Brian Michael Gaherty targeted the congresswoman with violent threats because of her race, the judge found.
A 61-year-old Texas man was sentenced on June 17 to 33 months in federal prison and fined $10,000 for making threatening phone calls to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
District Judge Gary Klausner found that Brian Michael Gaherty, 61, of Houston, targeted the congresswoman with violent threats because of her race. A “hate-crime enhancement” was applied to his sentence, the DOJ said in a press release.
Mr. Gaherty pleaded guilty on January 29 to one count of threatening a U.S. official, admitting to threatening to assault and kill Ms. Waters on four separate occasions between August and November 2022.
The DOJ stated that Mr. Gaherty made the threats “with the intent to impede, intimidate, and interfere with Waters while she was engaged in the performance of her official duties.”
Prosecutors found that each of the four voicemails Mr. Gaherty left at Ms. Waters’ district office in Los Angeles County contained “a violent threat, profanity, and racist and misogynistic language.”
In one of his voicemails, Mr. Gaherty threatened to “put a cap” between Ms. Waters’ eyes and “stomp” her. He told the congresswoman that she “better move” because he and his “boys in the area” had a “contract” on her life.
Authorities warned Mr. Gaherty in October 2022 to disengage, but he left two more voicemails just weeks later. In one of them, he told Ms. Waters, “This ain’t no threat. It’s a … promise.” Mr. Gaherty was subsequently arrested in April 2023.
Mental Illness
Joseph Vinas, a lawyer representing Mr. Gaherty, had earlier requested a home confinement sentence for Mr. Gaherty. He said that his client made such phone calls because of his “extensive mental illnesses.”
In a May 28 sentencing memo, Mr. Vinas said that Mr. Gaherty was a victim of violence in June 2016, when he was shot in the right hip while washing his car in the driveway.
The shooting caused Mr. Gaherty mental and physical harm, the lawyer said. Mr. Gaherty was diagnosed with traumatic stress disorder, bipolar, and major depression as a result of the incident, Mr. Vinas said.
“The BOP [Bureau of Prisons] is not equipped to care [for] Mr. Gaherty’s complex of cocktail of mental and physical ailments. Home confinement would be more efficient and just under his circumstances,” he stated.
The lawyer argued in the memo that Mr. Gaherty’s threats to Ms. Waters were “grandiose and not credible,” adding that he had only made the phone calls “while suffering paranoid delusions of persecution.”
Mr. Gaherty was charged in April 2023 with four counts of making threats in interstate communications and four counts of threatening a U.S. official. Prosecutors also accused him of threatening other elected officials and a news reporter in Houston.
“Threats to harm or kill elected officials are anathema to our nation’s values and must not – and will not – be tolerated,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement.