A man who prosecutors say threatened to kill Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) over his support for a legal challenge to the 2020 election results was sentenced to jail time and home detention after pleading guilty to a federal felony, Harris’s office announced Thursday.
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Sidhartha Kumar Mathur of West Friendship, Md., will serve eight weekends in jail, six months of home detention and two years of supervised probation, plus 100 hours of community service, after pleading guilty to making false statements to investigators about the alleged threats.
‘I’ll slit your throat’: Maryland man charged with threatening congressman
According to a sentencing memo from federal prosecutors, Mathur, 35, sent a message through Harris’s website on Dec. 10 saying, “I will f---ing kill you and blow up your office if you try to take my vote away. I know where you and your family lives. You will be ended.”
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Harris delivered a statement during Mathur’s sentencing hearing on Thursday, telling the court that while he expects to hear from angry people, Mathur’s violent threats upended his and his family’s lives, according to a statement released by his office Thursday. Harris’s family members essentially felt confined to their home after the threat and while Mathur was out on bond, the release said.
Federal prosecutors did not identify Harris as the threatened member of Congress — saying only that the member was from Maryland — but Harris identified himself as the victim. He first revealed in January that he had been threatened after he reportedly carried a gun through a metal detector near the House chamber. A spokesman said at the time that Harris never confirms whether he’s carrying a gun for self-defense for security reasons, “because his and his family’s lives have been threatened by someone who has been released awaiting trial.”
Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland sets off metal detector while carrying gun near House chamber
“These grotesquely violent and serious threats made against me and my family last December were appalling — and it was frustrating that this man was allowed to walk free until sentencing,” Harris said in a statement Thursday. “I hope that this felony conviction serves as a lesson that all political disagreements in America must be addressed in a civil way — not by threats of physical, deadly violence.”
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Mathur was accused of making the death threats after Harris, along with more than 100 Republican lawmakers, signed on to a brief in support of Texas’s lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results in a number of states that Trump lost.
After Mathur sent the Web message — which added that Harris should be “tortured and skinned alive” — he then called Harris’s district office and left a voice mail, according to the sentencing memo.
“Yeah, this is regarding the 106th Republican House members in support of Texas’s bid to overturn the election,” Mathur said, according to the memo. “If you even mess with my vote, I’m going to come and I’ll slit your throat and I’ll kill your family.”
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In interviews with Capitol Police investigators, Mathur expressed remorse and said he did not plan to act on his threats, the memo said.
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“Mathur stated that he may have taken his statements [too] far,” federal prosecutors wrote. “Mathur stated that he would never harm anyone and he apologized for his statements.”
Mathur had initially admitted to leaving the voice mail but denied sending the Web message, which prosecutors charged was a lie. Mathur had sent the message under someone else’s name, they said.
Prosecutors wrote in their memo that despite Mathur’s “professed concern about the sanctity of the voting process,” his actions were “simply unacceptable in a civilized society or a functioning democracy.”
Attorneys for Mathur did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.