The FBI on Thursday arrested a San Diego man accused of leaving threatening messages on the personal cellphone of an Arizona election official during the contentious 2022 midterm election season.
William Michael Hyde, 52, faces a federal indictment on a charge of interstate threatening communication, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego. He’s expected to make an initial appearance in court Friday. It was not immediately known if he had an attorney who could comment on his behalf.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office, citing an indictment that it said was unsealed, but was not yet publicly available late Thursday afternoon, said Hyde left two voicemails on the phone of the unnamed Maricopa County official on Nov. 29, 2022.
The first message said “run” with an added expletive, federal prosecutors said. One minute later, Hyde allegedly called again.
“You wanna cheat our elections?” Hyde allegedly said in the second message. “You wanna screw Americans out of true votes? We’re coming, (expletive). You’d better (expletive) hide.”
The alleged messages were left one day after a highly contentious meeting held by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to certify the midterm election results from earlier that month in the county, which comprises Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs and is home to about three-fifths of Arizona’s population. Leading up to that meeting, some Republican leaders in the state and around the country had pointed to issues with malfunctioning vote tabulation machines on Election Day to call into question the results of the election, in which Democrats had performed well.
In the two most high-profile races, incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly defeated Republican challenger Blake Masters, while Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, narrowly defeated Republican news anchor Kari Lake for governor.
In the lead up to the Nov. 28 certification meeting, the chairman of the Board of Supervisors was moved to an undisclosed location for his safety because of threats on social media, NBC News reported. Huge crowds gathered outside the meeting, and inside the building they booed and disrupted the supervisors and election officials. Public speakers spent most of two hours urging the supervisors not to certify the results, sometimes invoking threats and violent language.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution necessary,” one woman told the supervisors, according to footage of the meeting broadcast by FOX 10 Phoenix.
“This is a war between good and evil,” another man told the officials, pointing to them. “You all represent evil.”
Prosecutors said the election official targeted by Hyde attended and participated in that meeting.
Hyde is the 18th person nationwide this year to be charged with a federal crime for allegedly threatening a public official, according to Seamus Hughes, senior faculty member at the University of Nebraska Omaha’s National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education center.
Research published last year by Hughes and Peter Simi from Chapman University show that federal charges for such threats against public officials have been ticking up in recent years, from 38 in 2013 to 78 in 2023.
“There are increasing threats against not only high-profile officials like the president, but also increasingly against the front-line public servants like election officials,” Hughes wrote to the Union-Tribune in an email Thursday. “More and more, the threats result in a chilling effect where less people are willing to raise their hand to assist in the democratic process. Arrests like these help put a marker that threats against public officials should never be the norm.”
Prosecutors said Hyde’s case is part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Election Threats Task Force, launched in June 2021 “to ensure that all election workers — whether elected, appointed, or volunteer — are able to do their jobs free from threats and intimidation.”
Hyde is at least the second San Diego County man to face such charges in recent years. Oceanside resident Johnathan Ryan McGuire pleaded guilty in 2022 to threatening to kill Sen. Chuck Schumer in a profanity- and bigotry-laced voicemail left at the office of the New York Democrat. A judge sentenced McGuire to five months in prison and three years of supervised release.
Hyde faces the same charge to which McGuire pleaded guilty. It carries maximum penalties of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
