A federal grand jury has indicted 33-year-old Shannon Mathre of Toledo, Ohio, on charges of threatening to kill Vice President JD Vance and possessing child pornography — the second charge discovered only because investigators were already examining evidence tied to the first.
U.S. Secret Service agents arrested Mathre on Feb. 6. The Department of Justice announced the indictment the following day.
According to the DOJ, Mathre allegedly stated on Jan. 21 that he would locate Vance and use an "M14 automatic gun" to kill him during the vice president's visit to Northwest Ohio. Vance arrived in Toledo the very next day to deliver remarks alongside Republican Sen. Jon Husted and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
One day separated a specific, weapon-named death threat from the vice president's physical presence in the same region.
While examining evidence related to the threat, federal agents discovered multiple digital files containing child sexual abuse material. The grand jury charged Mathre with distributing and receiving that material over a period stretching from Dec. 31, 2025, through Jan. 21, 2026 — the same day he allegedly made the threat against Vance, as The Daily Caller reports.
The threat charge carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison. The child pornography charge carries up to twenty years.
Mathre pleaded not guilty to both charges during his initial court appearance and remains in custody ahead of a Feb. 11 detention hearing.
Attorney General Pamela Bondi framed the prosecution as a warning to anyone who believes anonymity provides cover:
"Our attorneys are vigorously prosecuting this disgusting threat against Vice President Vance. You can hide behind a screen, but you cannot hide from this Department of Justice."
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche drew attention to the layered nature of the case:
"While arresting this man for allegedly threatening to murder the Vice President of the United States, a serious crime in and of itself, federal law enforcement discovered that he was also in possession of child sexual abuse materials. Thank you to federal, state and local partners in working together to bring justice twofold to this depraved individual."
The throughline from both statements is unmistakable: this Justice Department treats threats against elected officials as operational matters, not paperwork exercises. The investigation didn't stop at the initial allegation — agents pulled the thread and found something far darker waiting underneath.
This arrest did not occur in a vacuum. Just weeks earlier, another man faced federal charges for vandalizing Vance's home in Cincinnati. The vice president has now been the target of both a specific assassination threat and property destruction in his home state within a compressed window of time.
The political temperature around figures in this administration has been dangerously elevated since the 2024 campaign. Threats against public officials have become so normalized in certain corners of the internet that people apparently feel comfortable naming a specific weapon and a specific target — and then sitting in their homes waiting for nothing to happen.
Something did happen. The Secret Service showed up.
There is a grim irony embedded in this case. Mathre's alleged threat against Vance is what brought federal investigators to his door. Without that threat, the child sexual abuse material on his devices might have remained undetected — the files distributed and received over a three-week window with no one the wiser.
This is what serious law enforcement looks like in practice. Not just closing the file on the original complaint, but following the evidence wherever it leads. Every digital forensic examination that accompanies a threat investigation has the potential to uncover exactly this kind of secondary criminality. The question is whether agencies have the resources and the will to keep pulling.
Under this DOJ, the answer appears to be yes.
Mathre faces up to 25 combined years in federal prison if convicted on both counts. His detention hearing is set for Tuesday. The facts alleged against him — a death threat against the sitting vice president and the exploitation of children — occupy two of the most serious categories in federal criminal law.
He pleaded not guilty. The evidence will speak at trial. But the system that caught him worked exactly the way it was supposed to — one investigation opened the door, and agents didn't look away from what they found on the other side.
