Long-time GOP election official says he’s receiving death threats over Trump cricitism

A Georgia GOP election official who made national headlines said he has received death threats since calling on President Trump to end his attacks on state officials.

Gabriel Sterling told the Los Angeles Times he has police protection for his home and has received a text with his address advising him to sleep with his eyes open.

“I never expected to be in this situation. I mean, my title is statewide voting system implementation manager, right?” he told the newspaper.

The president has increasingly gone on the attack against Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) after they refused to join his efforts to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the Peach State.

In response, Sterling outlined the threats to state officials in a Dec. 1 press conference and addressed Trump directly. 

“You need to step up and say this, is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence,” he said at the time. “Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed.”

Sterling, who has identified as a Republican since he was a child, told the Times, “I remember being very cognizant of right and wrong growing up.”

“But, listen, politics can be really crappy and cutthroat. I get that,” he added. “I was a politician. But these people, these elections workers, they didn’t sign up for that.”

“It was clear from that speech how exasperated he had become,” Sterling’s fellow Republican, Philadelphia election official Al Schmidt, told the newspaper. “It was a very good thing he did.”

Sterling, who has said he voted for Trump, told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” that he decided to make the remarks after hearing a contractor in Georgia’s Gwinnett County had become the target of death threats.

“When I was going through the Twitter feed on it, and I saw it basically had the young man’s name, which was a very unique name, so they tracked down his family and started harassing them,” he said earlier this month.