CDC chief Rochelle Walensky and NIAID director Anthony Fauci at a 2021 Senate hearing. Photo: J. Scott Applewhite-Pool/Getty Images
A man who threatened to kill CDC director Rochelle Walensky has pleaded guilty to “making threats in interstate commerce,” federal prosecutors said Monday.
Details: Robert Wiser Bates told FBI agents he called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, to leave threatening voicemails for Walensky that stated “he would kill Dr. Anthony Fauci as well,” per a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi.
What’s next: Bates, 39, of Ridgeland, Mississippi, is scheduled to be sentenced in March and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to prosecutors.
The big picture: The American Medical Association warned in February that a rise in intimidation, threats and attacks on medical professionals over the past decade had become “even more of an alarming phenomenon since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
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