A New York man was sentenced to 13 months in prison on Tuesday threatening phone calls He threatened to kill members of Congress and a staff member.
Ade Salim Lilly, 35, was sentenced to three years of supervised release Department of Justice said a news release.
Lilly’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.
Lilly admitted his guilt in May, making interstate communications with threats to kidnap or injure and making repeated threatening phone calls.
Beginning in February 2022, he made more than 12,000 calls to the offices of congressional lawmakers from Maryland and Puerto Rico before his arrest in Puerto Rico in November 2023, according to court documents.
During the calls, Lilly would abuse congressional staffers and “become angry and use vulgar and abusive language toward the person who answered the phone” when the staffer said they could not help him, federal prosecutors said.
“I’m going to kill you, I’m going to knock you out, I’m going to kill you with a bomb or a grenade,” Lilly told a congressional staffer during a call on Oct. 21, 2022, prosecutors said.
During two days in February 2023, Lilly made more than 500 calls to the office of a lawmaker in Washington, according to prosecutors.
In a sentencing letter seeking an 18-month sentence, prosecutors cited increasing threats against elected officials.
“It’s an election year, and increasingly, criticism of a political position or viewpoint crosses the First Amendment line and leads to genuine threats of violence,” they wrote. “The widespread increase in threats against elected officials poses a real risk for the normalization of violent expressions.”
A man was charged in Virginia last month makes several death threats on a conservative social media site against Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
Former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, have also faced social media threats. A Florida man was indicted in July Threatens to kill Trump and Vence.