‘I Made a Stupid Phone Call’: Alabama Man Who Told Fani Willis to ‘Look Over Her Shoulder’ Over Trump Indictment Says He ‘Didn’t Know’ He Was Threatening Anyone As He Faces Prison Time
An Alabama man recently admitted to leaving threatening voicemails for Fulton County officials a week before the election interference indictment against former president Donald Trump was announced in Georgia.
According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 58-year-old Arthur Ray Hanson II called the Fulton County Government service line on Aug. 6, 2023, and left voice messages for District Attorney Fani Willis and Sheriff Pat Labat. These calls took place as news began surfacing that the county was preparing to drop a criminal indictment against Trump and several co-conspirators.
According to court records, in his voice message to message for Willis, he said, “When you charge Trump on that fourth indictment, anytime you’re alone, be looking over your shoulder.”
In the message to Labat, Hanson said, “If you take a mug shot of the president and you’re the reason it happened, some bad (expletive)’s gonna happen to you.”
Willis is the chief prosecutor in a sweeping RICO indictment that alleges that Trump and more than a dozen other people attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
Sheriff Labat’s office booked and processed Trump and his alleged co-conspirators and took his mug shot. Labat had commented publicly that anyone charged in the indictment would be jailed and their mug shot would be taken, per standard protocol.
“I didn’t knowingly know I was threatening anybody,” Hanson told a federal judge on Tuesday, the AJC reports.
A federal grand jury indicted Hanson in October 2023 for making interstate threats via phone. He pleaded guilty in court this week and told the judge overseeing his plea hearing that the investigation of Trump angered him, and he made the phone calls hoping authorities would back down.
“I made a stupid phone call,” the insurance salesman from Huntsville, Alabama, said in court. “I’m not a violent person.”
Prosecutors said they would seek leniency for Hanson since he expressed remorse and took responsibility for his actions. He will be sentenced at a later date.