A court sentenced a 34-year-old man to two years in prison on Thursday for violent threats he made against the Human Rights Campaign and two state lawmakers.
Adam Michael Nettina of West Friendship, Maryland — who worked direct mail copywriter for the House Freedom Caucus and writer for CatholicVote — pleaded guilty in August to one felony count of transmitting threats by interstate communication. As part of a plea agreement, he admitted the offense qualified as a hate crime.
After an FBI investigation last year, Nettina was charged with leaving a threatening voice mail for employees at the Washington, D.C. office of the Human Rights Campaign, one day after the mass shooting at The Covenant School near Nashville, Tennessee. Six people, including three children, were killed in the incident.
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The shooter, who was also killed, had recently begun identifying as a trans man. Nettina referenced The Covenant School in his message, among a barrage of violent threats.
“You guys going to shoot up our schools now? Is that how it’s going to be? You just gonna kill little kids?” Nettina said in the voicemail. “Let me tell you something, we’re waiting, we’re waiting. And if you want a war, we’ll have a war. And we’ll f*cking slaughter you back. We’ll cut your throats. We’ll put a bullet in your head. We’re not going to give a f*ck. You started this bullsh*t. You’re going to kill us? We’re going to kill you ten times more in full.”
U.S. District Court Judge George L. Russell III sentenced Nettina to two years in prison and three years of supervised release, with credit for time served since his arrest.
Nettina was arrested in March 2023 while working at a cigar bar in Eldersburg, Maryland. According to prosecutors’ sentencing memo, police located a 9mm handgun and two loaded magazines in his backpack, a long-barrel rifle, and 140 rounds of ammunition in his bedroom at his father’s residence, as well as two AK-47 rifles and more ammunition in a storage unit in Virginia. A second handgun was found at his father’s home.
As part of his plea deal, Nettina acknowledged the HRC voicemail was just one of a series of violent, offensive, and threatening messages left for LGBTQ+ advocates and allies between March and November 2022.
In October 2022, Nettina emailed a state delegate in Virginia who advocated for transgender children, writing, “You are a terrorist. You deserve to be shot and hung in the streets. You want to come after people? Let’s go b***.”
A Maryland lawmaker who posted support for the transgender community received a message from Nettina with the threat, “Better watch out[.] Baby killing terrorist. Enjoy hell[.] You’re going sooner than you think.”
Nettina was previously employed as a campaign copywriter by a Virginia direct-mail fundraising organization, according to his LinkedIn page, with clients including “House Freedom Caucus members and leading Republican challengers in targeted races.”
His work as a writer for CatholicVote, an Indiana-based 501(c)(4) organization, included a response to the mass shooting of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June 2016 titled “We Have Nothing to Apologize For.”
CatholicVote removed Nettina’s articles from its website following his arrest.
