Man Who Threatened to Kill Fox News Hosts and Joe Manchin Now Faces up to 20 Years in the Slammer

48-year-old Rickey Johnson of New York is in hot water after threatening the lives of U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Fox News hosts Greg Gutfeld and Laura Ingraham. For the charges of two cases of interstate threats, Johnson could face up to ten years.

Separately, a statement from the DOJ said he could be on the hook for another ten years for threatening a federal official. If we had to speculate, it appears Johnson is a Democrat, and despite Manchin being the same, he may be unhappy with Manchin for not toeing the party line.

This is not an ok excuse to threaten anyone though, nor is any excuse. Court documents show that after a one-week jury trial Johnson was convicted based on evidence from Instagram including messages and videos.

Newsweek reported in part:

“On February 3, the 48-year-old sent a direct private message to Gutfeld reading: “you will be killed” and said that he was “going to take [Gutfeld’s] life.”

He also made public posts on Instagram threatening Manchin and Ingraham. Newsweek further reported:

“Rather than express his political differences constructively, Rickey Johnson escalated his discord by instilling fear. Johnson’s attempts to scare and stifle a U.S. Senator and two Fox News hosts were federal crimes for which he has now been convicted by a New York jury,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.

Johnson is set to be sentenced on May 25 over his actions, according to the Justice Department.

In our view:

It seems that although there are probably crazy people on both political sides of the aisle, we see a lot of this stuff from the left. Even left-leaning CNN had to report back in 2017 about James T. Hodgkinson, who shot at U.S. Congress members, particularly Republicans.

Hodgkinson was a Bernie Sanders supporter, who hated Donald Trump. Although threats and action are not the same, it shows the hatred that political divisions can breed, and it’s a real shame.

Media outlets should sometimes tone down the rhetoric so as to help prevent the type of anger that might lead people to do things they should not do in our opinion. We will do our best to bring an update when the sentence ultimately gets handed down to Rickey Johnson.