BILLINGS, Mont. – A Montana man faces years in jail at his Wednesday sentencing for threatening to assault former Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy after changing into upset with the federal government for not taking pictures down a Chinese spy balloon that floated over the defendant’s home city.
Richard Rogers, 45, of Billings, will seem earlier than U.S. District Choose Susan Watters after a jury convicted him final 12 months for threatening a member of Congress and making harassing telephone calls to the FBI and congressional workers by which he routinely made vulgar and obscene feedback.
The risk in opposition to McCarthy carries a most penalty of six years in jail and a $250,000 superb. As a result of Rogers has no legal historical past, federal sentencing pointers name for a shorter time period, and his attorneys requested a sentence of probation.
Rogers, a former telephone customer support consultant, delivered the risk to a McCarthy staffer throughout a sequence of greater than 100 calls to the Republican speaker’s workplace in simply 75 minutes on Feb. 3, 2023, prosecutors mentioned. That was in the future after the Pentagon acknowledged it was monitoring the spy balloon, which was later shot down off the Atlantic Coast.
Rogers testified at trial that his outraged calls to the FBI and McCarthy’s workplace had been a type of civil disobedience. Considered one of his attorneys mentioned in the course of the trial that Rogers “simply needed to be heard.”
Prosecutors requested the court docket to ship a “robust deterrent message” that threats in opposition to public officers should not protected by the First Modification. They requested for a sentence of two years in jail.
“Rogers’ conduct on this case contributes to a rising and regarding delusion that the First Modification someway provides an individual full immunity from all penalties so long as their speech or conduct is framed as ‘political protest,’” prosecutors wrote in a court docket submitting.
Protection lawyer Daniel Ball requested for Rogers to be spared jail and sentenced to supervised launch.
Threats in opposition to public officers within the U.S. have risen sharply in recent years, together with in opposition to members of Congress, their spouses, election workers and local officials. Rogers’ case was amongst greater than 8,000 threats to lawmakers investigated by the U.S. Capitol Police in 2023.
A 30-year-old Billings man was sentenced final 12 months to 2 1/2 years in federal jail after leaving voicemail messages threatening to kill former Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and his household. Another Montana man was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in 2023 for threats in opposition to Tester.
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