The Mackinac Center For Public Policy — the conservative-leaning think tank in the news this week after it requested emails from Michigan labor studies professors regarding Wisconsin and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow — says it has called in the FBI after receiving a series of threatening voicemails that promised to bomb their Midland, Michigan headquarters.
“You are on Main Street,” one of the voicemails said, according to details posted on the Mackinac website. “You are the first place to be bombed.”
A representative from the Mackinac Center did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment Saturday.
The Detroit Free Press reports Mackinac has called in federal investigators to look into five threatening voicemails the center received “Thursday night and early Friday.” From the paper:
Four messages appeared to be from one woman. The other may have been from another woman, though in that call she left a name and indicated she lived in a neighboring state. The center declined to release the name or the state.
The calls “made repeated references” to Maddow, who devoted a large portion of her show to the Mackinac Center’s Freedom Of Information Act request to state university labor studies departments on March 29. Mackinac has requested all emails related to the political strife in Wisconsin surrounding Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) plan to end collective bargaining rights for thousands of state workers.
Mackinac spokesperson Michael Jahr told the Midland, MI Daily News that the calls included “vile and vitriolic language and some very clear threats to our personnel.”
More details on the contents of the calls from the Mackinac Center report on them:
In one message, a female voice said: “Scotty Walker is dead. So are you. We know where you live.” The woman then recited the Mackinac Center’s address and said, “We are coming up to destroy you.”…
In another message, a female voice said: “We are going to destroy everybody. We are going to destroy all of you. All of you die. Midland, Michigan. Get ready. We are going to destroy all of you.”
“We, along with the authorities, are doing everything necessary to protect ourselves,” Mackinac Center President Joseph Lehman said in a statement posted on the site. “No threats will prevent us from showing the public how universities spend tax dollars.”
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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