Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, R-Ga., arrives as Republicans meet to decide who to nominate to be the new House speaker, on Capitol Hill in Washington, late Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
A man has been arrested and charged with threatening Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia after allegedly vowing to shoot her in the head and kill her during a menacing phone call made to the congresswoman this week.
“I’m going to murder her. I’m going to shoot her in the f—ing head and kill her, OK,” a man who the FBI says is 34-year-old Sean Patrick Cirillo of Macon, Georgia, said in a voicemail first reported by the congresswoman on Thursday.
“You don’t think you’re going to get a paycheck? You’re going to die. Your family is going to die,” the caller allegedly said.
Cirillo is also accused of threatening Greene’s staffers, saying, “I’ll kill you too if you want” when they spoke to him by phone. They reported that the caller pretended to be a donor and then said he was a “sniper” who “had a bead” on the lawmaker.
A copy of the call circulated among several news outlets, including CNN. A representative for Greene did not immediately return a request for comment to Law&Crime Friday.
The FBI confirmed by email that Cirillo was placed under arrest for allegedly making threats against the lawmaker on Thursday.
According to local Fox affiliate WAGA, Cirillo will appear in federal court in the northern district of Georgia for the first time on Dec. 13 to face charges of using communication devices to make the threats. As of Friday morning, nothing under Cirillo’s name yet appears on the district’s criminal federal docket.
Greene told Atlanta News First that “threats to elected officials should never be tolerated.”
She also said she has recently had to close her office in Georgia “due to the potential of violence” posed to her staff.
It is unclear if Cirillo allegedly called the lawmaker’s Georgia branch or her office in Washington, D.C.
“It’s wrong and should never happen,” the Republican lawmaker said in a statement from her office issued Thursday. “Threats of violence should always be taken seriously. And that’s exactly why I take my Second Amendment rights seriously.”
Greene’s office in Georgia is not the only one that has closed.
Fellow Rep. Rich McCormick announced he was closing his office in Cumming, Georgia, due to threats of violence he received the same day he took to the floor of the U.S. House and called for Rep. Rashida Tlaib to be censured for comments about the conflict in Israel.
News of Cirillo’s arrest was announced the same day that Rep. Greene pushed to impeach Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas for what she claims is a failure by the department and vis a vis, the Biden administration, to secure the U.S. border with Mexico.
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