Be careful of pushing the envelope on your rights.  The law may push back.

A resident of Shepherd is learning this the hard way.

It took only three days of a trial this week for a jury to find Richard Lee Rogers guilty of threatening to assault a member of Congress and two counts of harassing phone calls.  The congressman he targeted in February 2023 was then Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, Republican from California's 20th district.

Mr. Rogers became irate over the Chinese spy balloon that floated over Montana on February 1st, 2023.  Two days later on the 3rd, he repeatedly called McCarthy's DC office and promptly dropped any civility as he yelled obscenities and abuse upon staff.  According to the Associated Press, he made over 100 calls to the Speaker's office in about 75 minutes (that many in that amount of time, I suspect most of these went unanswered).

The jury heard dozens of the actual phone conversations, especially the one in which Rogers threatened to assault Mr. McCarthy.  The Montanan even identified himself by name and gave his location in Billings, which the U.S. Capitol Police verified as connected to his phone number.

Prior to this outburst against the former Speaker, Rogers harassed the FBI's National Threat Operations Center by calling over 150 times in the first ten months of 2022.  This Trump supporter even claimed he was in DC on January 6th when the Capitol building was overrun by protestors.

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Photo: Moussa81, Getty Images, TSM Media Center
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Mr. Rogers and his lawyers cited his First Amendment right of free speech and the petition for a redress of grievances for his defense.  He had insisted on investigations into the FBI and the Biden administration.  According to AP, he called his verbal tirades a type of "civil disobedience."  The jury didn't buy it.

He is currently free pending sentencing on January 31st of 2025.  Rogers faces up to eight years in prison and $500,000 in fines.

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