Florida man pleads guilty to leaving voicemails threatening to cut off senator’s head

A Florida man has pleaded guilty to leaving voicemails threatening violence against an unidentified U.S. senator.

Brian Christopher King, 62, pleaded guilty to transmitting communications in interstate commerce that contained threats to injure the person of another, the Justice Department said in a statement on Friday. 

He faces up to five years in federal prison.

The Justice Department said that King made two phone calls to the Washington, D.C., office of a senator and left profanity-filled voicemails threatening to cut off the lawmaker’s head. The incident took place in March 2020, it said.

When he was interviewed by FBI agents days later, King admitted to leaving the threats but denied having any intent to travel to Washington or to harm anyone, according to investigators. 

This was not the first time King had been interviewed by FBI. After a similar incident in 2018, he had been warned that threatening elected officials was a serious matter, but he was not arrested by agents at the time. 

Despite the repeated warnings, King called a police department in California in June 2020 and claimed he had heard someone was going to cut the heads off a particular U.S. senator and a particular member of the House.