A Falmouth, Massachusetts man who last year pleaded guilty to making a bomb threat to Arizona’s then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in 2021 was sentenced on March 12 to 42 months in prison, The Hill reported.
James W. Clark was arrested by the FBI in late July 2022 for a threat he sent in February 2021.
Federal prosecutors accused the then-38-year-old Clark of sending a message via the Arizona Secretary of State’s Election Division’s website contact form warning that the election official, unnamed by the Justice Department, had to resign by February 16, 2021, or he would detonate a bomb “in her personal space.”
According to prosecutors, Clark searched online for information about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people. He also did an online search to find the address of the unnamed Arizona election official.
Following Clark’s arrest in July 2022, then-Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ office confirmed that she was the unnamed target of the bomb threat.
At the time of Clark’s arrest, Katie Hobbs’ office said while Clark’s was the first bomb threat Hobbs had received, it was only one of thousands she faced following the 2020 presidential election.
Hobbs, who is now Governor of Arizona, said at the time that Clark’s actions were “unconscionable” and that such harassment should not be “tolerated” or “normalized.”
Clark pleaded guilty in August 2023 to making a bomb threat to an elected official.
In a March 12 press release, the Justice Department announced that Clark had been sentenced to three years and six months for sending the threatening communication that included a bomb threat.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the release that those who used threats of violence against election workers would be held “accountable under the law.”
Garland said James Clark would spend 42 months in federal prison for his threat against “an Arizona election official” and warned that the Justice Department would “aggressively investigate and prosecute” any threats of violence.
