Mississippi Man Pleads Guilty to Threatening CDC Director

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, answers questions during a Senate committee hearing in Washington on Jan. 11, 2022. Greg Nash/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

A Mississippi man pleaded guilty on Monday to threatening the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) director.

Robert Wiser Bates, 39, of Ridgeland, Mississippi, left hostile voicemails for CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in which he threatened to kill her, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Mississippi.

Bates was charged with making threats against a federal official and making threats in interstate communication.

In an interview with the FBI, Bates admitted to making the calls and expressed intent to also kill National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Bates’s sentencing date is March 7, 2023. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

There was no information in the court documents that explained Bates’ motivation for the threats.

Since the onset of the pandemic, the CDC and Fauci have faced criticism as the central regulatory agency and representative of those regulations, respectively, because of what some have alleged as conflicting information that led to lockdowns and other unconstitutional policies that created more problems than they solved.

Previous Threats

In August, 57-year-old Thomas Connally of Snowshoe, West Virginia, was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for sending emails threatening to harm Fauci, according to a press release from the District of Maryland’s U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Connally also admitted to threatening Dr. Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institute of Health; Assistant Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine; and a public health official at the state level in Massachusetts.

According to his plea agreement, from Dec. 2020 to July 2021, Connally used an anonymous email account from Switzerland to send emails to Fauci threatening him and members of his family.

In one of the emails found in an affidavit (pdf) filed in U.S. District Court, Connally said Fauci and his family would be “dragged into the street, beaten to death, and set on fire.“ In another email in which he compared Fauci’s likeness to an elf and called him a ”sickening, compromised, satanic freemason criminal,” he asked why Fauci didn’t debate Kary Mullis about PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests.

The now-deceased Kary Mullis was a biochemist known for inventing a process known as the PCR, in which a small amount of DNA can be copied in large quantities over a short period of time.

He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Michael Smith for his role in the invention.

Mullis was openly critical of Fauci.

“Guys like Fauci get up there and start talking—you know, he doesn’t know anything—really—about anything, and I'll say that to his face,” Mullis said in one interview.

In other emails, Connally threatened Collins and his family with physical assault if he didn’t stop promoting COVID-19 vaccinations.

According to the attorney general’s office, the investigation into the anonymous encrypted email account was discovered to be associated with Connally, which led to his arrest in July 2021.

“Everyone has the right to disagree, but you do not have the right to threaten a federal official’s life,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, Erek L. Barron. “Threats like these will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”