Michael Anthony Gallagher, 71, mailed his threatening postcards anonymously, signing them "KKK." 75 such postcards were sent over the years, a list that included: U.S. Representatives Jackie Speier, Anna Eshoo, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Adam Schiff; U.S. Senators Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Mitt Romney, Richard Blumenthal, then-Senator Kamala Harris, California Governors Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, and State Senator Jerry Hill, prosecutors said. Gallagher, wrote wrote an apology letter saying, “I am painfully sorry and ashamed.” I guess Judge Richard Seeborg wasn't buying it though, as he sentenced him to four months, despite the DOJ only asking for probation for this miserable reprobate.
Source: Mercury News
SAN FRANCISCO — In a rare rebuke of prosecutors, a federal judge handed down a jail sentence to a California man who spent some four years sending dozens of racist death threats on personalized, handmade postcards, court records show.
Michael Anthony Gallagher, 71, pleaded guilty last August to mailing a threatening postcard to Rep. Maxine Waters, signed “KKK,” but his crimes from 2016 to 2020 went well beyond that single offense. The U.S. Department of Justice argued a one-year probation term, and no jail, was a sufficient consequence.
But at the December sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg decided to jail Gallagher for four months, according to a minute order of the hearing. Gallagher was ordered to report to the Bureau of Prisons by the first week of March to begin his sentence.
Federal court, compared to California’s justice system, gives judges immense leeway in determining sentences. They are given general sentencing guidelines and tasked with finding a term “sufficient, but not greater than necessary,” but aren’t bound by either side. Still, most judges in the Northern District of California will settle on a sentence between what both parties are asking; it’s rare for a judge to go beyond what prosecutors seek.
According to Mercury News, the threat against Maxine Waters contained a reference to putting a bullet in her head.
'The Sheriff of Stanislaus County says you and your w**backs are s***,' Gallagher allegedly wrote. 'We will successfully put a bullet in your head. -+KKK.'
