A Gwinnett county employee raises a bit of paper saying that they’ve a query as they start their recount of the ballots on November 13, 2020 in Lawrenceville, Georgia.
Megan Varner | Getty Images
A Texas man was arrested Friday for allegedly posting a threat to kill a Georgia election official and different officers simply days after then-President Donald Trump pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” votes that could reverse his loss to President Joe Biden.
The case in opposition to 54-year-old Chad Stark of Leander, Texas, is the primary prison prosecution filed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Election Threats Task Force, which was shaped final June on the heels of widespread baseless claims by Trump and his allies of election fraud.
Stark, who has an intensive prison historical past, is accused of posting a message on Craigslist on Jan. 5, 2021, with the topic: “Georgia Patriots it is time to kill [Official A] the Chinese agent – $10,000.”
That official was recognized as a state election employee, and the message was written on the identical day because the runoff elections for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats that had been gained by Democratic challengers, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
In the message, Stark allegedly wrote, “Georgia Patriots it is time for us to take again our state from these Lawless treasonous traitors. It’s time to invoke our Second Amendment proper it is time to put a bullet within the treasonous Chinese [Official A].”
“Then we work our approach down to [Official B] the native and federal corrupt judges,” Stark wrote, in accordance to an indictment issued by a grand jury in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
“We want to pay a go to to [Official C] and her household as effectively and put a bullet her behind the ears,” Stark allegedly wrote, only a day before a mob of Trump supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol in a fury over false allegations that Trump had lost to Biden due to ballot fraud.
The case was introduced a day after the top state prosecutor in Atlanta asked a judge to empanel a special grand jury to assist her pursue a criminal investigation of Trump and others for possible illegal interference with Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
Stark is due to seem Friday afternoon in federal court docket in Austin, Texas, on one depend of interstate threats.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice recordsdata present that Stark has a prison report courting again to no less than 1997, when he was arrested on a felony cost associated to the manufacture or distribution of a managed substance. Stark later pleaded responsible within the case, and was sentenced to 10 years in jail, data present.
His probation in that case was revoked after one other arrest associated to a managed substance in 2001, for which he was sentenced to seven years in jail.
Records present he was arrested in 2011 on a cost of aggravated sexual assault in a case involving a baby, which was later lowered to a lesser cost of reckless damage to a baby. He was sentenced to three years or probation in that case.
Trump on Friday morning issued a brand new assertion blasting the prison probe of his pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a Jan. 2, 2021, cellphone name, during which he repeated his false claims of election fraud within the state.
“All I need to do is that this: I simply need to discover 11,780 votes,” Trump informed Raffensperger in that decision.
Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger holds up election mail that he stated arrived for his son, who’s deceased, throughout a information convention on election ends in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., December 2, 2020.
Elijah Nouvelage | Reuters
On Friday, Trump stated, “So let me get this straight, I’m being investigated in Georgia for asking an Attorney General with many legal professionals and others knowingly on the cellphone to look for corruption, which undoubtedly came about within the Georgia Presidential election — however the individuals who dedicated the crime are under no circumstances, form, or type beneath investigation and are as an alternative being protected?”
U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine of the Northern District of Georgia, in an announcement on Stark’s arrest, stated, “The intimidation of these answerable for finishing up free and honest elections on this nation is in opposition to the legislation and can’t go unchecked.”
“When somebody threatens an election official working at any stage of the voting course of – whether or not that be an elected workplace holder or a volunteer ballot employee – our democracy is put in jeopardy,” Erskine stated.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks on the Department of Justice, prematurely of the one 12 months anniversary of the assault on the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2022.
Carolyn Kaster | Pool | Reuters
Attorney General Merrick Garland in a speech Friday to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, stated, “There isn’t any First Amendment proper to unlawfully threaten to hurt or kill somebody.”
“The Justice Department will proceed to do all it could actually to maintain accountable those that goal public servants with violence,” Garland stated.