A New York man who threatened Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
Patrick W. Carlineo Jr., 56, of Addison, a village southwest of Ithaca, was sentenced Friday on his plea of guilty in November to threatening to assault and murder a U.S. official and being a felon in possession of firearms.
He was arrested in April for the call to Omar's office on March 21.
During the call, Carlineo asked about the Muslim Brotherhood, called the lawmaker a "terrorist" and said, "Somebody ought to put a bullet in her skull," the prosecutor's office said. Omar is one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress.
Carlineo's attorney, Sonya Zoghlin, said in an email to The Associated Press at the time of his guilty plea that Carlineo never intended to harm Omar and that "he has taken responsibility for using threatening and inappropriate language to express those beliefs."
Prosecutors said Carlineo "believed that Congresswoman Omar supports Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and that Congresswoman Omar's election to the United States Congress was illegitimate."
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In a letter to the judge in November, Omar asked for compassion in his sentencing. "The answer to hate is not more hate; it is compassion," she wrote. "Punishing the defendant with a lengthy prison sentence or a burdensome financial fine would not rehabilitate him. It would not repair the harm he has caused. It would only increase his anger and resentment."
Carlineo, a convicted felon, had a loaded .45-caliber handgun, three rifles, two shotguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition at his home, prosecutors said. He was convicted of criminal mischief in 1998 and legally barred from possessing a firearm.
He has also been ordered to forfeit six firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York said.
