An Alabama man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to sending threatening phone calls for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and the county sheriff last summer in response to the probe into former President Donald Trump’s election interference.
Arthur Ray Hanson II made the phone calls just over a week before Trump and 18 others were charged in Fulton County on August 14th.
At his guilty hearing Tuesday, Hanson of Huntsville, Alabama, told a federal judge that he never intended to injure Willis, whose office is prosecuting Trump and the others, or Sheriff Patrick Labat, whose staff booked the former president into the Fulton County prison and took his mug shot.
“I made a stupid phone call,” Hanson admitted in court. “I’m not a violent person.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said that he will be sentenced at a later date. Assistant United States Attorney Bret Hobson informed the judge that prosecutors would seek leniency for Hanson because he accepted responsibility for his acts. At the plea hearing, Hanson admitted to contacting a Fulton County government customer service line on August 6 and left voicemail messages for the prosecutor and sheriff.
In one letter, Hanson cautioned Willis, “When you charge Trump on that fourth indictment, anytime you’re alone, be looking over your shoulder.”
His note to Labat warned him about the repercussions of photographing Trump in jail.
“If you take a mug shot of the president and you’re the reason it happened, some bad (expletive)’s gonna happen to you,” the audio message continued, according to court filings.
Willis’ office obtained an indictment that suggested Trump and others conspired to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. It was the fourth criminal case filed against the former president in as many months, and it was widely anticipated.
The sheriff stated publicly beforehand that anyone indicted in the case would be booked following standard protocols, including having a jail mug shot taken. A federal grand jury indicted Hanson in October on accusations of making interstate threats over the phone.
Hanson told U.S. Magistrate Regina Cannon on Tuesday that he was outraged by the Trump investigation and made the phone calls in the hopes that officials would back down.
“I didn’t know I was threatening anyone,” he told the judge. “To me, it was a warning.”
Source: apnews.com