Wasilla Republican Indicted for Threatening to Off a Michigan Mayor

A federal grand jury in Anchorage has indicted James Lawhorn, a registered Republican from Wasilla, on eight counts for allegedly sending more than 20 messages threatening to murder a Michigan mayor over five days last September. Seven counts are for transmitting threats in interstate commerce, and the eighth is a federal stalking charge.

The indictment doesn't name the target, referring only to "Individual-1," as the Muslim mayor of a Michigan city. But the timing and details may line up with Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who went viral in right-wing media last September after telling a resident at a council meeting that he wasn't welcome in the city because he was an Islamophobe - a clip that racked up millions of views once "X" accounts like End Wokeness and commentators like Megyn Kelly and Matt Walsh amplified it.

The alleged threats detailed in the indictment began two days after far-right MAGA commentators pushed the clip. Hammoud has faced repeated threats during his tenure, including a separate assassination threat that led to a Detroit man's arrest this spring.

According to prosecutors, Lawhorn allegedly threatened the unidentified mayor with hanging, firing squads, and bullets to the head, called for their family and friends to be killed, and declared that no Muslim is or ever will be an American citizen. He allegedly sent these messages, many of which were laced with homophobic rhetoric, to local crime pages, community groups, and an unspecified city's official government Facebook page.

Each count carries up to five years in federal prison. Lawhorn is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and the case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Anchorage.

Nobody should pretend this is some isolated Valley weirdo who materialized out of nowhere. The MAGA movement has spent years marinating its followers in violent fantasies about hanging politicians and purging Muslims from public life, and the country is living the results. Election workers and judges now treat death threats as a routine cost of showing up to work. Democratic Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were assassinated in their own home last summer by a gunman carrying a hit list of Democratic officials.

Wasilla just happened to be where this MAGA was sitting when he allegedly logged on.