Ex-Georgia poll worker pleads guilty to making bomb threat while posing as voter

“Bomb hoaxes and similar threats create grave and unnecessary disruptions in our communities, pulling vital law enforcement resources and terrifying people,” acting U.S. Attorney C. Shanelle Booker said in a statement.

On Oct. 16, Wimbish was serving as a poll worker at the Jones County Elections Office, located about 90 miles southeast of Atlanta, when he had a verbal dispute with a voter, Hodges said. Later that day, officials said Wimbish researched what information about himself was publicly available and drafted a letter posing as the voter threatening to bomb the polling location.

Wimbish then mailed the letter to the elections superintendent signed from a “Jones County Voter” on Oct. 17, Hodges said. It arrived at the election office five days later.

Authorities said Wimbish acknowledged he lied to FBI agents who were investigating the threat, falsely claiming he believed the letter was sent by a Jones County voter and that he had not researched himself online.

Wimbish further admitted to authorities that he intended the letter to appear as if it came from the voter and added details to make it seem like the voter was targeting Wimbish and other poll workers, Hodges explained in a news release.

“For example, it said, ‘Yesterday I had your young liberal woke idiot Nicholas Wimbish give me hell,’ that ‘he tries to influence people’s votes in line,’ and that ‘I researched a newspaper article about Nicholas Wimbish and other woke liberal fraudsters impostering to be patriots,’” Hodges said about the mailed letter.

The letter was typed, but Wimbish included a handwritten note that read, “PS boom toy in early vote place, cigar burning, be safe,” authorities said. The letter was later discovered on Wimbish’s computer.