OAN’s Taylor Tinsley
11:38 AM PT – Tuesday, May 14, 2024
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray are sending a clear warning as the 2024 election cycle approaches.
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The agency’s two leaders warned of potential threats at an Election Threats Task Force meeting on Monday.
Garland said the Department of Justice (DOJ) will find anyone who threatens to harm or kill an election worker and hold them accountable.
“The public servants who administer our elections must be able to do their jobs without fearing for their safety or that of their families,” the Attorney General said. We will aggressively investigate and prosecute those who threaten election workers.”
The task force was created in June of 2021, after threats towards election workers began to soar following the 2020 election.
More than a dozen people over the country have been charged.
Garland read out a series of instances where people made threats in the past and have since been jailed, the longest being 3 ½ years.
A man in Texas was handed a 3 ½-year prison sentence for threatening “the lives of Arizona election officials and their children and advocated for a mass shooting of poll workers and election workers,” and a 2 ½-year sentence for a man in Iowa “who threatened to lynch an election official in Arizona.”
A recent survey conducted by the Brennan Center For Justice found that more than one in three local election officials have experienced threats, harassment, or abuse.
“The work election workers do to ensure our elections are free and fair could not be more important, and we’re committed to doing our part to make sure they can do that work free from threats of violence or intimidation,” said FBI Director Wray.
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