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Left: US President Joe Biden speaks at Florida Memorial University on Nov. 1, 2022, in Miami Gardens, Florida (mpi04/MediaPunch /IPX). Right: Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign event, Wednesday, July 17, 2024, in Kalamazoo, Mich. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio). Inset: Kevin C. Butler (Roanoke County Sheriff’s Office).
A Virginia man, aged 47, has been sentenced to several years in prison for persistently issuing death threats against former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris through a barrage of offensive phone calls and messages. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Thomas T. Cullen sentenced Kevin C. Butler to five years in a federal prison, as reported by the authorities.
After a two-day bench trial, Butler was found guilty by Judge Cullen on seven counts of knowingly and willfully threatening the president and those in line for the presidency.
“Threats of violence against public figures undermine our political system and the rule of law,” stated acting United States Attorney Robert N. Tracci following the verdict. “This office is committed to holding accountable those who threaten violence against public officials.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia revealed in a press release that evidence presented showed Butler made numerous calls in early December 2022 to a state probation and parole office, where he threatened the lives of then-President Biden and then-Vice President Harris.
Prosecutors detailed that Butler left voicemails in which he declared his intent to assassinate the nation’s top leaders. He specifically mentioned plans to obtain a “MAK 90 (a semiautomatic firearm)” and to “jump over the fence” at the White House in order to “kill the President.”
The criminal complaint says Butler phoned a state probation officer on Dec. 1, 2022, and left a voicemail stating, “whenever I get the chance, Imma kill the President Joe Biden” and “I’m going to DC one way or another and I’m gonna do it.”
That same day, he spoke to a different probation officer and made multiple threats, including telling her he was going to “buy a gun from a street” and “aim it at the Secret Service people,” followed by, “I’m just going to kill the President.”
In an interview with federal agents, prosecutors say Butler admitted to making the calls. He also explained that he planned to obtain a gun from a friend and travel to the nation’s capital, where he would kill multiple Secret Service members to get to the president.
“Butler stated that he is an anarchist and believes that he must kill President Biden because of the evil that has been done by the military and actions taken by former President [Barack] Obama when Biden was the Vice-President,” federal agents wrote in a probable cause affidavit included with the complaint.
Butler was convicted in 2014 in the Eastern District of Virginia for making similar threats against then-President Obama and then-Vice President Biden, court records show.