An Inland Empire man was found guilty of making harassing telephone calls to government offices and threatening to injure congressional staffers, officials announced Thursday.
Robert Eric Stahlnecker, 48, of Twentynine Palms, was found guilty by a jury Wednesday of federal crimes, including one count of making threats by interstate commerce and five counts of anonymous telecommunications harassment, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California said in a news release.
The jury acquitted Stahlnecker of two counts of threatening federal employees.
Stahlnecker allegedly made eight telephone calls within a seven-minute period on Sept. 26, 2019, to the Washington D.C. office of Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and berated an intern who answered the call, according to evidence presented in his two-day trial.
He insulted the intern by using vulgar language and threatened to come to the senator’s office to kill him, officials said.
Between September and November, Stahlnecker made multiple abusive telephone calls to staff members and interns of multiple Congress members, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Stahlnecker also made more than 10,000 calls to government agencies and elected officials between January and November, according to court documents.
He is scheduled for a sentencing hearing on May 4 and faces a statutory maximum of five years in federal prison.