’ messages or contacts with election workers.
‘There are many things that are open to debate in America,’ the attorney general said in a 2021 memo. ‘But the right of all eligible citizens to vote is not one of them. The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow.’
On Monday, a man from Iowa was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for threatening to ‘lynch’ and ‘hang’ Republican elected officials for not overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Mark Rissi, 64, was arrested after leaving death threats in voicemails sent to two Arizona officials: Clint Hickman, a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and Mark Brnovich, the former Attorney General of Arizona.
In his message to Hickman, Rissi asked the local official to remember the oath he swore on a Bible before taking office.
‘When we come to lynch your stupid lying Commie [expletive], you’ll remember that you lied on the [expletive] Bible, you piece of [expletive]. You’re gonna die, you piece of [expletive]. We’re going to hang you. We’re going to hang you.’
In the second message, he threatened the Arizona Attorney General to ‘Do your job, Brnovich, or you will hang with those [expletive] in the end. We will see to it. Torches and pitchforks. That’s your future, [expletive]. Do your job.’
A lawyer for Rissi said he ‘feels horrible’ about the messages he sent, and blamed it on being ‘inundated with misinformation’ about the election.
