Federal authorities have charged a New Hampshire resident with threatening to kill Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and target other attendees at a campaign event in the state.
On Dec. 11, the U.S. Department of Justice announced federal authorities had arrested 30-year-old Tyler Anderson of Dover, New Hampshire. Mr. Anderson made his initial appearance in federal court in Concord, New Hampshire, on charges of transmitting an interstate threat to harm.
According to charging documents filed on Saturday, Mr. Anderson received a campaign text message on Dec. 8 notifying him of a campaign event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Monday, Dec. 11. He is alleged to have sent a response text stating, “Great, another opportunity for me to blow his brains out!” and a second text stating, “I’m going to kill everyone who attends and then [expletive] their corpses.”
While charging documents did not specify the presidential campaign in question, Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign team identified itself as the recipient of the threatening text messages. The campaign determined the threatening texts came from a number that corresponds with a Dover address, and in turn notified the Dover Police Department. The FBI was subsequently notified and executed a search warrant at the Dover address on Saturday, Dec. 9, and arrested Mr. Anderson.
According to charging documents, FBI agents who seized Mr. Anderson’s phone were able to find a deleted folder with messages that matched up with the threats the Ramaswamy campaign received. An FBI agent found another series of messages on the phone from Dec. 6 that included threatening remarks to another unspecified presidential campaign regarding a different upcoming event.
“Fantastic, now I know where to go so I can blow that [expletive’s] head off!” read one of the Dec. 6 messages from Mr. Anderson’s seized phone. “Thanks, I’ll see you there. Hope you have the stamina for a mass shooting!” came a second message. A third Dec. 6 message read, “And then I’m gonna [expletive] [redacted] corpse,” followed by a fourth message that read, “And, don’t worry [redacted] make sure to [expletive] yours too.”
According to the charging documents, Mr. Anderson signed a Miranda Rights waiver and admitted to investigators that he’d sent threatening messages to multiple campaigns.
With the current charges, the New Hampshire man faces up to five years in prison, up to three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000.
NTD News reached out to an attorney representing Mr. Anderson, but did not receive a response by press time.
Ramaswamy Campaign Team Responds to Threats
“We are grateful to law enforcement for their swiftness and professionalism in handling this matter,” Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign said in a press release following Mr. Anderson’s arrest.
While charging documents did not describe a potential motive for the threatening text messages, Mr. Ramaswamy’s team tied the threats to politically charged rhetoric targeting conservatives and people on the political right.
“We’re going to let the investigators do their work and figure out who this person is and what their motives might be. We will, however, say this: we constantly hear about January 6 and ‘violence’ and ‘extremism on the right’ from the media, but the same media goes silent when the target is a Republican,” Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign said.
The Ramaswamy campaign said “deranged voices and left-wing cranks” routinely “demonize” Republicans and question their loyalty to the United States.
“It’s no wonder that fanatics will take action. Whenever it’s some nut with alleged right-wing views, the media is quick to blame all conservatives for stoking violence,” the campaign statement reads. “Yet the media never looks in the mirror and sees that they stoke hatred and violence by questioning our patriotism and motives and accusing us of undermining democracy.”
