Dover man faces trial for texting death threats to presidential candidates
CONCORD – The trial of a Dover man accused of sending death threats to the campaign teams of three presidential candidates in the month before the 2024 New Hampshire primaries began Monday in federal court.
Tyler Anderson was arrested at his Dover home in December and charged with threatening to kill 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy at an event in Portsmouth. It was later revealed that he had sent similar messages to the campaign teams of former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
Anderson was charged in federal court with three counts of causing the transmission of a threat to harm another person in interstate commerce.
Anderson’s case began Monday before Judge Samantha Elliott. He is represented by Assistant Public Defender Dorothy Graham. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Charles Rombeau and Matthew Vicinanzo are the prosecutors.
Alleged threats were made in response to SMS advertising
Anderson was charged over a text message he sent in response to a text message from Ramaswamy’s campaign team inviting recipients to a get-together breakfast at the Roundabout Diner in Portsmouth.
“Another opportunity for me to blow his brains out,” the text said. “I will kill everyone present and then (expletive) their bodies.”
In addition to that text message, Anderson is also charged with text messages he allegedly sent in response to messages from the Haley and Christie campaign teams.
In September, Anderson responded to a text message inviting recipients to a Chris Christie event at Franklin Pierce University with a threat to “blow the bastard’s head off.”
“I hope you have the stamina for a mass shooting,” said another text.
And in November, in response to one of her campaign text messages, he wrote that Nikki Haley deserved to be “skewered with a red-hot nail” and that “evisceration would work, too.”
The line between freedom of expression and criminal threat
In his opening statement, Vicinanzo said that while the United States values free speech and political discourse, including political disagreement, “there are lines that simply cannot be crossed.”
According to him, situations in which the limit is crossed include shouting “fire” in a crowded building and threatening violence against another person.
The latter, he said, is what Anderson did.
Vicinanzo also said Anderson received 40 political text messages over the course of two years and texted “stop” only once.
Each charge against Anderson carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, up to three years probation and a fine of up to $250,000.
Anderson has pleaded not guilty. Judge Elliot said that to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the jury would have to find that he sent a message, intended to do so and disregarded the risk that someone might perceive the message as a genuine threat to harm someone.
Anderson says he thought he was responding to bots
Graham said Anderson should not be found guilty because he was convinced the texts were created by computers or “bots” and he did not know anyone would read them.
“I thought they were automated texts. I didn’t think my texts were being processed,” Graham said in her opening statement. “That’s what he told the agents and that’s what he believed.”
Graham said Anderson received many text messages from campaign teams that didn’t stop even when he wrote “stop,” making him even more convinced there was no one on the other end.
She also said that the texts, which were accompanied by emojis and photos, were so “exaggerated” and “vulgar” that they were not “serious messages.”
The rules for election campaign SMS
The public prosecutor summoned five witnesses on Monday.
The first was Danielle Evansic, a science and math teacher at Holy Family Academy who also worked full-time as a volunteer coordinator for the Ramaswamy campaign in New Hampshire. Her duties included sending campaign-related text messages to New Hampshire residents.
Federal Communication Commission rules require political campaigns to obtain consent from recipients before sending automated text messages. However, if the sender does not use automated messaging, they can send text messages without the recipient’s consent.
During the Ramaswamy campaign, Evansic and about a dozen others working on the New Hampshire campaign used software called Campaign Sidekick to send individual text messages by pressing a button.
The software would also allow them to view messages sent to them over the past few days and respond to them. Evansic said they would typically ask about other events or request to be removed from the text list.
On December 8, 2023, she came across Anderson’s responses to the campaign text. The “threatening” messages “raised alarms for her,” she said. She alerted people in the campaign’s senior leadership, including Zachary Letourneau, the Ramaswamy campaign’s regional political director in New Hampshire.
Letourneau said he personally is not concerned about any actual danger to the campaign, but professionally any threat is credible. The campaign has taken additional measures to ensure safety, such as requiring a police unit at every campaign event and equipping Ramaswamy with a bulletproof vest. Ramaswamy was on “high alert” and “on guard” after the text messages, he said.
Witnesses from the Haley and Christie campaigns also used messaging software to send campaign texts to recipients, but were not involved in reviewing the messages. John Hall, a digital consultant who worked for Haley’s campaign, said the messages were sent by phone agents in places like Colorado and Alabama who clicked through the messages. When asked by defense attorney Graham, he said he had concerns about the political process that some campaign technologies were being abused, such as not stopping sending messages after a recipient texts “stop.” He said that was not the case with the Haley campaign.
Neither the Haley nor the Christie campaign knew about Anderson’s messages to them until Anderson was arrested and the FBI investigated his other text messages.
The FBI investigation
FBI Special Agent Adam Howe, the prosecution’s third witness, said he was informed of the messages at about 10:30 p.m. on December 8. Shortly before 1 p.m. the next day, he, along with Dover and Portsmouth police, executed a search warrant and arrested Anderson at his home.
Prosecutors played a video of Anderson’s interview after his arrest, in which he admitted that he went into “graphic detail” and that the messages, while “exaggerated,” were “effective.”
Howe said he understood Anderson to mean that by sending these texts, he was trying to get the campaigns to stop sending messages. However, Anderson also said in the video that he did not believe the texts were processed, referring to automated texts.
Trial ends this week
The public prosecutor will summon further witnesses on Tuesday.
The trial is expected to end this week. Judge Elliot told jurors Monday night that the trial may end on Tuesday.
Local country singer Ricky Valido releases first album with retro charm – WSVN 7News | Miami News, Weather, Sports
Black Girls Code comes to the Spelman campus
The live-action series “Tengu no Daidokoro” will receive a second season in October – News
About The Author
