It's the first guilty plea obtained by the U.S. Justice Department's Election Threats Task Force, which was launched last year to investigate threats of violence against elections workers, the office said. FBI agents in Colorado and Nebraska investigated the case.

“Threats of violence against election officials are dangerous for people’s safety and dangerous for our democracy, and we will use every resource at our disposal to disrupt and investigate those threats and hold perpetrators accountable,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

According to the announcement, Ford sent Griswold a series of threatening messages over Instagram in August. “Do you feel safe? You shouldn't,” one read. Another read: “Your security detail is far too thin and incompetent to protect you.”