An Elberton woman who worked as a security guard at a Democratic campaign office in Athens was sentenced to 18 months in prison after she pleaded guilty to making a bomb threat against the facility in December, federal officials said.
Jessica Diane Higginbotham, 35, pleaded guilty in May to one count of communicating a bomb, said Melissa Hodges, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. Higginbotham made the threat Dec. 3, one day before Georgia senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were in Athens to campaign ahead of the state’s senatorial runoff election.
Higginbotham’s prison sentence will be followed by a year of supervised release. There is no parole in the federal prison system.
“The bomb threat was leveled by an employee for a political organization days before a federal election in Georgia,” U.S. Attorney Peter D. Leary said. “This incident was a targeted effort to disturb the peace and disrupt the democratic process.”
According to Hodges, court documents showed that Higginbotham sent the bomb threat in a text message to an employee of the Athens-Clarke County Democratic campaign headquarters just after 6 p.m.
The text message read, “Hello, I am writing this message to you to let you know that I am coming by either tonight or in the morning to set a bomb up. So I can blow all the Democrats up. I have other people going to other offices also. If I can’t stop you by breaking in and destroying the property then I will blow (everyone) up. So be ready to be blown up. This is going to either happen tonight or in the morning. Hope you like being on the wrong team.”
The FBI immediately opened an investigation and looped in Athens-Clarke County police, Hodges said. Using a series of electronic disclosure requests, the FBI was able to track the text message to Higginbotham’s phone and learned she was a contract security guard for the Democratic campaign office. Hodges said U.S. Capitol Police were also investigating the threat and independently identified Higginbotham’s phone as the source.
The day after Higginbotham sent the text, an FBI task force located her in a coffee shop in Athens. She vomited when she saw the agents approaching her, then tried to deny that she had sent the threatening text, Hodges said. Later, a search warrant executed on Higginbotham’s phone linked her device to the email account used to send the bomb threat.
In the course of investigating Higginbotham, agents also learned that the campaign offices had been burglarized the month prior, Hodges said. A laptop was stolen, but investigators noted that the burglary seemed staged because, despite tables inside being turned over, there was no sign of forced entry into the building. Investigators later found the stolen laptop with Higginbotham’s other personal items.
“Higginbotham now admits that she used a cellphone to willfully threaten to kill or injure people and unlawfully destroy a building with an explosive,” Hodges said.
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