Florida congressional candidate charged with threatening to kill primary opponent

The Justice Department revealed an indictment Friday charging a Florida man with threatening to kill his political opponent in 2021. William Robert Braddock III, 41, of St. Petersburg, Florida, was charged with threatening two people, one of whom the DOJ said was his primary opponent in the 2022 election for Florida’s 13th Congressional District. Braddock allegedly threatened to “call up my Russian-Ukrainian hit squad” and make the primary opponent disappear, according to the indictment. The DOJ indictment did not name the alleged victims.

One of Braddock’s primary opponents and the race’s eventual winner, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., contended in 2021 court documents that Braddock was stalking her and wanted her dead. A Florida court in 2021 granted Luna and a conservative activist and friend of hers, Erin Olszewski, a temporary restraining order.

Braddock called off his campaign in 2021, not long after the injunction was granted by the judge. On Saturday, NBC News was unable to get in touch with Braddock for comment. Braddock may or may not have entered a plea. The congresswoman has “faced a growing number of death threats” in the previous month, according to a Luna spokesman who told NBC News that while her office was unable to comment on the case, it did speak to a “broader and more disturbing issue of violence in the political arena.”

Requests for response from Olszewski’s lawyer were not immediately answered on Saturday afternoon. In 2021, Braddock testified before a Pinellas County judge that he was against the injunction and that he wished to “obtain, review and validate” the evidence that had been used against him, claiming he had no idea “what they

The DOJ claims that Braddock left the nation after allegedly making the threats and was later discovered to be living in the Philippines. Following his deportation, he appeared in court for the first time on Thursday in Los Angeles, according to a DOJ news release.

According to the DOJ, Braddock faces a potential sentence of five years in prison for each count of interstate transmission of a true threat to injure another person. The Election Threats Task Force of the Justice Department was established in 2021 to combat threats against election workers, and this case is a part of it. The St. Petersburg Police Department is assisting the FBI’s Tampa field office in its investigation of the matter, according to the DOJ. Luna is up for re-election on Nov. 5. The Republican primary for her seat in August was canceled after Luna was the only candidate to qualify.