A man from New York was sentenced to more than a year in prison on Tuesday for making thousands of harassing telephone calls to members of Congress and threatening to kill a staffer, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Ade Salim Lilly, 35, of Queens, New York, was sentenced to 13 months in prison and three years of supervised release, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. Prosecutors accused Lilly of conducting a "campaign of pervasive harassing communications" against members of Congress. Lilly had pleaded guilty in May to two federal charges: interstate communications with a threat to kidnap or injure, and making repeated threatening telephone calls. From February 2022 until his arrest in November 2023, Lilly made more than 12,000 telephone calls to about 54 offices for members of Congress across the country, according to court documents. Out of the thousands of calls, over 6,526 calls were to offices within the District of Columbia, USA Today reports.
Prosecutors said Lilly would "become angry and use vulgar and harassing language" in some of the telephone calls. Congressional staff repeatedly asked Lilly to stop calling and Capitol Police also told Lilly on multiple occasions that his calls were "unwanted, and due to a harassing nature, were prohibited by law," according to prosecutors. Lilly was also accused of making at least one phone call, in which he threatened to kill a staff member at a congressional office in Washington D.C., in October 2022. In addition to the threatening phone call, prosecutors said that in at least seven cases, Lilly repeatedly called congressional offices that had stopped answering his calls after they became aware he was targeting them. His harassment campaign continued until he was indicted and arrested by Capitol Police agents in November 2023 in Puerto Rico. The case is the latest incident involving threats made against public officials, including two Eastern Europeans who were indicted last month for allegedly "swatting" 40 private victims and 61 official victims. Capitol Police reported in January that threats against lawmakers rose to 8,008 last year from 5,206 in 2018.
Comments