Man Pleads Guilty to Threatening to Kill Eric Swalwell and His Family Hours After Paul Pelosi Attack

A Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty Friday to charges stemming from threats he made to kill Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), members of his family, and his staffers.

Swalwell was subjected to threats from a man who had already been convicted of impersonating members of the Trump family as part of a fraud scheme, CNN reported.

The Justice Department said 22-year-old Joshua Hall pleaded guilty to a count of making interstate communications with a threat to injure. He made the threats while in New York and faces up to five years in prison.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York issued a statement about the guilty plea.

“Joshua Hall made terrifying threats to the staff of a United States Congressman whom he disliked rather than attempting to effect change through any of the freedoms of expression that all Americans enjoy,” Williams said. “These threats of violence endanger our public officials and thwart common decency.”

The plea came hours after another Bay Area Democrat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was informed her husband Paul Pelosi was struck in the head with a hammer during a violent home invasion.

A man broke into the couple’s San Francisco residence looking for the House’s ranking Democrat. She was in Washington at the time.

Swalwell briefly mentioned the plea on MSNBC’s The ReidOut during a discussion about the Pelosi attack:

Today, the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York received a guilty plea from someone who had threatened me, my staff, and my family. And there’s other cases that are ongoing. But our family and our staff, they sit or live on the X, so to speak. Members of Congress, like the speaker, like myself, we’re constantly in motion, in our districts, across the country helping other colleagues. We’re overseas fulfilling our committee assignment work.

It’s our staff who sit like sitting ducks at the office, and it’s our family members who are most often and regularly at the residence.

Watch above, via MSNBC.