Dec. 20 (UPI) — A Mississippi man pleaded guilty Monday to a charge of threatening to kill U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky.
Robert Wiser Bates, a 39-year-old resident of Ridgeland, Miss., pleaded guilty to making threats in interstate commerce, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi said in a statement.
The charge stems from voicemails Bates left for Walensky in July of 2021.
According to court documents, Bates called Walensky at the CDC in Atlanta, Ga., and left her what has been described by federal prosecutors as voicemails that were “threatening in nature.”
Bates also admitted to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents during an interview that he was behind the threatening phone calls and that he would kill Dr. Anthony Fauci, the outgoing chief medical adviser to the president and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Bates is to be sentenced March 7 when he faces a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
Bates entered his guilty plea months after a West Virginia man was sentenced in August to 37 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release for threatening Fauci.
Thomas Patrick Connally Jr., a 57-year-old Snowshoe, W.Va., man, pleaded guilty to sending Fauci emails from Dec. 28, 2020, to July 25, 2021, in which he vowed to kill the United States’ leading infectious disease doctor and his family.
In one of the anonymous emails, Connally told Fauci that his family would be “dragged into the street, beaten to death and set on fire.”
