A California man was indicted on Wednesday for writing a letter in which he threatened to kill President Barack Obama. Apparently Roger Hudnall has a thing for writing threatening letters to the government.
A Humboldt County man who served time in prison for mailing a phony anthrax letter to the FBI was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury on charges that he wrote a letter threatening to kill President Obama, records show.
Roger Hudnall, 54, of Eureka wrote, "I will Kill the President" in a letter he mailed on Jan. 7, 2009, less than two weeks before Obama took the oath of office, according to the indictment handed down by a federal grand jury in San Francisco.
Hudnall was charged with making threats against the president. He is in state custody on another conviction, records show.
The indictment comes two days after federal prosecutors dropped charges against John Gimbel, 60, of Crescent City, who had been accused of threatening to kill Obama. But a jury deadlocked earlier this month on whether Gimbel's racist, violent e-mail was an actual threat or an empty rant.
In 2002, Hudnall was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for mailing a letter to the FBI's San Francisco office that threatened to kill two people and contained white powder he said was laced with anthrax. It was actually baby powder.
Sheryl Huggins Salomon is senior editor-at-large of The Root and a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based editorial consultant. Follow her on Twitter.