{"id":78631,"date":"2021-11-21T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T07:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/alaska-man-pleads-not-guilty-to-threatening-2-us-senators\/"},"modified":"2021-11-21T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2021-11-22T07:30:00","slug":"alaska-man-pleads-not-guilty-to-threatening-2-us-senators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/alaska-man-pleads-not-guilty-to-threatening-2-us-senators\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska man pleads not guilty to threatening 2 US senators"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mark Thiessen<\/strong><\/ins><\/p>\n

Associated Presss<\/em><\/ins><\/p>\n

ANCHORAGE — A man charged with threatening the lives of Alaska’s two U.S. senators pleaded not guilty on Monday and judge decided that he will remain in custody.<\/p>\n

Jason Weiner, an attorney for Jay Allen Johnson, entered the plea on his client’s behalf during Johnson’s arraignment in U.S. District Court in Fairbanks.<\/p>\n

Johnson at the hearing greeted U.S. Magistrate Judge Scott Oravec by saying: “Good morning, Happy Thanksgiving and I’m sorry I’m here today.”<\/p>\n

Johnson, from the small community of Delta Junction, was indicted last week on six criminal counts — including threatening to murder a U.S. official, being a felon in possession of firearms, threatening to destroy property by fire and threatening interstate communications.<\/p>\n

The government is also seeking to confiscate two pistols, three revolvers, a rifle and a shotgun found on Johnson’s rural Alaska property because he is a felon who is not legally allowed to possess firearms.<\/p>\n

If convicted, Johnson could face a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison and up to $1.5 million in fines, assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Tansey said.<\/p>\n

Weiner told Johnson during the arraignment that he has sought a plea deal offer from the government prosecutor.<\/p>\n

“But at this point, he couldn’t give me one. He’s got to do some consultation in order to do that,” Weiner said in court.<\/p>\n

Oravec last Friday ordered Johnson’s detention to continue during a separate hearing. On Monday, the judge said he saw no reason to “disturb that ruling at this point.”<\/p>\n

Johnson is accused of making threats against U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both Republicans, and of threatening to burn down properties owned by Murkowski during a series of profanity-laced voice messages left over the span of months at their offices in Washington, D.C., before his Oct. 4 arrest.<\/p>\n

Johnson at an earlier hearing, said he is “a senior citizen and I am highly disabled and I will not be carrying out any of these threats.” He is a felon because of a drunken driving conviction in 2016 that came after two plus previous drunk driving convictions.<\/p>\n

Johnson’s wife, Catherine Pousson-Johnson, testified during her husband’s detention hearing in October that he was was in pain after recent surgeries and that he “gets very angry listening to politics on the news.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":78632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-78631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78631"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=78631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}