A 38-year-old man will be sentenced to prison after investigators say he spent more than two years making social media threats against government officials, including sexual assault threats.
Michael Lee Tomasi, a Rio Verde resident, was sentenced Monday to 15 months in prison and three years of supervised release after pleading guilty on Aug. 13 to one count of making threats against public officials, according to the US Department of Justice. The Department of Justice ordered Tomasi to surrender his firearms, including an assault rifle, handgun, shotgun, gun magazines, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Tomasi’s guilty plea, according to the DOJ, stems from a threat he made on social media on August 26, 2023, to kill FBI agents, saying, “Shoot the FBI first and ask questions later” and inviting the FBI to “come to my house and see what happens. He threatened to shoot the FBI agents before they even took their pistols out of the trunk, with the intention of killing them.
Tomasi, who lived in Colorado and Arizona from May 2021 to November 2023, threatened multiple people and groups on social media, including a city district attorney, a state court judge, a member of Congress, and other federal officials and law enforcement officers, according to the DOJ.
According to NBC News, the FBI detained Tomasi in December 2023 at his house after discovering 5,000 rounds of ammo, a Smith & Wesson AR-15-style rifle, six filled magazines, and body armor.
“After making vile threats to execute and sexually assault FBI agents and employees, state and local law enforcement officials, and other public servants, Michael Tomasi told the FBI to ‘come to my house and see what happens’ — what has happened is that he will spend 15 months in federal prison,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement.
According to the Arizona Republic, Tomasi may face up to 10 years in jail on these allegations.