Joseph Morelli, the 51 year-old Endicott, New York resident who left a series of threatening voice mails on Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s phone in March of 2022, has been sentenced to three months in prison, one for each count of transmitting interstate threatening communications.
Morelli pled guilty in February, identifying himself as the individual who left seven messages with Greene’s office in which he threatened to “hurt” her, and to pay “someone 500 bucks to take a baseball bat and crack [the congresswoman’s] skull.”
“You’re gonna cause people to get hurt, so I’m gonna have to hurt you physically…I’m gonna make sure that, even if they lock me up, someone’s gonna get you cause I’ll pay them to,” Morelli said in one of the messages. In another, he dared Greene to press charges, spelling out his full name and leaving his telephone number.
Greene requested that Morelli to pay over $66,000 in restitution to her client, citing money she was forced to spend on upgrades to security at her Georgia home, including fencing and cameras. The judge in the case deferred making a decision on the compensation request.
Morelli’s lawyer blamed her client’s threatening behavior on the fact that he has bipolar disorder, and said he was working “with treatment providers” to “minimize the struggles that he faces due to his mental health diagnosis.”
Greene is not the first politician Morelli threatened, with prosecutors in the case indicating that he had also previously harassed and threatened a local city judge, as well as a lawyer representing his wife in a custody dispute.
Morelli faced a maximum sentence of up to five years in jail and a fine of up to $250,000 for the threats against Greene, but got less than even the 10-16 months he was expected to receive for admitting responsibility. He was released to home confinement in February pending sentencing, a decision Greene slammed as evidence of a “two-tiered justice” system. She also compared prosecutors’ handling of Morelli’s case with the harsh sentences meted out to the January 6 protesters.
Greene has faced severe harassment by her detractors over her voting record and policy positions, and has reported at least half a dozen incidents of “swatting” (that is, prank calls made to police meant to provoke a response by heavily armed SWAT police units). She called swatting a “very serious crime,” accusing callers making the prank calls of trying to get her murdered by police, and calling it a “giant abuse of police resources and time.”
The GOP congresswoman from the party’s pro-Trump MAGA wing has established a reputation of speaking her mind and speaking truth to power, earning the ire of Democrats and some fellow Republicans over her opposition to the US-led war against Russia in Ukraine, her support for the campaign to defund the FBI, her impassioned defense of Donald Trump, and her attacks on the “Biden crime family” and “pedophile” Democrats.