United States Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday announced criminal charges against a 69-year-old man living in San Diego who is accused of sending a threatening letter in the mail to conservative influencer Benny Johnson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bondi shared at a press conference held in Florida that George Russell Isbell Jr. was arrested after the United States Postal Service helped trace the letter and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents found his fingerprints on it.<\/p>\n
According to the Department of Justice, the letter said Johnson needed to be \u201cexterminated\u201d and included other graphic notes about him being killed. Johnson stood next to Bondi for the press conference and said, \u201cThis individual described orphaning my four beautiful children and widowing my wife with great joy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bondi said Isbell was arrested in San Diego on Friday morning, however, the DOJ press release said he was taken into custody days earlier on Oct. 7. NBC 7 reached out to the FBI San Diego spokesperson who confirmed they were the arresting agency but could not clarify the timeline because the government shutdown limits their ability to respond to media requests.\u00a0<\/p>\n
NBC 7 learned Isbell lived in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego and spoke to one of his neighbors, Gregory Stern.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe lived alone, as far as I could tell,\u201d Stern said. \u201cThe guy, ever since he moved in, he hasn’t made friends. We never saw him much outside. We saw him, like, loading, unloading cars, groceries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stern said Isbell never put any political signs or flags on his house and that it was a relatively quiet street until this week. Stern said he watched law enforcement swarm around the home on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was like cops or federal enforcement everywhere. Then I saw them entering the house, knocking on the door, \u2018FBI, open up,\u2019 and they all had their guns drawn,\u201d Stern recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stern said he did not think Isbell was home and did not see anyone come out of the home in handcuffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t see them take anything out of the house. I didn\u2019t see anybody get taken out of the house because I was under the impression he was already in jail,\u201d Stern added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
NBC 7 reached out to the United States Attorney\u2019s Office, Middle District of Florida spokesperson for a copy of the complaint but received an automatic email response that read, \u201cDue to a lapse in appropriations, USAO-MDFL Public Affairs operations are limited. Normal press announcements and responses to media inquiries will resume once the lapse in federal appropriations has ended.\u201d<\/p>\n
If convicted, Isbell could face up to five years in prison. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"United States Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday announced criminal charges against a 69-year-old man living in San…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":293756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1035,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-293755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-crime-and-courts","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-sandiego","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115353676951783298","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}