Violent threats to U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Tim Scott land Georgia man in prison

Threatening phone calls to two U.S. senators sent a Cochran man to prison.

The Macon office of the FBI worked with the U.S. Capitol Police in Washington, D.C., to catch 41-year-old Jason Kenneth Bell who was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia.

Bell pleaded guilty to calling the office of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, in March 2017 and phoning the office of Sen. Tim Scott, R-South Carolina, in October of last year.

The Bleckley County man did not identify himself in the calls but spoke with an intern and left messages at Schumer’s office saying he wished New York’s senior senator did not have personal protection.

“I would hit you until I couldn’t lift my arms anymore,” he said, according to a news release.

Bell threatened to kill Scott, who is black, saying “are we as a white people supposed to just stand for this injustice, or do we do what Dylann Roof did?”

Roof, a self-declared white supremacist, was convicted of murdering nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Marc T. Treadwell sentenced Bell to 30 months in prison followed by a year probation.

He is prohibited from contacting Schumer, Scott or any member of their staffs.

U.S. Attorney Charles E. Peeler stated in the release that Bell’s repeated threatening, abusive and harassing phone calls landed “him a deserving place in federal prison.”

In this case, civil discourse crossed the line to criminal activity, he stated.

“Everyone has the right to express their views, no matter how distasteful, under the First Amendment, but no one has the right to threaten, abuse or harass those they disagree with,” Peeler stated in the release.

This story was originally published August 31, 2018 at 4:50 PM.