Florida man pleads guilty to sending MAGA-tinged threats to victims

A Florida dentist pleaded guilty on Monday to sending political threats to three victims in 2019 and 2020 and to an election official in 2024.

According to court documents, Richard Glenn Kantwill, 61, of Tampa, sent more than 100 politically-tinged threats to various public figures in 2019 and 2020 via Facebook and Instagram messages, email, and text.

As charged in the superseding information, those threats included a threat sent via email to an author, a threat sent via text to a religious persona, and a threat sent via Instagram to a television personality.

Kantwill also sent at least seven additional threats to four public figures via Facebook from April 2022 to April 2024, including a threat to an election official in Colorado on Feb. 9.

That one involved Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who Kantwill referred to as his “number one target” a day after the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case in which Colorado was seeking to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the ballot under a Civil War-era insurrection clause.

The threats from Kantwill used “racist, misogynistic, sexist and vulgar slurs,” according to the Colorado Secretary of State office.

Griswold received more than 1,000 violent or death threats since the case, in which she was not a plaintiff, was filed in September 2023.

“With this plea, the Justice Department is ensuring that Richard Kantwill faces accountability for targeting an election official and other public figures with over 100 heinous threats,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “In the three years since I created the Department’s Election Threats Task Force we have worked to aggressively combat the dangerous increase in violent threats against the public servants who administer our elections. Today’s action is yet another warning: the Justice Department will not stand for threats of violence that endanger people’s safety and endanger our democracy.”

“Today’s guilty plea is the next step in holding Richard Kantwill accountable for his almost year-long campaign of terror, sending more than 100 violent threats to over 40 victims including various public figures and an election official,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “Make no mistake, using electronic communications to threaten victims with violence is illegal and the FBI will continue to pursue those who seek to cause fear and terror by sending such violent threats.”

Kantwill pleaded guilty to four counts of interstate transmission of a threat. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison for each count.