Man gets 11 months for threats against officials
A Bay Area man has been sentenced to 11 months in federal prison for making voice-mail threats against then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, prosecutors said.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued the sentence Tuesday despite recommendations from both the prosecution and defense of a term of four years probation with no prison time for Daniel Carrier, who had pleaded guilty to two felony charges in December.
Carrier, now 44, was described in court documents as a vehement foe of illegal immigration and public officials who he believed were allowing it. According to the charges he admitted, on Jan. 21, 2021, he left a profanityfilled message on the voice mail of Pelosi, D-San Francisco, saying, “You better resign … ’cause we got a bullet and a rope with your f—ing name on it.”
In October 2022, another Pelosi antagonist, David DePape, broke into her Pacific Heights home in San Francisco and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. DePape, who testified about his adherence to right-wing conspiracy theories, was convicted of assault and attempted kidnapping of a federal official by a jury last November and is scheduled to be sentenced in April.
In June 2022, Carrier left a voice mail on a message line of the Department of Homeland Security with orders to tell Mayorkas to “close the border before we citizens start killing those f—ing illegal immigrants or we come looking for him and feed him to the dogs.”
Carrier then ran a barbershop in Concord but later moved to San Francisco, where he has been working for a local nonprofit sweeping streets and preventing drug overdoses, his lawyer said. While Carrier has made similar phone calls in the past, he “quickly came to realize from the very start of this case that he had approached this issue of legitimate concern in the wrong way,” Daniel Blank, an attorney with the federal public defender’s office, said in a court filing.
“As a result, both parties saw the wisdom in a quick resolution of the case, wherein Mr. Carrier accepts responsibility for his offense while the government agrees to recommend a non-custodial sentence,” Blank said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Walsh told Alsup that Carrier’s “outbursts in this case are driven by some combination of mental health issues, substance abuse, and economic and social isolation.” Instead of a “counterproductive” prison sentence, Walsh said, the public interest would be better served by “an attentive probation officer empowered to force Mr. Carrier to attend mental health counseling, go to substance abuse treatment, obtain employment, and widen his social circle.”
On Tuesday, however, Alsup sentenced Carrier to 11 months in prison, followed by three years of probation. He also ordered Carrier to undergo treatment for mental illness and drug abuse and to have no contact with Pelosi or Mayorkas. Carrier had been free on bond since his indictment last September.
“Participating in the public political conversation is an important right for all citizens,” U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey said in a statement. “Nevertheless, threatening our public servants is not protected by the First Amendment and corrodes our ability to engage in peaceful and important public discourse.”
Blank, the defense lawyer, was not immediately available for comment.