The Justice Department on Tuesday announced it was bringing a criminal case against a Michigan man who sent angry emails complaining about the intensity of ads from a political action committee supporting Vice President Kamala Harris.
Christopher Clay Pierce said he felt the ads were “calling me racist” and wanted the PAC, which wasn’t named in court documents, to quit it.
“You will shut down your entire organization or it will be shut down for you,” he wrote in one Oct. 2 email recounted in the court filings. He added that “Americanpatriot three” — perhaps a reference to the Three Percenters anti-government organization — “are trained killers” who “will go to work” if the PAC continued.
The Justice Department announced the charges as voting was underway on Election Day.
The FBI said Mr. Pierce was “hostile” when agents showed up to question him about the emails on Oct. 30. He spoke to them through his screen door.
He acknowledged sending the emails but disagreed with the agents’ assertion that they could be seen as threats, FBI Agent Nathanial Han said in an affidavit justifying the criminal case.
“Pierce abruptly ended the conversation and aggressively closed his front door,” Agent Han said.
He was charged with one count of making a threat using interstate communications.
Mr. Pierce did not have a lawyer listed in the court case as of Tuesday afternoon.
He had an initial appearance and was released on bond.
Agent Han, in his affidavit, said Mr. Pierce had gotten a talking-to from the FBI in 2022 after a post he made to social media the day Cassidy Hutchison, a former aide in the Trump White House, testified in Democrats’ probe into the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Mr. Pierce called her testimony “career suicide” and said she couldn’t “hide.”
“You can’t be trusted! And we all know what happens to snitches!” he wrote on Instagram.
He also said “what comes next” would make Jan. 6 “look like a Sunday stroll through the park.”
The FBI scolded him at the time, saying that sounded like threats and could earn him federal charges.
Mr. Pierce again spoke through his screen door and “exhibited general hostility toward the agents,” Agent Han said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.