Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA), Committee Chair, listens to testimony during a House Financial Services Committee hearing on oversight of America’s largest consumer banks, at the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, September 21, 2022. (Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)
Brian Michael Gaherty, of Houston, Texas was sentenced to just under three years in prison for making a series of threats to U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters of California, including vowing to “put a cap” in the Democratic lawmaker and “stomp” her.
The Justice Department announced the 33-month sentence on Monday. In addition to the prison sentence, Gaherty was fined $10,000 by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner, an appointee of former President George W. Bush. Gaherty, who, according to his sentencing memorandum is 62 years old, pleaded guilty to a single charge of threatening a U.S. official in December 2023.
The calls in question were first made in August 2022 when Gaherty vowed in voicemails left at Waters’ district office in Los Angeles to “put a cap” between Waters’ eyes, “cut [her] throat” and “stomp her.”
He also told her that his “boys in the area” had a “contract” out to kill her.
In one Aug. 8, 2022 call, according to prosecutors, Gaherty said:
Hey, you Black b—-. You f— with my people man. All that racism s— b—-, you up in age, 80 years old and s—, trying to remember 1960 and all that bull—-. And causing controversy b—-. We got something for your a– now b—-, you black mother——. Yeah we coming for you bro. You better. Hey, like you told them mother——- to go and do what they had to do. We coming for your Black a–, b—- a– now mother——. You — a— b—-. I’mma cut your Black a– throat n—-.
Court records show Gaherty made at least four separate calls to Waters, 85, and frequently used racial slurs and epithets.
Records indicate that Gaherty was contacted by a U.S. Capitol Police special agent in October 2022 and questioned. He was told to cease harassing Waters. Prosecutors say he gave the agent a false name and hung up the phone.
“Notably, Special Agent Guest’s warning did nothing to deter the defendant,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum this May.
A month later in November 2022, prosecutors said he called Waters again and this time and told her that she had made a fatal mistake in reporting him.
“This ain’t no threat. It’s a goddamn promise,” Gaherty said in a rambling message where he also vowed that he would “get in” her face.
Not long after, he called again, and this time got hold of a staffer who answered the phone.
“Tell Congresswoman Maxine Waters when I see her on the street I’m going to bust her upside her head,” he said, according to prosecutors.
When the staffer asked who was calling, Gaherty snapped: “F— who this is, tell that lying b—- I’m looking for her.”
According to a sentencing memorandum filed by Gaherty’s lawyer, in December 2022 two FBI agents showed up unannounced at Gaherty’s home. He answered a few questions after welcoming them inside. He told them he did not own a knife collection. When asked if he had firearms, Gaherty’s attorney said the man offered to surrender them but the agents did not want nor take them. They left without arresting or charging him.
He continued the threatening calls right through to February 2023 however and wouldn’t be arrested until April 2023 when he was indicted on eight counts, all of which related to making threats either via interstate communications or for threatening a U.S. official.
Prosecutors say Gaherty also left threatening voicemails for two other congresswomen of color including a Latina congresswoman and another Black congresswoman. They were not identified in court records. Those messages were sent from September to February 2023 during the same period of time he was threatening Waters.
In fact, prosecutors said Gaherty threatened the Latina congresswoman on the same day that the U.S. Capitol Police called the Texas man and warned him to stop.
“Keep getting the Capitol police, man,” Gaherty whined in a message to the Latina lawmaker. “You know what? You’re gonna cause the problem for your f— yourself dog. I’m not threatening nobody. I’m making a comment. Freedom of speech … F— you [Name of Congresswoman].”
An attorney for Gaherty, Joseph Vinas, told Law&Crime in an email on Tuesday that Gaherty was “incredibly remorseful” and he confirmed that Waters attended the sentencing hearing Monday and watched proceedings. He said Gaherty extended a “heartfelt” apology to her.
Had Gaherty not been a victim of a crime that had traumatized him so many years earlier, Vinas said he did not believe any of this would have happened.
In his proposed sentencing memorandum filed this May, Vinas wrote that Gaherty’s “life changed forever” in June 2016 when he was shot in the hip by a stranger who approached him in his driveway after driving up and down Gaherty’s street.
Vinas said Gaherty tried to run before being shot but didn’t make it inside. Instead, injured, he lay on the ground pretending to be dead as the man rifled through his pockets. After his assailant left, Vinas said Gaherty “crawled across the street to his neighbor’s house where they called 9-1-1.”
Vinas said Gaherty underwent at least 50 therapy sessions after that attack and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as well as with bipolar type 1 disorder.
“Mr. Gaherty does not stand before this honorable court denying, justifying or excusing the statements he made. He, more than perhaps anyone else, finds them reprehensible. He has no recollections of making the statements and when he heard them, he begged for them to stop,” Vinas wrote.
When viewed ‘through the lens” of Gaherty’s mental and medical health records, the court should know, the defense attorney wrote, that these were the “delusional rantings of a man who, through no fault of his own, suffers from a complex combination of mental illnesses.”
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