Dem Congressman’s Office: His Life Has Been Threatened Over Health Care Bill

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Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) will not be hosting any town hall events this August — instead, he’s making himself available to constituents for one-on-one meetings about health care reform — and at least part of the reason is this: His offices have received threatening phone calls, including at least one direct threat against his life.

“We had no town hall events scheduled for the August recess anyway, but in light of everything that’s happened — we have received a threatening phone call in the D.C. office, there have been calls to the Raleigh office,” said Miller communications director LuAnn Canipe, in an interview with TPM. The threatening call in question happened earlier this week.

“The call to the D.C. office was, ‘Miller could lose his life over this,'” said Canipe. “Our staffer took it so seriously, he confirmed what the guy was saying. He said, ‘Sir is that a threat?’ and at that time our staffer was getting the phone number off caller ID and turning it over to the Capitol Police.”

They haven’t heard anything back from the police yet, but they did get the caller’s number. So this could develop into something soon enough.

Canipe explained that Miller had no plans for a town hall before and won’t be holding any now, due to this event and the examples he’s already seen from the around the country: “Our point is, we’re not gonna be bullied into having a town hall so it can then be interrupted by the fake grassroots folks.”

“We don’t want to people to think we’re shutting out our constituents,” Canipe added.. “We’re meeting with them one on one to discuss health care reform.”

(Special thanks to TPM Reader ML.)

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