ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WFLA) — A candidate within the 2022 election for Florida’s thirteenth Congressional District will spend three years in federal jail after threatening to have his main opponent killed.
William Robert Braddock, 41, of St. Petersburg, was sentenced Wednesday after pleading responsible to interstate transmission of a risk to injure one other individual, the U.S. Division of Justice (DOJ) mentioned.
Investigators mentioned Braddock considered his opponent — an unnamed Republican social gathering frontrunner — as his solely impediment to profitable the 2022 race.
He spent months disparaging and threatening the lady, at one level in June 2021 calling her friends and saying he would have her murdered if she continued to ballot nicely.
Court docket data revealed a part of the cellphone name, wherein Braddock threatened to “name up my Russian-Ukrainian hit squad” and make his main opponent “disappear.”
“I would be the subsequent congressman for this District. Interval. Finish of debate,” Braddock additional said. “And anyone going up towards me is f—ing [expletive] ignorant for doing so. [The victim]’s ignorant so I don’t have an issue taking her out, however I’m not going to do this soiled work myself, clearly.”
NBC Information beforehand reported that the race’s eventual winner, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, filed courtroom paperwork in 2021 claiming that Braddock was stalking her and wanted her dead.
A Florida courtroom in the end granted Luna a brief restraining order towards Braddock.
After terminating his marketing campaign that very same yr, Braddock fled the nation, taking a one-way flight to Thailand. He later settled within the Philippines and remained there till self-surrendering to authorities in Manila in June 2023.
He was taken again to the US in 2024 to face his costs, in keeping with the DOJ.
The investigation was led by FBI Tampa Division and the St. Petersburg Police Division, with substantial help from the US Marshals Service and overseas regulation enforcement businesses.
