Ahead of Election Day, Georgia law enforcement took a poll worker into custody for sending a fake bomb threat to election officials following a heated argument with a voter.
Fake bomb threat terrorizes Jones County
According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), Nicolas Wimbish, 25, tried to pin the blame on the voter by using their details and falsely signing off as a “Jones County Voter.”
The department’s press release said Wimbish is accused of sending the bomb threat to the Jones County Elections Superintendent on Oct. 17, the day after he had a verbal altercation with a voter.
Wimbish’s letter, which is written from the voter’s viewpoint, labeled him as a “woke liberal idiot” who had “given [him] hell.”
The letter also accused him of “conspiring votes” and “distracting voters from concentrating,” the DOJ noted.
The missive threatened that Wimbish and other poll workers should “look over their shoulder,” claiming to “know where they go” and “where they all live because I found home voting addresses for all them.”
It ominously warned that young men “will get beatdown if they fight me” and will get “treason punishment by firing squad if they fight back,” according to the DOJ.
An FBI agent investigating the case mentioned in the charging papers that he thinks Wimbish “conducted the Google search on his own name to confirm what information was available about him and other poll workers online.”
FBI agent figures out poll worker sent fake bomb threat
The agent believes that Wimbish wrote the letter pretending to be the disgruntled voter, because the term “distracting voters” was used in the complaint that was made about him on October 16.
Additionally, Wimbish allegedly included a vile threat to “rage rape” the “ladies” and advised them to watch their backs.
The letter concluded with a handwritten note reading, “PS boom toy in early vote place, cigar burning, be safe.”
According to the FBI agent on the case, “based on my training and experience I know that ‘boom toy’ may reference an explosive device and ‘cigar burning’ may reference a delayed fuse ignitor.”
The FBI interviewed Wimbish on October 23, where he recounted that on October 16, “a voter whose name he did not know at the time chastised him for speaking with Person 1 because it prevented the voter from concentrating.”
After that, he said that the voter asked for his identification badge and said his name out loud after reading it.
Wimbish managed to be present when the letter was received by the polling station, and was the one who identified the disgruntled voter as the person who wrote it after scanning it over.
While being interviewed by the FBI, Wimbish didn’t admit that he was the one who wrote the letter, instead alleging that it was authored by the voter he had the altercation with on Oct. 16.
The FBI executed a search warrant on Wimbish’s personal computer on Nov. 4, and found an Oct. 18 document that referenced “boom toy,” and the associated print spooler, a program that temporarily stores print jobs on a computer.
Wimbish has been charged with mailing a bomb threat, providing false information regarding the threat, mailing a menacing letter, and lying to the FBI. If convicted, he could face up to 25 years in prison.
Russia behind additional fake bomb threats in Georgia
Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, disclosed on Tuesday that there was a different bomb threat against a voting site.
However, he noted it stemmed from a Russian source and dismissed it as not genuine. In a later briefing, Raffensperger explained that this threat impacted several precincts across different counties in Georgia.
“In the interest of public safety, you always check that out,” Raffensperger stated. “They don’t want us to have a smooth, fair and accurate election.”
The FBI revealed that bomb threats were reported at polling sites in various states, and many of these threats “appear to originate from Russian email domains.”
Man arrested at U.S. Capitol on Election Day
In another incident, the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center was shut down on Tuesday afternoon after Capitol Police apprehended a man found with a torch and flare gun during a security screening.
“Our officers just arrested a man who was stopped during our screening process at the Capitol Visitor Center (CVC),” the Capitol Police shared in an online statement.
“The man smelled like fuel, had a torch & a flare gun. The CVC is closed for tours for the day, while we investigate,” the statement continued. “We will provide more information when we can.”
A Capitol Police spokesperson said that a Michigan man in his upper 20s drove to the U.S. Capitol and tried to get through security at the Capitol Visitor Center, where he was taken into custody. The man carried documents described as a “manifesto,” which referred to the Middle Eastern conflict.
Capitol police were able to located suspect’s vehicle and secured the area around it.
