Last month, I told you of a man who sped toward Washington, D.C., with one mission: to kill the president. He was determined to do so, he told the police: if they released him, he would continue with his task. There was no interrupting him; he was locked into a sequence, mentally. The police remanded him to custody.
Last week, someone new decided to pick up on this theme. The New York Times reports that on Saturday, January 29th, a man stopped by police in Kansas said he was “coming for” Biden:
The man, [37-year-old] Scott Ryan Merryman, made the threats over three days, starting on Tuesday, when he called the police in Independence, Kan., and said he was heading to Washington, D.C., to see the president, according to an affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
He called the police on himself? Were it always this easy.
The U.S. Secret Service called Mr. Merryman on Wednesday and he told an agent that he had been instructed by God to visit Mr. Biden and to lop off “the head of the serpent in the heart of the nation,” according to an affidavit written by Lisa Koerber, an agent with the Secret Service.
The phraseology here sounds QAnon adjacent, if not the group proper. This is apocalyptic talk, “the head of the serpent.” Many pastors and other clergymen who had thrown in with Trump and his team before the election—some who predicted with great specificity that Trump would be re-elected—have turned to strident, angry rhetoric in the past year, often with scenes and phrases that evoke Revelation and its imagery.
In fact, Merryman went on to say that his message for Biden, provided he was able to deliver it, would be “that people were fed up with the divisiveness in the country and to turn back to God.”
According to the Times, Merryman said he was not referring to Mr. Biden and that he was not making a threat against the president. It remains unclear who the reference could be except Biden. In fact, when an agent called him back that very day, Merryman clarified further, saying “he was ‘coming for’ Mr. Biden, according to the affidavit.”
Justice.gov adds that Merryman was brazen enough to dial into the White House switchboard directly. He used the same telephone number that he had used to contact the Secret Service agent in Kansas.
Merryman was charged with making threats against the president, as well as a count regarding interstate communication containing a threat to harm. Justice.gov says that Merryman faces both a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for making threats against the President as well as up to five years for interstate communication containing threats to harm.
Friday, Feb 4, 2022 · 9:17:50 PM +00:00
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novapsyche
As I just posted in the comments, Merryman was not the only person charged the same week by federal agents for threats on the President:
Scott Ryan Merryman, 37, Independence, Kansas and Ryan Matthew Conlon, 37, of Halethorpe, Maryland; were both arrested last week, but Conlon's case was sealed until Monday. He is also charged with making threats to blow up National Security Agency headquarters.
The same week!