A man accused of making nearly three dozen threats “to kill the president” in posts on social media and calls and voicemails left with the Secret Service has been arrested in Oregon and faces federal charges.
Through his court-appointed lawyer, Diedrich Joseph Holgate, 46, entered not guilty pleas Tuesday in federal court in Portland to a two-count indictment charging him with making a threat against the president and making interstate communications with a threat to injure. Holgate was later booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center.
It’s not clear what Holgate was doing in Oregon. Prosecutors said he’s from Madison, Wisconsin, but records indicated he lived previously in Texas.
Holgate is accused of calling the Secret Service’s office in Miami on Sept. 7 and saying, “I’m going to kill the president,” according to the newly unsealed indictment.
He also called a Secret Service field office in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28 and threatened to “kill everybody,” the indictment alleges.
According to the indictment, when asked to specify who exactly he was after, Holgate said in that call, “POTUS, FLOTUS and SCOTUS. … I have the right to kill the president. I want to kill you” and added that the president had better call him or “he’s going to die.” On the same call, he told the office he didn’t care “if it is Trump or Biden” and that he would “hang everyone for treason.”
Holgate has left about 22 similar threats on X, formerly Twitter, since January 2021 and about 11 messages with the Secret Service, according to the indictment. A Secret Service agent informed Holgate in August that what he was doing was illegal, the indictment says.
Holgate’s arrest comes amid heightened scrutiny of the failures of the Secret Service following the assassination attempt on former President Donald J. Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and after another man was charged last month in an assassination attempt of Trump at a golf course in Florida.
Court records show Holgate was fired from a Texas job in 2006. This past July, he left a voicemail with his former employer, saying he was in Oregon and threatening to come after his former boss, according to the indictment.
Holgate was previously convicted of sending threatening voicemail messages to two judges in Travis County, Texas, in 2018 and sentenced in 2020 to five years in custody. In that case, physicians testified that he suffered from a mental illness and delusional thinking, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
— Maxine Bernstein covers federal court and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, mbernstein@oregonian.com, follow her on X @maxoregonian, or on LinkedIn.
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