An Alaska man is threatening to “kidnap and injure” a U.S. senator, police say
An Alaska man threatened to “kidnap and injure” a U.S. senator, Capitol Police told a federal judge, in the latest example of elected U.S. officials facing direct threats to their physical safety.
The threat was made by email through the senator’s website on or about September 28, according to an affidavit filed Friday with a federal judge in Alaska by Austin Hunter, a special agent with the U.S. Capitol Police.
The affidavit, which sought an arrest warrant for the Alaska man, used pronouns that suggested the senator he threatened was a woman. But it did not name her or the state she represents.
If the senator was from Alaska, she could only have been Lisa Murkowski, a Republican. Representatives for Senator Murkowski declined to comment Wednesday.
The man accused of making the threat, Arther Charles Graham, was arrested in Kenai, Alaska, on Oct. 30, the warrant said. It called the crime interstate communication involving a threat of kidnapping and injury. An initial hearing was scheduled for Friday in federal court in Anchorage, according to court documents.
Mr. Graham told FBI agents who visited him at his home in Kenai in early October that he had threatened the senator by email, the affidavit said. Mr Graham told the senator he would “hunt you, cut off the flesh from your body and wear your skin as clothing”, it said.
Mr. Graham, 46, did not respond to requests for comment sent overnight to the phone number and email address listed for him in the affidavit. A Capitol Police dispatcher said by phone early Wednesday that no one at the agency was immediately available for comment.
The news of the arrest was reported by Seamus Hughes, a federal court records expert based in Washington, and by NBC News.
Since the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, violent political expressions in the United States have increasingly taken the form of direct threats against members of Congress from both parties.
In one case, an Alaska man who pleaded guilty last year to threatening to kill Alaska’s two U.S. senators — Sen. Murkowski and Sen. Dan Sullivan, also a Republican — was sentenced to 32 months in prison and a $5,000 fine.