Justice Department officials said reports of widespread threats against officials running the 2020 and 2022 elections have resulted in charges against roughly 20 people, with more than a half dozen receiving sentences between one and 3½ years.
But the federal officials said at a news conference in Arizona on Monday that it remains to be seen if the stiff sentences will serve as an effective deterrent to would-be-criminals in future election cycles.
“Let these cases be a lesson not to take or attempt to take the rule of law into one’s own hands,” said U.S. Attorney Gary Restaino, Arizona’s top federal prosecutor.
When Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and falsely claimed that Joe Biden wasn’t the true winner because of widespread voter fraud, election workers across the country — from rank-and-file employees who helped process ballots to top state officials who certified or defended the results — came under attack. In June 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland launched the Election Threats Task Force to combat violent threats facing election workers.
An outsize number of the prosecutions have involved Arizona, a competitive swing state in the 2020 election that helped clinch President Biden’s victory and became a hotbed for conspiracy theories falsely claiming that the election was rigged and Trump actually won. Officials said that they have seven federal cases in which people who reside outside Arizona have been charged with threatening the state’s election workers.