Numerous market research firms report approximately six billion text messages are sent in the U.S. every single day. Authorities say of those said text messages, one pardoned U.S. Capitol rioter took his time to write in detail how he would “eliminate” a Black United States representative.
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You remember Janaury 6, 2021? The day when an angry, heavily armed Donald Trump-loving mob attacked the U.S. Capitol just when Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s defeat over Trump in the 2020 presidential election? Lawmakers and staff alike sought safety and refuge behind barricaded doors as rioters pushed past Capitol police officers, broke windows and vandalized offices.
Despite this, President Trump offered pardons for many of the rioters. And one of those forgiven rioters, 34-year-old Christopher Moynihan, who got an undeserved second chance is now accused of trying to kill Democrat Hakeem Jeffries on Monday.
And Moynihan allegedly had Jeffries’ assassination all planned out: he would “eliminate” the House Minority Leader during his scheduled speech at the Economic Club of New York this week, according to reports.
How did authorities discover the alleged threat on Jeffries’ life? Texts.
Moynihan, who the US Attorney Office said had entered the Senate Chamber and had the nerve to flip through a notebook on a senator’s desk, allegedly wrote in a text: “Hakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” per court documents. He allegedly added that, “Even if I am hated, he must be eliminated; I will kill him for the future.”
Jeffries, 55, didn’t take the alleged threat laying down.
He wrote how he is “grateful to state and federal law enforcement for their swift and decisive action to apprehend a dangerous individual who made a credible death threat against me with every intention to carry it out.” The New York native also called out Trump’s “blanket pardon that occurred earlier this year” of the “many of the criminals released” who have since gone on to commit “additional crimes throughout the country.”
Nevertheless, Jeffries said “threats of violence will not stop us from showing up, standing up and speaking up for the American people.”
In 2022, Moynihan, per the BBC, was found guilty of obstructing an official proceeding and plead guilty to five misdemeanor charges for his role in the Capitol insurrection. The Clinton, New York, native, who was one of the first rioters to break through police barricades according to prosecutors, was sentenced to 21 months in prison in 2023.
But Trump wasted no time pardoning his supporters. On his first day back in office, he pardoned “hostages” Moynihan and more than 1,500 other riot defendants after he said their lives had been “detroyed.”
Moynihan was arrested in Clinton, New York, for making a terroristic threat to kill a member of Congress— a felony— and plead not guilty. He’s being held in a facility in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is scheduled to appear in court on Thursday (Oct. 23).
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