ATLANTA — A Texas man has been charged in relation to a Jan. 2021 Craigslist post in which he allegedly threatened multiple Georgia officials over the 2020 election.
The post called on "Georgia Patriots" to kill one of the unnamed officials in the title of the post, accusing that official of being a "Chinese agent" and appearing to offer $10,000 as a bounty.
The charging document states the post said "it's time to invoke our Second Amendment right it's time to put a bullet in the treasonous Chinese [Official A]."
At least two other officials, identified in the document only as Official B and Official C, were also threatened in the post. CNN first reported on the charges on Friday.
"Then we work our way down to [Official B] the local and federal corrupt judges," the post continued, according to the charging document. "It's our duty as American Patriots to put an end to the lives of these traitors and take back our country by force we can no longer wait on the corrupt law enforcement in the corrupt courts."
"If we want our country back we have to exterminate these people," the post added, according to the charging document.
At the time of the elections, Georgia officials and elections workers were receiving numerous threats from people who believed a multitude of conspiracies that asserted Georgia's election results had been manipulated against former President Donald Trump.
The former president repeatedly targeted officials such as Gov. Brian Kemp and Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger in his tweets and public statements at the time as he was fixated on Georgia in particular.
Raffensperger had to deny at one point that his brother had any kind of shadowy connection to China, and attorneys Lin Wood and Sidney Powell who were working on lawsuits against Georgia's results fanned China conspiracies both related to the Dominion voting machines Georgia used and to state officials.
Wood, in particular, at one point tweeted a photo of Kemp and Raffensperger wearing masks with the Chinese flags on them. That tweet was later retweeted by Trump.
And at a rally in Alpharetta in early December, Wood disavowed the Senate runoffs that would be held later in January as he spoke to a crowd that chanted "Lock Him Up" in reference to Kemp.
"We're not gonna go vote on January 5th on another machine made by China. You're not gonna fool Georgians again," Wood said. "Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election?"
The Texas man faces charges of posting the messages to Craigslist "containing a threat to injure and kill government officials, including Official A, Official B, and Official C, and others."