Texas man charged over threat to kill Georgia election official

A Texas man was arrested Friday for allegedly posting a threat to kill a Georgia election official and other officials just days after then-President Donald Trump pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” votes that could reverse his loss to President Joe Biden.

The case against 54-year-old Chad Stark of Leander, Texas, is the first criminal prosecution filed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Election Threats Task Force, which was formed last June on the heels of widespread baseless claims by Trump and his allies of election fraud.

Stark is accused of posting a message on Craigslist on Jan. 5, 2021, with the subject: “Georgia Patriots it’s time to kill [Official A] the Chinese agent – $10,000.”

That official was identified as a state election worker, and the message was written on the same day as the runoff elections for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats that were won by Democratic challengers, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

In the message, Stark allegedly wrote, “Georgia Patriots it’s time for us to take back our state from these Lawless treasonous traitors. It’s time to invoke our Second Amendment right it’s time to put a bullet in the treasonous Chinese [Official A].”

“Then we work our way down to [Official B] the local and federal corrupt judges,” Stark wrote, according to an indictment.

“We need to pay a visit to [Official C] and her family as well and put a bullet her behind the ears,” Stark allegedly wrote, just a day before a mob of Trump supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol in a fury over false allegations that Trump had lost to Biden due to ballot fraud.

The case was announced a day after the top state prosecutor in Atlanta asked a judge to empanel a special grand jury to help her pursue a criminal investigation of Trump and others for possible illegal interference with Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.

Stark is due to appear Friday afternoon in federal court in Austin, Texas.

Trump on Friday morning issued a new statement blasting the criminal probe of his pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call, in which he repeated his false claims of election fraud in the state.

“So let me get this straight, I am being investigated in Georgia for asking an Attorney General with many lawyers and others knowingly on the phone to look for corruption, which definitely took place in the Georgia Presidential election—but the people who committed the crime are in no way, shape, or form under investigation and are instead…