SEATTLE
A 27-year-old Seattle protestor is will be sentenced in October after he plead guilty last week in federal court to saying he wanted to cut Congressman Jim McDermott’s tongue out along with other threats against the elected official, according to federal prosecutors.
Jasper Kilmer Hillman Bell made many phone calls in April to McDermott’s staff after he express outrage over how delegates were being allocated between the Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and the role McDermott as a “Super Delegate,” according to officials.
Prosecutors will ask a federal judge to sentence Bell to no more than a year in jail when he his sentenced on Oct. 8, according to officials.
According to the plea agreement, in mid-April, protestors went to Congressman McDermott’s office unhappy about his support for a particular Democratic presidential candidate as a ‘Super Delegate.’
Bell had written to the Congressman three times about the Super Delegate controversy, and had called the office on multiple occasions.
On April 22, 2016, BELL called the Congressman’s office in Seattle seventeen times, and his Washington DC office an additional six times in one fifty minute period.
In the calls BELL expressed his outrage that protestors had been arrested at the Congressman’s office. Speaking with staffers BELL demanded to know the Congressman’s home address and said he would “track him down and cut his (expletive) tongue out,” officials said.
He told one he would find Congressman McDermott’s home address and “…he would not be safe.”
Following the angry phone calls Bell went to the Congressman’s office and pounded on the locked exterior doors demanding to be admitted to the offices. Seattle Police arrested Bell later that evening.
Bell was in custody in the King County Jail until federal charges were filed earlier this week.
Following his guilty plea he was released on the condition that he get anger management and mental health treatment.
Under the terms of his release bond, Bell is required to have no contact with Congressman McDermott and his staff, and must stay a quarter mile from the Congressman’s office. Bell is required to stay a half mile away from any political rally in the state of Washington, according to authorities.