We’re still piecing together the story of this guy in Washington state who’s been charged by the feds with threatening to kill Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) for her yes vote on health care reform. But what we do know based on the charging documents in the case (which you can read here) is that at one point to make sure they had the right guy an FBI agent called the suspect and pretended to be from the anti-reform group Patients United Now. That’s a real industry-backed group (or at at least was real during the reform debate; our call just now to the phone number listed on their website reached a line that has been disconnected).
In what must have been a pretty funny scene — were it not for a series of voicemail messages to Murray threatening to kill her and calling her an effing slut and the like — the suspect apparently buys that the FBI agent is really a rep of this pro-repeal group and details to the agent how often he’s been calling Murray (and Sen. Maria Cantwell, too, though I think we can presume his messages to her were not so clearly threatening). Then, as if to seal the FBI’s case for them, he says that the “they need to be strung up,” that he carries a .38, that he won’t “blink” if he’s confronted, and that he doesn’t care if he gets thrown in jail.
I presume that the FBI had this guy under surveillance, because the threatening voicemails commenced the day after health care reform passed the House and continued for several days, and the undercover call that pretty much seals the guy’s fate was on April 1, but the arrest warrant wasn’t issued until April 5. So presumably if the guy made any move toward Murray, they would have swooped in. But we don’t know those precise details yet.
