A Florida man who made death threats to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and controversial NY Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.
The man, Paul Vernon Hoeffer, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release. He had pleaded guilty to interstate transmission of threats to injure.
Hoeffer called Pelosi’s office in March of 2019 and Ocasio-Cortez’s office in November 2020, threatening to kill them both, authorities said.
He also called and threatened to kill Chicago District Attorney Kim Foxx (D).
Pelosi was his first target, according to court filings. In one call to her office, he said he would “come a long, long way to rattle her head with bullets” if she doesn’t resign. In another, he threatened to cut her head off “jihadist-style.”
After a Pelosi staffer transferred him to the US Capitol Police, he was warned that death threats are criminal. Hoeffer responded, “You know how hard it is to prove someone made a threat?”
He also left a series of threatening voicemails for Foxx, using racial slurs and threatening to kill her, according to court filings.
The FBI traced his number, went to Hoeffer’s home, and warned him to stop. Hoeffer, who runs his own towing business, apologized and assured the agents “he would not continue to make calls of this nature,” prosecutors said.
But in Nov. 2020, he left a threatening message to the office of AOC, threatening to decapitate the New York congresswoman and warning her to “keep one eye open when you sleep,” the filings said.
Prosecutors had urged US District Judge Aileen Cannon to sentence him to 41 months “to reflect the seriousness of the offense” and “provide just punishment.”
“Defendant, someone who represents himself as gainfully employed, a hardworking individual with various responsibilities in life, found time to call women to tell them he was going to shoot them in the head or cut their heads off and that they were going to die. And he did not do it once, but multiple times on multiple days,” even after he was warned off by the FBI, they noted.
Hoeffer’s lawyer, Michael Ohle, told the press he is disappointed in the sentence and said the judge used his client as a deterrent for other offenders. He said he argued for a lower sentencing as Hoeffer is battling cancer, and incarceration will impact his abilities to communicate with his doctors.
Hoeffer faced up to 15 years in federal prison for his crimes as he said in the calls he wanted to form a “civilian army” for “all-out war.”
The sentencing comes as threats against lawmakers have spiked in recent years, reaching 9,600 in 2021, according to Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger.
This is sick. He threatened one of the most corrupt politicians in the history of the United States. He also threatened one of the fakest and dumbest politicians in the history of the United States. This is part of the liberals dumbing down of America. The only thing that will change this country is an insurrection on Washington DC. They all should be threatened and hung on the Capital Steps. All liberals and rinos hate America and are in it for themselves. If Putin does fire a nuke, I hope he hits DC while Congress is in session. That’s our only hope.