A Kaysville man is facing a federal charge of making multiple phone threats to kill members of Congress and reportedly made more than 2,000 phone calls to the U.S. Capitol in the last 13 months.
In a complaint unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Utah, Scott Brian Haven, 54, is charged with one count of interstate transmission of threats to injure. If convicted, Haven could face five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Haven was arrested Tuesday morning in Kaysville, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Salt Lake City. He appeared Wednesday before U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Paul M. Warner, who found Haven to be a danger to the community and ordered him detained “pending resolution of the case.” The spokeswoman did not know where Haven was being held.
Haven’s next court appearance is June 13.
The complaint accuses Haven of calling in to congressional offices in Washington, D.C., hundreds of times over a year. In those calls, he mentioned five representatives, five senators and former Secretary of State John Kerry. Seven calls are considered direct threats to members of Congress. The threatened lawmakers are not identified by name in the complaint.
The first threat was made to a senator’s office on May 17, 2018, the complaint states. The caller said “he would like to slice [Senator 1]’s head off and [Senator 2]’s head, too,” the complaint states, adding it was one of 32 times Haven called the Capitol Switchboard on that day.
Two more threats were recorded, on Sept. 18 and Oct. 18, 2018, before FBI agents in Utah went to Haven’s house to talk to him on Nov. 13, 2018, the complaint states.
At first, Haven denied to the agents he had made any threats, though he did say he called the D.C. office of the first senator “during periods of frustration with the way Democrats were treating President Trump,” according to the complaint. He later told the agents his calls were “just meaningless threats that were made out of frustrations,” and told the agents he would stop calling Congress. He also told the agents he owned a .22 caliber firearm.
A staffer at the first senator’s office said Haven called again Jan. 31, with a message that ended, “Do you like being a f---ing baby killer, you b----?” Another hostile call was made to that office on March 21, the complaint said. Those calls were not considered threats, because they did not mention specifically causing injury to anyone.
On April 25, the complaint said, a threat was made to a fourth senator. Another representative got a threatening call May 15, in which the caller said he would “use his 2nd Amendment Right to blow the head off” the congressperson. Yet another representative got a threatening call on May 23. And the first senator’s office received a threatening call — the seventh overall — on May 28, which referred to a fifth senator and Kerry.
According to the complaint, phone records showed 1,499 calls to the Capitol Switchboard from a phone identified as Haven’s between May 17 and Oct. 29, 2018. Also, AT&T records showed another 850 calls made from that number to the switchboard between May 1 and May 28 of this year.
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