A Gaston County man with a long history of violence is charged with threatening to kill President Joe Biden.
According to newly unsealed documents in the case, David Kyle Reeves, 27, of Gastonia, made a series of angry and erratic phone calls to the White House switchboard between Jan. 28 and Feb. 1 in which he threatened to kill the president and other federal officials. He repeated the threats in phone conversations with the Secret Service in which he dared agents to try and stop him, documents show.
“I’m going to come kill the president, I’m going to kill the Secret Service because I own this whole planet,” Reeves said in a phone call to a Secret Service special agent, according to an affidavit.
In subsequent phone calls, according to the affidavit, Reeves taunted the agents, saying his threats were protected under free speech, and that he would continue to make them.
In one of the calls, according to the affidavit, Reeves appeared to threaten to kill members of Congress. In another, he told the Secret Service “to come pick him up, and take him to the White House so he can punch the President in the face, sit in his chair, and stay there until he dies.”
Reeves made his initial appearance in federal court in Charlotte on Thursday morning where he was officially charged with Threatening the President of the United States. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
U.S. Magistrate Judge David Keesler ordered Reeves held pending his next court date. According to Mecklenburg County Jail records, Reeves was arrested last Friday.
The documents, along with an Observer search of public records, show that Reeves has a long list of past criminal charges involving violence. They include assault, family violence, terroristic threats and acts, assault on a police officer while resisting arrest, violation of family violence order, malicious injury willful injury to courthouse, threatening the life of a public employee and criminal trespass, among other arrests.
In a phone conversation earlier this month, Reeves told another Secret Service special agent that “no punishment will stop him and it is not against the law to threaten people.”
Reeves’ attorney, Kevin Tate, told the judge that his client “may be taking” psychotropic medication and hoped he could continue to have access to the drugs while in the Mecklenburg jail.
After the hearing, Tate, senior litigator with the Federal Public Defenders Office for the Western District of North Carolina, did not reply to an Observer email seeking comment.
Reeves is not believed to be tied to the violence that overwhelmed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 when supporters of then-President Donald Trump tried to block the certification of Biden’s victory.
2nd area suspect accused of Biden threats
Prior to his arrest, according to the affidavit, Reeves was living in Gastonia with his father. He becomes the second Charlotte-area defendant tied to threats on Biden’s life.
In October, federal court documents alleged that Alexander Treisman, a heavily armed wanderer traveling the country in a van, had mused online of killing Biden.
“I was going to do a Columbine for a while,” the 19-year-old from Seattle wrote online in April, documents show. “(Now) I think it would be better to put it toward something more memorable.”
Later, federal investigators found another online post in which Treisman asked, “Should I kill Joe Biden?”
According to federal documents, less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 presidential election, investigators found evidence on Treisman’s computers and phone that was “consistent with a surveillance and attack plan connected to a possible threat against Joe Biden or other targeted act of violence.”
Treisman, according to court records, told investigators that his violent posts were not real and only part of his online persona. But investigators with the FBI office in Charlotte who tracked Treisman’s credit cards and cell phone were able to place him at a Wendy’s only 4 miles from the former vice president’s Delaware home on May 3.
Treisman remained jailed in Cabarrus County on unrelated charges.
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