Joe and Jill Biden: AP Photo/Will Weissert; mug shot of Adam R. Mouser: Sangamon County Detention Facility; image of Barack Obama: AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis; image of Hillary Clinton: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
A 40-year-old man in Illinois will spend more than a year in a federal correctional facility for making violent threats against the lives of President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and several congressional Democrats.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Lawless on Wednesday ordered Adam R. Mouser to serve a sentence of 14 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to one count of making threats against the President of the United States, authorities announced.
Mouser faced a maximum possible sentence of five years. Following his incarceration, Mouser will also be required to serve two years of supervised release.
According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of Illinois, Lawless scolded Mouser during Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, telling him that “words do matter.”
“I believe it is common sense to not threaten to kill another individual,” she said, emphasizing that the threats were “repeated” and “escalated,” even after Secret Service agents went to Mouser’s home.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Secret Service agents on Aug. 10, 2023, learned that Mouser had been posting threats on X in which he said threatened to kill Biden.
“I’ll murder him with my bare f—— hands then put a bullet in that piece of s— wife,” he wrote in reference to Joe and Jill Biden.
The following day, Mouser challenged federal authorities, writing that the “sad pathetic pigs won’t shoot me” because he’ll shoot back and kill them, then track down their children “and murder them too.”
Responding to a post in which another person asked readers if they would prefer to eat a meal with Obama or Clinton, Mouser, on Aug. 9, responded by saying that he would shoot them both under the chin.
Mouser also claimed that a “Utah man” was murdered by U.S. officials for threatening Biden, an apparent reference to 75-year-old Craig Robertson, who was killed inside his home after he pointed a handgun at FBI agents attempting to place him under arrest.
According to the criminal complaint, authorities tracked down Mouser at his home in Jacksonville, Illinois, about 225 miles southwest of Chicago.
A Secret Service agent and a local police detective spoke to Mouser at the home on Aug. 23, 2023, and said that he “appeared very hostile” from the moment he opened the door. He was then quick to confirm that he was the one behind the online threats.
“Yeah, I posted it,” Mouser said when asked about the threats.
Mouser also emphasized that he meant what he said and stood behind the posts, according to the complaint.
“Mouser stated that he had First Amendment rights and that we were trying to silence him,” authorities wrote in the complaint.
But Mouser was mistaken, as the First Amendment does not protect “true threats” of violence.
Mouser then wrote about the investigators after they left, disparaging them in online posts.
In one post, Mouser wrote that he was alive but added, “I won’t go quietly.”
In another, he asserted that authorities would return to his home at night to kill his family in their sleep.
“The Fed protects pedophiles and scum,” he allegedly wrote. “Hope u stay alive longer than I did.”
The case against Mouser was investigated by the U.S. Secret Service with assistance from the U.S. Marshals Service and Jacksonville Police Department.
Alberto Luperon contributed to this report.
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