A task force within the Department of Justice dedicated to addressing threats against election workers has led to charges against roughly 20 people and has opened dozens of investigations into additional instances since its launch in 2021, officials announced on Monday.
Speaking at a press conference in Arizona to lay out the sentence for an Ohio man for making death threats to an official in the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, DOJ official John Keller told reporters 13 of the 20 people charged have been convicted. Seven individuals have received sentences between one and a half to three and a half years in prison, which, he added, signals “how seriously the federal courts are taking this conduct.”
“Our work is not done, our efforts will not wane, the department will continue to vigorously pursue anyone who criminally threatens or targets the election community,” Keller said. “This behavior is insidious with potentially grave consequences for individual victims and for the institution of election administration as a whole.”
“The public must know, any criminal threats to the election community will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” he added.
The Justice Department’s Elections Threats Task Force was formed in June 2021 in response to escalating reports of intimidation and threats to election workers following the 2020 election. Former President Donald Trump and his allies claimed, without evidence, there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election. (There is no evidence of widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, a statement verified by officials on both sides of the aisle. Claims of fraud brought by Trump and his allies were rejected in courts nationwide, including the U.S. Supreme Court.)
A survey by Brennan Center for Justice in March 2022 found three in four election officials said threats have increased in recent years and one in six said they have experienced such threats.
“Death threats are not debate,” Keller said on Monday. “Death threats do not contribute to the marketplace of ideas. Death threats are not first amendment-protected speech.”
In the case of the Ohio man, officials on Monday laid out a sentence of two and a half years in prison for Joshua Russell for leaving a series of voicemails around the 2022 midterm elections threatening the life of then Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who was elected governor of the state that year.
“Mr. Russell made three phone calls to the office of then Secretary of State Katie Hobbs threatening to put her in the ground or in a grave,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Gary Restaino said during Monday’s press conference.
“You’re the enemy of the United States, you’re a traitor to this country, and you better put your sh[inaudible], your [expletive] affairs in order, ’cause your days [inaudible] are extremely numbered,” Russell said in his first voicemail to Hobbs, according to the DOJ. “America’s coming for you, and you will pay with your life, you communist [expletive] traitor [expletive].”
Hobbs, Arizona’s former top elections official, spoke about threats she received in the immediate aftermath of overseeing the state’s 2020 election. President Joe Biden defeated Trump in the major battleground state.
In 2022, Kari Lake, Hobbs’ Republican challenger for the governor’s seat, claimed there was fraud after she lost and unsuccessfully went to court to try to overturn the results.