A Florida woman has been arrested for threatening to “shoot” Governor Ron DeSantis, Senator Marco Rubio, and Senator Rick Scott in a tweet.
Karen Jones, 55, of Palm Beach County, wrote in the tweet: ““DeSantis, Rick Scott and Marco Rubio are looting my state. Imma shoot them,” according to the Miami Herald.
The threatening statement was made in a retweet of a Washington Post reporter, who shared an article about proposed “anti-mob” legislation that would expand Florida’s “stand your ground law” to allow self-defense in cases of riot-related activity.
Jones, who is a registered Democrat, was arrested by Palm Beach County deputies. After having her rights read, the sheriff’s office said she admitted to a detective that the Twitter account belonged to her, and that she made the threatening post. According to her arrest affidavit, Jones told the detective that it was a “joke.”
A Palm County Detective noted that there was nothing in the post to suggest that Jones was joking. “When I made the observation that there were no commonly used terminology to show the post was a joke, Jones stated that anyone who follows her knows her sense of humor,” the detective wrote.
Not the First Threat
Jones isn’t the first Florida resident to make threatening statements against a Republican politician on Twitter in this election cycle.
Steven DiLauro, 31, a medical student from Miami, wrote on Twitter on October 26 that if he ever saw Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, he would “bounce his skull on the sidewalk like a f**king sea otter and tear his skin off while he’s still breathing and that’s a promise.”
DiLauro also wrote that “every member of the GOP should be lined up in a front of a wall but there are a select few who should be slowly lowered into a tank of sharks,” the report said.
His lawyers are trying to claim that DiLauro’s threatening speech is protected under the first amendment. “I’m bewildered they chose to make an arrest for someone venting when there is much worse stuff on the Internet,” said Brett Schwartz, adding: “Statutorily, it doesn’t pass muster.”
The left is losing their minds, and they’re not afraid to show it publicly. First, the riots, looting, and acts of domestic terror; and now, blatant violent threats on a public forum. What’s next?
