A man who threatened to “put a bullet” in Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has been sentenced to a year behind bars — a considerably lighter sentence than the maximum 10 years that he was facing.
Omar earlier appealed to the judge to show leniency and compassion to her aggressor.
“We will not defeat” hate and threats of political violence “with anger and exclusion,” Omar wrote in a November letter to U.S. District Judge Frank Geraci Jr. “We will defeat it with compassion.”
On Friday, Geraci sentenced Patrick Carlineo Jr., 56, to a prison sentence of 12 months and 1 day, as well as three years of supervised release, for his threats against the lawmaker, CNHI News Service reported.
Carlineo of Addison, New York, admitted last year to calling Omar’s Washington office and threatening to “put a bullet in her fucking skull.”
“Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood? Why are you working for her, she’s a fucking terrorist,” Carlineo told a member of Omar’s staff during the call in March 2019. “Somebody ought to put a bullet in her skull.”
Authorities later found a cache of weapons at Carlineo’s home, including several firearms and more than 1,300 rounds of ammunition, The Leader reported.
Carlineo, who was convicted of felony criminal mischief in 1998, was legally barred from owning any guns. As The Leader noted, Carlineo had been found guilty of harassing a woman and destroying her property.
In an email to HuffPost on Monday, Carlineo’s attorney, Sonya Zoghlin, took issue with the notion that her client’s sentence had been a “light” one.
“In his case, the parties agreed that the guidelines were 12-18 months. The judge had the discretion to sentence him either above or below that range, but a sentence even close to 10 years was never a realistic prospect,” she wrote.
Zoghlin added that a jail sentence was “inconsistent” with Omar’s request to the judge.
“Sending Patrick Carlineo to prison serves no one’s interest. I think Congresswoman Omar recognized that; it’s disappointing the court didn’t agree,” she said.
Omar, who is one of the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress, has faced an onslaught of intimidation and death threats since taking office last year.
Still, in her letter to Geraci, she stressed the need to battle such threats with compassion and not retribution.
“Threatening assassination of a public official in our country is dangerous to both the individual and our republic,” Omar wrote to the judge.
“But we must ask: who are we as a nation if we respond to threats of political retribution with retribution ourselves? The answer to hate is not more hate; it is compassion,” she added.
This post has been updated with comments from Carlineo’s attorney, as well as to reflect that it was The Leader that reported on details of the man’s arrest.