Vigilantes target Arizona election workers with death threats

A large portion of nationwide threats to election workers have involved Arizona, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona.

Arizonans were the targets of seven of 18 cases federal prosecutors have brought since 2021 against people who threatened election workers, U.S. Attorney Gary Restaino said at a press conference Monday in Phoenix.

Restaino added that in all the cases, the threats to Arizona election workers came from outside the state.

“There is no constitutional right to vigilantism. There is a common denominator in many of these cases: election deniers announcing an intent to violently punish those they believe wronged them,” Restaino said. “Let these cases be a lesson not to take or attempt to take the rule of law into one’s hands.”

Also Monday, Joshua Russell, a 46-year-old Ohio man, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for sending death threats to an election official in the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office during the 2022 primary and general elections.

Court documents show that in 2022, between Aug. 2 and Nov. 15, Russell left several voicemails threatening the life of an elected official. Russell pleaded guilty in August 2023.

“If you threaten violence against the public servants who administer our elections, there will be consequences,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a written statement. “The right to vote, which is the cornerstone of our democracy, relies on the ability of election workers and election officials to perform their duties without fearing for their lives."

The most recent arrest of a person allegedly making threats to Arizona election workers was of Brian Jerry Ogstad, a 59-year-old Alabama man who was taken into custody on Feb. 28. The Justice Department said Maricopa County election workers were on the receiving end of Ogstad’s threats.

According to prosecutors, Ogstad allegedly made a handful of threats, including on Aug. 4, 2022: “(Y)ou people are so ducking stupid. Everyone knows you are lots, cheats, frauds and in doing so in relation to elections have committed treason. You will all be executed. Bang.”

A 52-year-old San Diego man, William Hyde, was arrested on Feb. 22 for allegedly leaving violent threats on the personal cellphone of a Maricopa County election official.

The new norm: threats against election officials

Restaino was joined at the press conference by John Keller, head of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, and Akil Davis, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Phoenix office.

Keller noted that threats of violence are not protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“Debate on public issues should be robust and may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government officials,” Keller said. “But death threats are not debate. Death threats do not contribute to the marketplace of ideas.”

While noting the Justice Department will prosecute threats, Keller highlighted that there is work to do beyond the courtroom.

“Prosecution alone is not the answer. We must do better as a society,” Keller said. “The normalization of personal threats and attacks on government officials and their families is contributing to an election environment in which people are committing previously unthinkable crimes.”

Davis told reporters that the FBI and the Justice Department have had success spotting threats to election workers since establishing the Election Security Task Force in 2021.

“Election security is and will continue to be one of the FBI’s highest national security priorities,” Davis said. “Arizonans have a right to expect free and fair elections. While responsibility to ensure the fair election process lies with our state and local counterparts, I want to stress that the FBI takes all allegations seriously.”

Arizona was one of several states in which former President Donald Trump, U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake and other right-wing candidates have fomented misinformation about election fraud. The Associated Press reported that only four criminal charges of voter fraud came out of the 2020 election in Arizona.

The threats have caused some election workers, like Geraldine Roll of Pinal County, to resign from serving the public.

With Arizona set to be one of the key battleground states in the 2024 election, local law enforcement and federal officials have their eye on the state. Davis said that the FBI has analysts working in southern and northern Arizona.

“We cover the entire state, scrubbing the internet with our social media teams, looking for these threats and assessing them,” he said.