Ex-Trump supporter who threatened to kill Ilhan Omar sentenced to three years' probation
A former Donald Trump supporter has been sentenced to three years' probation and fined $7,000 for sending an email threatening to kill US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
Florida native David George Hannon, 67, was also ordered to undergo mental and substance abuse treatment and have no contact with Omar, the Tampa Bay Times reported on Thursday.
Hannon, who pleaded guilty in April to threatening a federal official, sent the email to Omar's office after she and three other congresswomen - Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts - held a news conference in July 2019 in response to criticism from former US President Donald Trump.
Trump had said the congresswomen, who are US citizens and outspoken about progressive policies, should "go back" to the "crime-infested places" from which they came.
Hannon emailed Omar's campaign with a subject line that read: "Your Dead You Radical Muslim", writing that Omar should get more security or she and the other women would be "six feet under". He also wrote: "YOU WONT HEAR THE BULLET GOING THROUGH YOUR OR THEIR HEADS!"
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Omar's staff immediately notified federal agents, but the FBI didn't visit Hannon at his Sarasota home until 19 months had passed, by which time Trump was out of office.
Hannon admitted that he had disparaged Omar's Islamic faith, but the judge declined to apply a hate crime adjustment to Hannon's sentence, which could have increased the sentencing guidelines.
"He was doing that because Trump told him to," his daughter, Elizabeth Hannon Dillon, told the judge during the hearing on Wednesday. "He was a Trump supporter and now he regrets it."
This threat was "heinous and inappropriate in every regard," US District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle said. "This sort of behaviour has no place in our society."
According to court documents, Hannon also made threatening phone calls to Omar's office in 2020, as well as to congressmen Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff, the Herald Tribune reported on Thursday.
Omar, a refugee who fled from Somalia to the US at the age of 12, is one of two Muslim women who were elected to Congress in 2018, alongside Tlaib.
Since taking the oath of office early in 2019, Omar has become a favourite target for right-wing politicians. The congresswoman's supporters argue that Republicans often take her comments out of context to stir manufactured outrage, and use racist and Islamophobic undertones to portray her as an outsider trying to undermine America.
In November last year she played a voicemail at a news briefing in which a man told her she wouldn't live much longer.
"Condemning this should not be a partisan issue," she said at the news briefing. "This is about our basic humanity."
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