Rene Ortiz
Introduction
Rene Ortiz, 56, of Casa Grande, Arizona, was sentenced on October 20, 2026, to 38 months in federal prison for delivering written threats to kill the President of the United States and the former Vice President. Senior U.S. District Judge Stephen M. McNamee imposed the sentence after a federal jury convicted Ortiz on June 8, 2026, of two felony violations of making threats against successors to the presidency and one felony violation of making threats against former presidents. The threats were delivered to federal courthouses in Phoenix and Tucson around the 2024 election, and Ortiz was arrested ahead of the 2025 presidential inauguration.
Background Information
The charges grew out of two written threats Ortiz delivered in November 2024, at the moment the presidential race was being decided. The investigation was conducted by the United States Secret Service with assistance from the United States Marshals Service, and when Secret Service agents interviewed Ortiz about the threats, he repeated his intent to make them — a factor that preceded his arrest on January 17, 2025, ahead of the Presidential Inauguration. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Amy Chang and Abbie Broughton of the District of Arizona handled the prosecution out of the Phoenix office, under case number 25-CR-00153-PHX-SMM.
The statutes Ortiz was convicted of violating — making threats against successors to the presidency, and making threats against former presidents — are federal felonies that criminalize written threats against the line of presidential succession and against those who have held the office, whether or not any attempt to carry them out occurs. His jury returned convictions on all three counts in June 2026, roughly a year and a half after the threats were delivered.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Convicted and sentenced. Ortiz was convicted by a federal jury on all three counts and sentenced to 38 months in prison. The threats themselves are established court findings from his trial, not allegations.
The first threat arrived on Election Day, November 5, 2024. Per the Justice Department, Ortiz delivered to the federal courthouse in Phoenix a written threat to “execute the newly elected [President of the United States] by firing an M-16A2 service rifle with a magazine of 6 rounds,” directed at both candidates — former Vice President Kamala Harris and President Donald Trump. The threat was written before the outcome was known, targeting whoever won the presidency.
The second came three weeks later. On November 25, 2024, after the election, Ortiz delivered a second threat to the federal courthouse in Tucson — this one to shoot “the incoming fraudulent elected [President of the United States] … at the inauguration on January 20th, 2025.” Between the two letters, the threats covered both major candidates for the presidency and then fixed on the president-elect and the inauguration itself. When the Secret Service interviewed him, Ortiz did not walk the threats back; he repeated his intent to make them, and he was arrested on January 17, 2025, days before the inauguration the second letter had named.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The Justice Department’s announcement of the sentence carried no quoted statement from prosecutors or the Secret Service, but the procedural record it laid out was pointed: a jury convicted Ortiz on every count he faced, and the sentencing judge gave him 38 months — three years and two months — in federal prison. The arrest date, January 17, 2025, placed his detention ahead of the January 20, 2025 inauguration that his second threat had referenced, and the conviction in June 2026 kept the case in the courts through the first year and a half of the term the threats had targeted.
For a defendant with no reported prior federal record in the announcement, the three felony convictions themselves carry lasting consequences beyond the sentence: each count is a conviction for threatening the presidency or its successors, and the trial record — including his statements to the Secret Service — is now part of the public court file.
Current Status
Ortiz is serving the 38-month sentence imposed by Judge McNamee on October 20, 2026. The jury’s June 8, 2026 verdict resolved all three counts by conviction rather than plea, and the Justice Department’s announcement reports no appeal. The case file remains docketed in the District of Arizona at 25-CR-00153-PHX-SMM, and the Secret Service investigation that produced the case closed with the convictions it was built to secure. No supervised-release term was stated in the announcement.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Ortiz’s threats were delivered on paper to federal courthouses rather than carried out, but the convictions and sentence treat them as the serious federal crimes they are charged to be: three felony counts, 38 months in prison, and an arrest that put him in custody before the inauguration. At 56, he will serve the sentence in federal custody, and the felony record now follows him permanently. The case also stands as a documented instance of the Secret Service’s post-election enforcement — a citizen who put his intent in writing, repeated it to federal agents, and was stopped ahead of the event his letter named.