Donald Trump's nonstop lies about his election loss has election officials and their families fearing for their lives.
The twice-impeached one-term president continues to insist the election was stolen from him through fraud, and his angry supporters have been terrorizing elected officials and low-level election workers through threats and intimidation, reported Reuters.
"You and your family will be killed very slowly," read one text message received April 24 by Tricia Raffensperger, the wife of Georgia's secretary of state, and another she received a week earlier said: "We plan for the death of you and your family every day."
An April 5 text warned that a family member would "have a very unfortunate incident."
Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state who resisted Trump's demands to undo his loss in Georgia, called on former Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) in January to apologize to his wife after she received death threats following the senator's demand for his resignation, but the Reuters report shows the intimidation campaign remains ongoing.
"Vitriol and threats are an unfortunate, but expected, part of public service," Brad Raffensperger told Reuters in a statement. "But my family should be left alone."
His wife told the news agency that she canceled weekly visits from her grandchildren, ages 3 and 5, who are the children of her eldest son Brenton, who died from a drug overdose in 2018.
"I couldn't have them come to my house anymore," she said. "You don't know if these people are actually going to act on this stuff."
The Raffenspergers went into hiding in late November after intruders broke into the home of their widowed daughter-in-law, which they believe was connected to the Trump-provoked intimidation campaign, and self-described Oath Keepers militants went to their home that same evening.
"Brad and I didn't feel like we could protect ourselves," she said.
At least two other election officials' families went into hiding, Reuters reported, and Democratic secretaries of state Katie Hobbs, of Arizona, and Jocelyn Benson, of Michigan, said they continue to receive death threats related to Trump's loss.
Election workers, including local volunteers, also continue receiving harassing phone calls, emails and texts -- and Richard Barron, who oversaw Fulton County, Georgia's election, reported 150 hateful calls between Christmas and early January.
"You actually deserve to hang by your goddamn, soy boy, skinny-ass neck," one woman said in a voicemail, while another caller wanted him sent to China: "That's where you belong, in communist China, because you're a crook."
Barron's registration chief, Ralph Jones, has worked elections for three decades, and he's never experienced the racist threats he faced since Trump's election loss, including threats to drag his body behind a truck and strangers showing up at his house.
"It was unbelievable -- your life being threatened just because you're doing your job," Jones said.