ICYMI: A Gaston County man with a long history of violence was charged with threatening to kill President Joe Biden. According to newly unsealed documents in the case, David Kyle Reeves, 27, of Gastonia, made a series of angry and erratic phone calls to the White House switchboard between Jan. 28 and Feb. 1 in which he threatened to kill the president and other federal officials. He repeated the threats in phone conversations with the Secret Service in which he dared agents to try and stop him, documents show.
Man calls White House and threatens to kill Biden
“I’m going to come kill the president, I’m going to kill the Secret Service because I own this whole planet,” Reeves said in a phone call to a Secret Service special agent, according to an affidavit.
In subsequent phone calls, according to the affidavit, Reeves taunted the agents, saying his threats were protected under free speech, and that he would continue to make them.
In one of the calls, according to the affidavit, Reeves appeared to threaten to kill members of Congress. In another, he told the Secret Service “to come pick him up, and take him to the White House so he can punch the President in the face, sit in his chair, and stay there until he dies.”
Reeves made his initial appearance in federal court in Charlotte where he was officially charged with Threatening the President of the United States. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
U.S. Magistrate Judge David Keesler ordered Reeves held pending his next court date. According to Mecklenburg County Jail records, Reeves was arrested.
The documents, along with an Observer search of public records, showed that Reeves has a long list of past criminal charges involving violence. They included assault, family violence, terroristic threats and acts, assault on a police officer while resisting arrest, violation of family violence order, malicious injury willful injury to courthouse, threatening the life of a public employee and criminal trespass, among other arrests.
In a phone conversation, Reeves told another Secret Service special agent that “no punishment will stop him and it is not against the law to threaten people.”
Reeves’ attorney, Kevin Tate, told the judge that his client “may be taking” psychotropic medication and hoped he could continue to have access to the drugs while in the Mecklenburg jail. Prior to his arrest, according to the affidavit, Reeves was living in Gastonia with his father. He became the second Charlotte-area defendant tied to threats on Biden’s life.
Video shows National Guard members walking near the US Capitol a day before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden https://t.co/r5EDIJMu8h pic.twitter.com/bkeBQGrvy4
— CNN (@CNN) January 19, 2021
Capitol still surrounded by National Guard troops
Federal court documents alleged that Alexander Treisman, a heavily armed wanderer traveling the country in a van, had mused online of killing Biden.
“I was going to do a Columbine for a while,” the 19-year-old from Seattle wrote online in April, documents show. “Now I think it would be better to put it toward something more memorable.”
Later, federal investigators found another online post in which Treisman asked, “Should I kill Joe Biden?”
According to federal documents, less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 presidential election, investigators found evidence on Treisman’s computers and phone that was “consistent with a surveillance and attack plan connected to a possible threat against Joe Biden or other targeted act of violence.”
Treisman, according to court records, told investigators that his violent posts were not real and only part of his online persona. But investigators with the FBI office in Charlotte who tracked Treisman’s credit cards and cell phone were able to place him at a Wendy’s only 4 miles from the former vice president’s Delaware home on May 3.
