‘I’m going to kill Ilhan Omar’: Wichita man charged after Facebook post

A Wichita man was charged after he wrote “I’m going to kill Ilhan Omar” on Facebook, federal court records show.

Adam Lee Osborn, 60, was indicted this week on one count of using the internet to make a threat to injure someone and one count of influencing, impeding and retaliating against a federal official by threat. The charges carry up to five and 10 years in prison, respectively, and each has up to a $250,000 fine.

When Wichita police officers arrived at his apartment after the Jan. 23 post, he acknowledged the post about wanting to kill the U.S. representative from Minnesota but said he was legally blind, was “just making a statement” and didn’t have the means to carry it out, a court document says.

During an interview with officers, Osborn also called Omar a racial slur and stated that “someone needs to do something to ‘em.”’

Osborn also talked about newly elected New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, saying “someone needed to take his sorry ass out too,” the court document says.

He said he “wouldn’t mind if they were killed” and told police his saying these things would “maybe provoke someone to handle business” and by that he meant to kill them, according to the court document.

“Threats of political violence will not be tolerated,” said Ryan Kriegshauser, a U.S. attorney for the District of Kansas, in a news release. “In a democracy, we settle our differences at the ballot box after robust public debate. For our system of government to work, it’s vital that certain lines are not crossed when it comes to self-expression. Threats of political violence destabilize the very core of our system of governance.”

Omar, a refugee from Somali, has been critical of President Donald Trump in the past and recently. A man was arrested Tuesday after spraying a liquid on her during a town hall meeting in Minneapolis. The man had made posts online in support of Trump, according to The Associated Press.