A nurse who sent her jailed husband videos threatening to kill Kamala Harris charged after the Secret Service intercepted them
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Niviane Petit Phelps, a 39-year-old nurse from Miami, was arrested on Friday.
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She is charged with threatening to kill Vice President Kamala Harris, a criminal complaint said.
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Phelps, who is Black, was angered by the false idea that Harris is not really Black, the Miami Herald said.
A Florida nurse was arrested Friday for threatening to kill Vice President Kamala Harris, Miami Herald reported.
Niviane Petit Phelps, a 39-year-old mother from Miami, is accused of recording and sending several videos to her husband in which she discussed murdering the vice president, according to a criminal complaint seen by CNN.
She “knowingly and willfully made threats to kill and inflict bodily harm upon the Vice President of the United States” between February 13 and February 18, the complaint said.
A Secret Service special agent intercepted communications between Phelps and her incarcerated husband on JPay, a communications platform that allows non-incarcerated people to communicate with those in jail, CNN reported.
The videos showed Phelps complaining to the camera about her hatred for Harris, President Joe Biden, and others, the media outlet said.
In one of the videos, the complaint said, Phelps stated: “Kamala Harris you are going to die. Your days are numbered already.”
According to the complaint, another video showed Phelps saying: “I’m going to the gun range. … I swear to God, today is your day you’re gonna die. 50 days from today, mark this day down.”
Phelps was pictured at a shooting range and applied for a concealed weapons permit in the following days, CNN reported.
Detectives from the Miami-Dade Police Department and Secret Service agents visited Phelps on March 3 in an attempt to interview her but Phelps resisted, the complaint added. An agent went again three days later and described Phelps as being “angry” about Harris becoming vice president.
Phelps, who is Black, also told the agent that her anger stemmed from the false idea that Harris is not actually Black, the Miami Herald said. The vice president is Black and is of South Asian and Jamaican descent.
Phelps was also reportedly angered by the false claim that Harris had put her hand on her clutch purse instead of the Bible when being inaugurated.
Phelps’ defense attorney, Scott Saul, told the Miami Herald that he did not believe his client to present a “genuine threat” to Harris. “All this case involved was my client venting to her incarcerated husband,” Saul said in a statement to the paper.
“It appears as though personal issues in her life, along with the volatile political landscape perpetuated by some, brought some frustrations out of her,” he wrote. “I do not think that there was ever a realistic or imminent threat upon Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Phelps has lost her job as a nurse at a Miami hospital and faces up to five years in jail if convicted, the Miami Herald added.
