Bruce Shore To Plead Guilty To Sending 'Harassing Email' To Jim Bunning's Office
First Posted: 08-24-10 01:13 PM | Updated: 08-24-10 04:25 PM
Bruce Shore, the unemployed Philadelphia man indicted for sending "harassing email" to Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), intends to plead guilty to the felony charge after pleading not guilty in May.
"I wish to plead guilty to the offense charged, to consent to the disposition of the case in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in which I reside," said Shore in an Aug. 12 federal court filing. His case has been transferred from Kentucky to Pennsylvania.
Shore sent Bunning's office several emails in February after the senator blocked a bill to reauthorize extended unemployment benefits. "I was livid. I was just livid," Shore, 51, told HuffPost in May. "I'm on unemployment, so it affects me."
Shore said at that time that he had no idea what, exactly, he'd written that had resulted in the felony charge. The Feb. 26 grand jury indictment merely said he "did utilize a telecommunications device, that is a computer, whether or not communication ensued, without disclosing his identity and with the intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, and harass any person who received the communication."
The Kentucky public defender representing Shore told HuffPost in May that he had not yet seen the government's evidence. The lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Neither did Shore, who faces up to two years in prison and a $250,000 maximum fine.
Shore had shared one email with HuffPost. "If I do NOT get my check next week I WILL HAVE NO FOOD AND WILL BE ON THE STREET," said the letter. "IF THIS POLITICAL GRANDSTANDING DOES NOT END TODAY - WE WILL COME TO YOUR OFFICES AND MAKE OUR POINT. YOU ARE PLAYING A LIFE AND DEATH GAME HERE."
Shore pretended in the letter that his first name was "Brad" and that he lived in Louisville. He told HuffPost he has no record of other emails sent via the contact page on Bunning's site, but that FBI agents had printouts of those messages when they visited him at his mother's house in March.
Bunning's office did not comment on the case but said it forwarded several threats to the U.S. Capitol Police as a matter of course. Bunning's office is not involved in the prosecution.
It's not Shore's first brush with the law: He was released from prison in the 1990s after being convicted for serial burglary as the Clyde part of what the Philadelphia Daily News called a Bonnie & Clyde team. He has since gone to school and even distinguished himself academically. "I'm walking around in my head: jail for email, jail for email," he said. "To think you turn your life around, you don't do anything wrong after you make a mistake when you were younger..."
Link to Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/24/bruce-shore-to-plead-guil_n_692625.html
END NOTE: While I do not support violence, illegal or Unconstitutional actions to get points across to any Public Officials, Senator Bunning opened the doors to a range of responses to his blockade of passage to extension to Emergency Unemployment Benefits to countless numbers of Americans hurting out their in the United States of America. If Senator Bunning felt harassed by Mr. Shore's emails, he knew the consequences of what may happen as a result of his inactions to the unemployed. On the other hand, Mr. Shore could of been more diplomatic in his email to Senator Bunning's Office despite his rooted personal feelings over the matter. I would hope both parties can get together and work out their differences in a peaceful manner and find a way for Mr. Shore to rehabilitate himself for his rash emails?
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