Josh Funk
An Ohio man has been charged with threatening to kill US Vice President JD Vance while he was visiting his home state last month. But the man’s lawyer said his health made it unlikely that he would have been able to carry out the threat.
In addition to the charge for threatening Vance, prosecutors also charged Shannon Mathre with possessing digital files depicting child sexual abuse that were allegedly discovered during the investigation. That second charge carries a much stiffer potential penalty of up to 20 years in prison. The charge related to the threats could lead to a maximum five-year sentence.
Lawyer Neil McElroy said Mathre’s health challenges would have been apparent to anyone in the courtroom on Friday when he pleaded not guilty to the charges, so he did not think the threat charge made sense. McElroy said he couldn’t comment on the charge related to the possession of child sexual abuse files because prosecutors had not yet provided any details about that at this early stage of the case.
“Anyone that spends any time in a room with Mr Mathre or has any knowledge of his condition – physical condition, mental condition – can see that it’s a farce,” McElroy said. He declined to go into detail about Mathre’s health challenges, but the lawyer said Mathre had “some mental disabilities and a variety of other conditions”.
Still, the US Justice Department and Secret Service took the threat very seriously after Mathre allegedly said: “I am going to find out where he [the vice president] is going to be and use my M14 automatic gun and kill him.”
The indictment filed in court doesn’t offer many details about the threat or the images he allegedly possessed, but the Secret Service said the investigation went beyond the online threat to examine Mathre’s actions and behaviour. The 33-year-old Toledo man’s Samsung phone was seized on January 21 as part of the investigation.
“Our attorneys are vigorously prosecuting this disgusting threat against Vice President Vance,” US Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “You can hide behind a screen, but you cannot hide from this Department of Justice.”
David Toepfer, who is the US Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, said, “hostile and violent threats made against the vice president, or any other public official, will not be tolerated in our district”.
Another Ohio man was charged last month after officials said he broke windows at Vance’s Ohio home not long after the vice president returned to Washington following a weekend visit to Ohio. The Secret Service arrested William D. DeFoor, 26, as he ran from Vance’s home on January 5. Vance is currently in Milan, Italy, attending the start of the Winter Olympic Games.
The Secret Service agent in charge of the Toledo office, Matthew Schierloh, said there should be zero tolerance for any kind of political violence in this country.
“The safety and security of those we protect is paramount to everything we do,” Schierloh said. “Thanks to vigilant members of the public and the tenacious work of our special agents, a comprehensive joint investigation was conducted, resulting in the arrest of a defendant for making threats against the vice president.”
Mathre is back in court on Wednesday for a hearing to determine whether he will remain in custody as the case moves forward.