The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the former primary opponent of Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) was charged with threatening to kill a rival opponent during the 2022 election.
The indictment released by the DOJ last week did not name the alleged victims and did not specifically say whether Braddock threatened Luna.
One of Braddock’s primary opponents was Luna, who in 2021 alleged in court that he was stalking her and said he wanted her dead. He also made threats against another woman, Erin Olszewski, she said in court in 2021.
Luna, who was publicly endorsed by former President Donald Trump, won the Republican primary in 2022 and won the congressional seat in the midterm election that year. She is currently running for reelection in the Florida district.
Braddock, a Marine veteran, was extradited back to the United States from the Philippines on a charge of interstate transmission of a true threat to injure another person. He made his initial court appearance on Sept. 26 in a Los Angeles federal court, according to the DOJ, which said that he left the United States for the Philippines after he made the alleged threat.
If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison, the department said.
In September 2021, Luna had testified in court that Braddock made repeated violent threats to “take her out,” while making claims about a Russian Ukrainian hit squad.
At the time, Luna testified that she'd had only brief in-person contact with Braddock at a political event but heard from several acquaintances last spring that he was allegedly making threats to have her killed.
“Mr. Braddock clearly hated my guts and wanted to hurt me,” Luna, an Air Force veteran, said during the testimony. “I started getting very afraid of him. It was horrifying, and it still is.”
Previously, Braddock denied any wrongdoing. He dropped out of the race in July 2021.
Around the same time, Olszewski said she recorded a phone call that year she had with Braddock, during which he allegedly made the hit squad statement.
“I was shook. I actually, I had to catch my breath,” Olszewski testified via Zoom. “I never in my life had heard an actual threat like this.”
Later that year, the St. Petersburg Police Department in Florida said it closed an investigation into what Luna and Olszewski had said and took no action against Braddock.
It’s unclear whether Braddock has entered a plea in the DOJ’s case. It’s not clear whether he has a lawyer.
The FBI’s Tampa field office is investigating the matter with support from the St. Petersburg Police Department, according to the DOJ statement. The case was brought in connection with the DOJ’s Election Threats Task Force, announced in 2021 to address what the department said were violent threats against election workers.
The Epoch Times contacted Luna’s office for comment Sunday.
