PHOENIX — A Casa Grande man was sentenced Tuesday to more than three years in federal prison for threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris, KTAR News reported.
Rene Ortiz, 56, a U.S. Marine veteran, was convicted in June of two counts of threatening successors to the presidency and one count of threatening a former president after a four-day trial.
Prosecutors said that on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, Ortiz hand-delivered a signed document to the Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse in Phoenix asking permission to shoot whichever candidate won the presidency with a military rifle.
His public defender argued at trial that the threats came from a mentally ill man who never meant to act on them. A licensed psychologist testified that Ortiz has schizoaffective disorder and borderline personality disorder.
The jury rejected that defense and found him guilty on all three counts.
Sources: KTAR News. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Gonzo fan2007 / CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
