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A resident of Long Island has been arrested for sending a death threat against a Republican congressman who voted for the $1 trillion infrastructure package.
Kenneth Gasper of Lake Ronkonkoma, New York, is accused of calling Rep. Andrew Garbarino and telling a staffer who answered the call that he would kill the Republican congressman if he saw him on the street. The criminal complaint filed by Nassau County police also said that Gasper called Garbarino a RINO, which stands for "Republican in name only."
Gasper has been officially charged with aggravated second-degree harassment. Representatives for the man have not made any comment regarding the charge.
Garbarino was one of 13 Republicans who voted for the $1 trillion infrastructure package promoted by the Biden administration. He recently discussed that his colleagues who voted against the package were spreading "misinformation" and accused some of encouraging harassment.
"There are members of Congress that are fundraising off of their misinformation and attacking us, and it's causing us to get death threats on the other side," he told the New York Post.
Some Republicans have condemned those in their party who approved of the package. Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert told followers to "hold these fake Republicans accountable," while Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene published the names and phone numbers of the 13 Republican voters on her Twitter account.
Garbarino is not the only Republican to be facing death threats after voting for the package. Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan recently received a voicemail from an anonymous South Carolina caller saying, "I hope you die. I hope everybody in your f***ing family dies."
A news conference from the Nassau County Police Department is expected to occur later Friday.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Police said Gasper made the phone call Monday over a vote by Garbarino that Gasper "did not agree with."
It wasn't clear whether he had an attorney who could comment on the charge.
Garbarino, who was elected in 2020 after longtime congressional member Peter King announced his retirement, was one of 13 Republicans who voted for the infrastructure package November 5.
The 13 defectors have been attacked by former President Donald Trump over their vote.
While the infrastructure vote appears to have led some opponents of the legislation to threaten lawmakers, death threats against elected officials were already on the rise.
The chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, J. Thomas Manger, told the Associated Press in September that his department was seeing thousands more threats against lawmakers than just a few years ago.
Manger predicted that authorities would respond to close to 9,000 threats against members of Congress in 2021.
