On Monday, he came face-to-face with one of his harassers.
Mark Rissi, a 65-year-old from Iowa, walked into the courtroom using a cane. He slowly passed Hickman as he made his way to the defendant’s table. In April, he pleaded guilty to sending threatening communications to Hickman and the state’s former attorney general, Mark Brnovich, also a Republican.
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He was in court to receive his punishment.
The remarkable scene in the Phoenix federal courthouse this week reflected the extent to which the institutions of American politics and justice continue to grapple with the fallout of Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud, which swept many of his supporters into a frenzy and led to an onslaught of threats and attacks on local officials who merely did their jobs carrying out the election and then accepting the results.
Now, many of those who embraced the threat of violence or violence itself as they questioned the election results are facing federal prosecutors — and having to explain their actions and often face consequences.
Rissi came into Hickman’s life Sept. 27, 2021, nearly a year after the election and days after the conclusion of a partisan and unreliable review of 2.1 million ballots cast by Maricopa County voters affirmed Joe Biden’s win. That review garnered international attention and raised hopes among fervent Trump supporters and believers in disinformation that the former president’s loss would be reversed.
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