SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – An Army veteran from Florida pleaded guilty to sending threatening communications to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
According to a news release from the Justice Department in Boston 31-year-old Drummond Neil Smithson pleaded guilty in federal court in Springfield to one count of use of interstate communications to transmit a threat to injure.
The indictment indicates on or about July 19, 2020, Smithson mailed a threatening letter from Ayer, Massachusetts to the Department of Veterans Affairs threatening to injure members of Moms Demand Action, a grassroots organization advocating for the end of gun violence.
“If you take my pension there is going to be retaliation,” and, “You take my pension and the second I get out of prison I will go to a Moms Demand Action meeting […] Try me.”
(SMITHSON ALLEGEDLY THREATENED, AMONG OTHER THINGS)
Smithson is scheduled to be sentenced on February 2, 2023, in federal court in Worcester. He faces up to five years in prison, up to three years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000.
