July 27, 2021- 9:00 p.m.
Federal authorities have arrested a man they say sent graphic and threatening emails to Dr. Anthony Fauci and his boss at the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Justice said Tuesday.
Thomas Patrick Connally, 56, was arrested Tuesday and charged with threatening a federal official.
As the federal government’s top infectious disease expert continues to be a top target of abuse for those who distrust Washington’s actions to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
The emails were unsigned and sent from an anonymous encrypted ProtonMail account, but federal investigators say the ProtonMail address was linked to an Instagram account and a separate email address used by Connally.
From December to July, Fauci and NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins received more than a dozen emails from the same address.
Threatening to torture and kill them, their wives and their children in gruesome and often vivid terms, according to an affidavit filed by the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector-general and unsealed Tuesday.
“Hope you get a bullet in your compromised satanic elf skull today,” Connally allegedly wrote in a late December email to Fauci, according to an affidavit.
Federal authorities didn’t specify where Connally lives, but the by reports he was arrested in West Virginia, and he was charged in Maryland, which houses both Fauci and Collins’ offices at the NIH headquarters.
