(NewsNation) — A New Hampshire man was arrested and charged after allegedly sending text messages that threatened to kill a presidential candidate and their supporters at a campaign event scheduled for Monday, U.S. Attorney Jane E. Young said.
The press release did not say which presidential hopeful the suspect was targeting. However, the campaign for businessman Vivek Ramasamy confirmed to NewsNation he was the victim of the threat.
“We are grateful to law enforcement for their swiftness and professionalism in handling this matter and pray for the safety of all Americans,” Tricia McLaughlin, a senior advisor for Ramaswamy’s campaign, said.
Ramaswamy was the only candidate who had a listed event in Portsmouth on Monday morning.
The suspect, 30-year-old Tyler Anderson, was charged with transmitting in interstate commerce a threat to injure the person of another, the release said. Anderson is scheduled to appear in federal court Monday afternoon.
In the charging documents, the suspect received a text message from the presidential candidate’s campaign, informing Anderson of the event. Anderson then responded to the text message Friday.
“Great, another opportunity for me to blow his brains out!” Anderson wrote. “I’m going to kill everyone who attends and then f— their corpses.”
Anderson faces up to five years in prison, up to three years of supervised release and a fine up to $250,000.
After an investigation, the FBI found additional texts on Anderson’s phone to another candidate from last Wednesday.
Anderson admitted to sending the threatening text messages to the presidential hopeful. He also said he sent similar messages to multiple other candidates.
The Ramaswamy campaign released an extended statement following the initial news that the presidential candidate was the target of the threat, calling out the news media for “going silent” on this issue.
“We constantly hear about Jan. 6 and ‘violence’ and ‘extremism on the right’ from the media, but the same media goes silent when the target is a Republican,” the statement read.