A Queens man was sentenced Tuesday to 13 months in prison for making more than 12,000 harassing phone calls to members of Congress over an 18-month period and threatening to kill a congressional aide.
Ade Salim Lilly, 35, pleaded guilty in May to one count each of making interstate communications with a threat to kidnap or injure, and making repeated telephone calls in 2022 and 2023. In court, he said he was “apologetic and remorseful,” though he claimed to be motivated by a desire to help the country.
“My intention was solely to better the future of the descendants of the founders of the United States, and serving our young people and families and future generations,” he said. “I will find alternative methods to address issues I believe need to be addressed.”
U.S. prosecutors sought an 18-month sentence, saying a stiff punishment is crucial to deter rising threats against elected officials. U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger told lawmakers in March 2023 that threats against members of Congress increased fivefold over the previous six years.
Assistant federal defender Kathryn Guevara asked for a sentence of 10 months, which represents the time that Lilly has already served waiting for his case to be resolved.
“The pervasive rise in threats against elected officials creates a real risk that expressions of violence will become normalized,” Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander R. Schneider wrote in sentencing papers. In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberley Nielsen said that threats to public servants performing their sworn duties must be “met with swift justice, and with harsh justice,” citing the July assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and the October 2022 attack on the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly acknowledged the danger and the need for deterrence. “Our public officials and their staffs must be able to do their jobs without threats, harassment and without being subjected to violence. These are just basic rules of the road we need to have as a country, and we’ve got a real problem in this regard right now,” Kelly said.
Still, Kelly noted that Lilly had no prior criminal convictions. Addressing the defense’s argument that Lilly was motivated by childhood tragedy and a zealous belief that lawmakers must do more for the nation’s young people, Kelly added, “it is easy to see” how his offense might be the result of “good intentions gone wrong.”
According to court documents, beginning in February 2022 and continuing until his arrest in Puerto Rico in November 2023, Lilly made thousands of telephone calls to about 54 congressional offices across the country, with about half of the calls placed to offices in D.C.
Lilly placed the calls while he was in Maryland or Puerto Rico, and most were answered by congressional staff members or interns, prosecutors said. Lilly became angry and used vulgar and harassing language in the calls, and in at least one call, he threatened to kill or injure the person with whom he was speaking, according to court papers.
Staffers and Capitol Police repeatedly asked him to stop calling and warned that his unwanted calls were harassing and barred by law, but Lilly kept doing so and masked his phone number, prosecutors said.
“I will kill you, I am going to run you over, I will kill you with a bomb or grenade,” prosecutors said Lilly told an aide in a call to an office in D.C. on Oct. 21, 2022.
According to plea papers, Lilly called one congressional office 500 times and another office 200 times over different two-day spans in February 2023. Prosecutors noted that Lilly was arrested in Howard County for telephone misuse and had arrest warrants issued on Feb. 3, 2023, in Prince George’s County and May 31, 2023, in Anne Arundel County for misdemeanor threats of mass violence and telephone misuse, respectively.
“Despite being arrested for his conduct by Maryland authorities on Feb. 3, 2023, the Defendant’s harassment and threatening phone calls continued for months,” Schneider said.
Prosecutors said there was no evidence that Lilly actually planned to carry out the threats, which caused minimal disruption. Still, Schneider and Nielsen argued that Lilly’s listener took his statements as a serious expression of an intent to inflict harm.
Kelly approved a government request that Lilly be barred from contacting certain lawmakers and government offices without prior approval from his probation officer while on three years of supervised release following incarceration.
(c) 2024, The Washington Post · Spencer S. Hsu