Man sentenced in threats case
Arizona Gov. Hobbs hit with death threats
An Ohio man who threatened to kill Katie Hobbs in 2022 during her successful bid for governor of Arizona was sentenced Monday to 2½ years in prison, prosecutors announced.
The man, Joshua Russell, 46, of Ohio, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Arizona in August to one count of making an interstate threat, according to the Justice Department. He was indicted in December 2022 on charges that he had left several voice messages containing death threats with the office of Hobbs, who was then Arizona’s secretary of state.
Hobbs, a Democrat, was the state’s top election official when Joe Biden’s 2020 victory there was certified. She was not named in court documents, but a letter filed in court last week on Russell’s behalf was addressed to her.
In the letter, Russell apologized to Hobbs and said he was being treated for anger and drug and alcohol abuse, which he cited as a factor in making the threats.
“Social media and news reports (that I didn’t know if they were true or false) became another addiction for me, and only fueled my depression, anxiety and anger,” Russell wrote.
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night, and Russell’s public defenders could not immediately be reached.
Russell’s sentence was a result of the Justice Department’s broader effort to prosecute people who threatened and intimidated election officials in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
Fueled by conspiracy theories and lies peddled by former President Donald Trump claiming that fraud had lost him the election, poll workers and election officials experienced a surge in threats.
Hobbs has said that she received thousands of threats for certifying the state’s voting results in that election. One man pleaded guilty last year to threatening Hobbs with a bomb in 2021 and was later sentenced to 3½ years in prison.
Russell threatened Hobbs in 2022 during a midterm election season that ended with Hobbs’ winning the governor’s race over her Republican opponent, Kari Lake. In one message left on the day of the state’s primary in August 2022, Russell called Hobbs a communist and accused her of having committed fraud in the 2020 election by certifying Biden’s victory.
“You’re an enemy of the United States — you’re a traitor to this country,” Russell said in the expletive laden message, adding, “America’s coming for you, and you will pay with your life.” The next month, he left another message threatening to kill her if the upcoming midterm election results didn’t result in her prosecution.
Finally, on Nov. 17, 2022, the day after The Associated Press called the governor’s race for Hobbs, Russell left another message saying she had just signed her own “death warrant.”
By the end of the 2022, investigators had tracked the messages to a phone in Bucyrus, Ohio, belonging to Russell. Investigators found that a phone number used by Russell listed “death4 pelosi@gmail.com” as a recovery email address, according to a statement of probable cause that an FBI agent, Nathaniel Gena, filed inside a complaint.