After making numerous threatening phone calls to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s office last year, a man from New York, is receiving a 3 month prison sentence.
Joseph Morelli of Endicott was sentenced Thursday after pleading guilty this year to transmitting interstate threatening communications stemming from voicemails he left for the Georgia Republican in March 2022.
Chief U.S. District Judge Brenda K. Sannes ordered Morelli, 51, to surrender on Oct. 2 and to serve a three-year term of supervised release after completing his prison sentence.
The sentencing came after a judge and jury listened to FBI evidence showing Morelli had left seven threatening voicemails for Greene at her Washington office on March 3 and 4 in 2022.
As part of his guilty plea in February, Morelli admitted to calling Greene’s office in Washington and threatening to cause her physical harm.
“Yeah, I just don’t think I can go on letting you, you know, cause hatred and poison to people. I really think I’m gonna have to cause you harm…physical harm,” Morelli said in one of the voicemails he left. “I’m gonna have to take your life into my own hands.”
Other voicemails contained Morelli saying, “I’ll show you, to your face, right up front, what violence truly is.”, “I’ll pay someone to take a baseball bat and crack your skull.”, and “You are going to get f—ing physically hurt.”
The judge who sentenced Morelli on Thursday postponed a decision on Greene’s request for restitution in the amount of roughly $67,000 for security improvements at her Georgia home following the threats.
Federal prosecutors said that Morelli should pay the requested restitution because Greene had received occasional reports of threats, but that Morelli’s case was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
In a court filing opposing the restitution request, Morelli’s attorney Gabrielle DiBella argued that Greene’s security expenditures and Morelli’s conduct were “far too attenuated” for the court to grant restitution.
It was reported in the New York Times last year, Greene spent more campaign cash on personal security in 2022, than any other candidate running for office at the time.
Greene stated, “I’ve been targeted in public multiple times. Earlier this year, a woman attacked me and my adult son at a restaurant.”
