Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Kingman man gets prison time for bizarre death threats against Trump

Feeling wronged by the U.S. government, the Kingman, Arizona, man reached a voicemail line several states removed, stated his name and began to blurt out threats.

In a series of calls made in April, Jerrod Hunter Schmidt — a convicted child molester — declared the names on his supposed hit list: President Donald Trump, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, that state’s attorney general and his predecessor, according to U.S. Secret Service arresting documents.

The 38-year-old told court officials in Nebraska that he owned an unregistered gun and a bullet with Trump’s “(expletive) name” on it that he’d shoot him into his head, he said at 2:11 a.m. April 10, according to the Secret Service.

Fifteen minutes later, he reaffirmed his intention with another call: “I just made a bunch of threats and I mean it, too!” he said before he detailed the disturbing way the most powerful person in the U.S. would die, the Secret Service said.

It didn’t take long for authorities to track down Schmidt and determine the origin of his ire.

For the threats, he will serve three years in prison, according to the office of the U.S. attorney for the district of Arizona.

A federal judge in Arizona on Monday handed down the sentence, officials said. On Sept. 28, Schmidt was found guilty on two counts each of threatening the U.S. president and making interstate threatening communications.

Schmidt, who lived in a motorhome planted in a land plot near Kingman, about 100 miles south of Las Vegas, had served nine years in a Nebraska prison for child molestation, later appealing the conviction.

He lost.

But “Schmidt believes that he won the case and is owed money for wrongful imprisonment,” the Secret Service wrote.

It wasn’t long before a Secret Service agent was on the case.

A sex offender registry provided a target address, the Secret Service said. A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent told his Secret Service counterpart that it wasn’t impossible, or even difficult, for Schmidt to obtain the .45-caliber gun he said he had.

A week after the initial calls, Schmidt called authorities in Arizona to say “he was living in a small white travel trailer” with Nebraska plates.

The next day, he was in custody, according to a copy of his arrest warrant.

After his stint in prison, Schmidt was ordered to three additional years of supervision.