US President Donald Trump and Vice President J D Vance.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Their initials match. So do their surnames.
One is a heartbeat from the presidency, and the other, J.D. Vance, was sentenced on Monday to two years in prison in connection with threats made against the vice president and President Donald Trump on social media.
The man who made the threats, James Donald Vance Jr., 67, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, pleaded guilty to three criminal counts in July, according to filings in US District Court in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Secret Service agents arrested Vance — not the vice president — in June after linking him to a series of social media posts in March and April on Bluesky in which he vowed to kill the president and vice president, the authorities said.
Federal prosecutors said he also made threats against billionaire Elon Musk, whom Trump previously put in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, and Donald Trump Jr., responding to a social media post suggesting that the president’s oldest son might seek the presidency in 2028.
“If tRump, Vance, or Musk ever come to my city again, they will leave it in a body bag,” a criminal complaint quoted Vance as saying. “I will either be shot by a secret service sniper or spend the rest of my life in prison. I’ve only got about 10 years of life left anyway.”
In July, Vance pleaded guilty to threatening to kill or injure the president and vice president, as well as transmitting interstate threatening communications. Each felony count carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
In a filing before Monday’s sentencing hearing, the public defender, Helen C. Nieuwenhuis, wrote that Vance should receive probation instead of jail time because he was a “first-time offender with serious physical and mental health issues.”
Federal prosecutors had urged the judge to sentence Vance — the defendant — to at least 30 months in prison, pointing out that he had been investigated in 2018 for posting threats against Trump on Facebook and that he had a history of making threats toward several other people.
“Threats against our nation’s leaders and their families will not be tolerated,” William Shink, a special agent in charge of the US Secret Service’s Detroit field office, said in a statement Monday.