Leniency denied for Biden threat
A former Judson Independent School District law enforcement officer was sentenced Wednesday to eight months in federal prison for sending an interstate text found to be threatening against members of the Joe Biden campaign, two days before the then-presidential candidate visited San Antonio in late 2019.
William Oliver Towery, 55, of New Braunfels responded on Dec. 11, 2019, to a mass text that mistakenly included him — it was meant to include his father, a Democratic donor — seeking campaign donations in advance of Biden’s campaign stop in San Antonio two days later.
Towery replied: “I’ll be there and have been practicing my sniping skills all month just for this occasion. If you will be near him you may want to wear something dark to hide the blood splatter.”
Towery was an investigator with the Texas Attorney General’s Office and later a reserve deputy with the San Marcos Sheriff’s Office. He also served in the 1990s as a police officer with Judson ISD, according to his bio cited at his trial in March. He later became a substitute teacher at New Braunfels ISD in 2009 and 2010, his bio said.
At a nonjury trial, U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez found Towery guilty after hear
ing testimony that included Biden campaign staffers, the FBI and Towery. The judge gave Towery until Jan. 26 to turn himself in to begin his eightmonth sentence, to be followed by three years of supervision after he’s released.
FBI special agent Chris Snow testified at trial that the texts had been deleted from Towery’s phone by the time agents visited Towery’s home on Dec. 13, 2019 — about the time Biden was in town.
The agents and New Braunfels police monitored Towery until Biden’s security detail was confident that the candidate was safely en route to the airport, Snow said.
Towery testified that he did not mean the text as a threat and that he thought a friend was playing a joke on him. He acknowledged a dislike for Democrats, but he said he and his father, who has the same first and last names but a different middle initial, do not talk politics.
At sentencing Wednesday, Towery, who suffers from health issues that in part force him to wear special braces on his legs, apologized for his conduct, noting anger management courses helped show him he was wrong.
“If I could take back what I’ve done, I would do so in a heartbeat,” Towery told the judge. “Please don’t throw me away. I’m sorry.”
His lawyer, Doug Daniel, told the judge his client had no intent to carry out such a threat. Daniel also argued that the sentencing should reflect that his client accepted responsibility after the trial. Doing so would have dropped Towery’s exposure from the recommended sentencing guideline of 15 to 21 months in prison down to 10 to 16 months, as well as allow for probation.
“Mr. Towery was not the one who initiated the contact between himself and the Biden campaign. It was their mistake,” Daniel said. “But there is no question he violated the law, and we acknowledge that.”
He urged the judge to exercise his discretion and give Towery probation.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Roomberg said Towery, as a former law officer, should have known better before making a “very graphic threat” and then lying about his actions to the FBI during an interview and to the court at trial while on the witness stand. Roomberg asked the judge to sentence Towery to the recommended 15 to 21 months in prison.
The judge pondered analogies that Daniel suggested in a sentencing memorandum, in which Daniel compared his client’s conduct to that exhibited in other politically charged cases, such as by the defendants who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to prevent Congress from certifying Biden as president-elect. Some of those people who were convicted did not receive prison sentences for their actions, the judge noted.
Roomberg said some of them may not have gotten jail because they were charged with misdemeanors,
not felonies. Roomberg said he could not speak for the decisions made by prosecutors in Washington, D.C.
The judge said he was concerned with “general deterrence.”
He then addressed Daniel: “Some have varying degrees. Some people are just angry. Some people are misplaced. Some people are just nuts. And so,
there’s different reasons for all this. But words have consequences. Even when made by senators and congressmen who have this inflammatory rhetoric, words have consequences. ... I find it no comfort that this defendant was a former law enforcement officer. We have way too many former law enforcement officers and former members of the military in Jan.
6 … engaging in behavior that they vowed at one time to protect, and then violating their oaths.”
While Rodriguez did not give Towery any credit for accepting responsibility and cited his untruthfulness at trial, the judge offered some leniency in light of the defendant’s age and medical condition.
“For purposes of general deterrence, I find that I must sentence you to prison time to send a signal to the community at large that threatening political figures in a specific and non-first Amendmentexpression way is necessary, if we’re ever going to live in a civil society,” Rodriguez said.