(Bloomberg) -- Federal prosecutors have charged five people with threatening election workers since the Justice Department launched a task force on the issue last summer, according to testimony prepared for a congressional hearing on Wednesday. 

Amid a wave of threats against local election workers following former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voting fraud that cost him his re-election, the Justice Department set up the task force, which has already reviewed more than 1,000 threatening and harassing messages, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr. said in prepared remarks for a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Threats to these individuals must be met with an unwavering response: We will not tolerate criminal intimidation of those who administer and safeguard our electoral system,” Polite’s testimony says.

One case grew directly out of Trump’s false claims about elections in Detroit, which led Republicans on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers to delay certifying the election results until the last minute, drawing national attention.

The next day, Katelyn Jones, a New Hampshire resident in her 20s who previously lived in Michigan, allegedly began sending threatening text messages to the Republican chair of the board for voting to certify the election, writing that it would “be a shame if something happened to your daughter at school.” Her text included a graphic photo of a mutilated dead woman and then a photo of the official’s young daughter.

Jones was charged with two counts of sending interstate threatening communications and faces trial later this month.

Federal prosecutors have also charged a Texas man with posting a request on Craigslist calling for specific elections officials in Georgia to be shot, a Las Vegas man with making repeated telephone death threats to the Nevada secretary of state’s office and a Massachusetts man with sending a message threatening to set off a bomb if the Arizona secretary of state did not resign.

A Nebraska man also pleaded guilty to threatening on Instagram to kill or hurt President Joe Biden, an unnamed election official and an unnamed public figure.

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