Ohio man charged with threatening to kill VP Vance also found with child sexual abuse material

A 33-year-old Ohio man is behind bars after a federal grand jury indicted him for threatening to kill Vice President JD Vance — and investigators say the probe uncovered something even darker.

Shannon Mathre of Toledo was arrested Friday by U.S. Secret Service agents on suspicion of threatening Vance during the vice president's visit to Northwest Ohio in January. During the investigation into those threats, federal authorities discovered Mathre had also been receiving and distributing child sexual abuse material, the DOJ said. He now faces charges on both counts.

The alleged threat was explicit. According to the indictment, Mathre stated:

"I am going to find out where [Vance] is going to be and use my M14 automatic gun and kill him."

Mathre made his initial appearance before a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of Ohio on February 6. The DOJ alleges the child sexual abuse material was possessed and distributed between December 31, 2025, and January 21, 2026.

The investigation ran deeper than a single threat

A Secret Service spokesman made clear this was not a case of one reckless post flagged by an algorithm. The investigation spanned months and involved multiple agencies.

"The investigation included not only what the defendant said online and to people, but also his actions and behavior. We have been following this for several months with our partners at the FBI and in Ohio."

That language — "online and to people" — suggests Mathre wasn't just mouthing off in some comment section. The threat had both digital and real-world dimensions. And as investigators pulled the thread, what they found was a man allegedly trafficking in the exploitation of children. NBC News reported.

Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a statement Friday that carried a clear message to anyone who thinks anonymity equals impunity:

"You can hide behind a screen, but you cannot hide from this Department of Justice."

The Secret Service spokesman drove the point further:

"As a society, we must remain united in our zero tolerance for political violence. This individual will now answer for his actions to a federal court."

A pattern that should alarm everyone

Mathre's arrest doesn't exist in isolation. It lands in a stretch of weeks that has exposed a persistent and escalating threat environment around the Trump administration and its allies.

• Just days earlier, a Maryland man was charged with attempting to murder Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought.
• Last month, the Justice Department criminally charged a man who damaged Vance's home in Ohio.
• Earlier this month, Ryan Routh — found guilty of attempting to assassinate then-candidate Trump at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, in September 2024 — was sentenced to life in prison plus a mandatory additional seven years for a firearm offense.
• In July 2024, just days after the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a man was arrested and charged in Florida for making social media threats against both Trump and Vance.

That's not a series of unrelated incidents. That's a drumbeat. Since Vance and Trump ran together on the Republican presidential ticket in 2024, they have faced multiple threats — and the people around them have, too.

When investigations do their job

There's a through-line worth noting in the Mathre case that transcends the political dimension: law enforcement pursued a threat against the vice president, and in doing so, stumbled onto the exploitation of children. The CSAM charges exist because agents didn't stop at the surface. They kept digging.

This is what competent federal law enforcement looks like. A threat investigation that might have ended with a single charge instead exposed alleged conduct that carries far more severe consequences. The system worked the way it's supposed to — not because of luck, but because investigators treated the initial threat seriously enough to follow the evidence wherever it led.

The DOJ did not release specific details about when or where the threat was made, which suggests the investigation may still have threads to pull. What is clear is that Shannon Mathre now faces a federal court on charges that span political violence and the sexual exploitation of children.

Two charges. One investigation. And a reminder that the people making threats against elected officials aren't always who the media imagines — sometimes they're exactly the kind of person you'd expect the justice system to find when it looks hard enough.