Brad Raffensperger Speaks Out on Disturbing Death Threats His Wife Received, Efforts They Took to Protect Their Family

Election officials who pushed back against the nonsense Donald Trump and others were pushing received all kinds of threats months ago. In Georgia, it got to the point where voting systems manager Gabriel Sterling directly called out Trump in early December and told him to denounce the violent threats from his supporters.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his family were the target of some of those violent threats, and a new report from Reuters reveals some of the vile messages his wife Tricia received.

One text said “You and your family will be killed very slowly” and another said “We plan for the death of you and your family every day.”

Rafensperger appeared on CNN Friday night to talk about why his wife chose to share those disturbing death threats.

He told Erin Burnett it was in part to highlight how these threats to election workers and their family members is continuing.

“This is not acceptable behavior to threaten wives, children, the family of people that work for the government,” Raffensperger said. “It’s time that elected officials on both sides hold our sides accountable. So if you’re on our side of the aisle, on the right side, we need to hold our people accountable and we need to clean up our backyard just like the left needs to clean up that backyard.”

Tricia Raffensperger went into some detail to Reuters about the lengths they went to in protecting their family:

She canceled regular weekly visits in her home with two grandchildren, ages 3 and 5 – the children of her eldest son, Brenton, who died from a drug overdose in 2018.

“I couldn’t have them come to my house anymore,” she said. “You don’t know if these people are actually going to act on this stuff.”

In late November, the family went into hiding for nearly a week after intruders broke into the home of the Raffenspergers’ widowed daughter-in-law, an incident the family believed was intended to intimidate them. That evening, people who identified themselves to police as Oath Keepers – a far-right militia group that has supported Trump’s bid to overturn the election – were found outside the Raffenspergers’ home, according to Tricia Raffensperger and two sources with direct knowledge of the family’s ordeal. Neither incident has been previously reported.

Burnett said at one point, “To feel such fear, Secretary, it brings tears to my eyes. It’s truly sickening.”

“Even if it wasn’t a violent thing, just people screaming and hollering and shouting at me and my grandchildren hearing that,” Raffensperger responded. “You know, just think about the emotional scars that could happen to them, but also what if they’re actually in physical danger. So that’s why we took a several month break of having the children over there until things started calming down a little bit.”

You can watch above, via CNN.

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