• William Robert Braddock III sentenced to three years for murder threat against opponent.
• Threat involved a purported foreign hit squad, made during a phone call.
• Braddock fled the U.S. to evade arrest before surrendering in 2023.

William Robert Braddock III, a former Republican congressional candidate in Florida, was sentenced to three years in federal prison for threatening to kill his primary opponent, U.S. Representative Anna Paulina Luna. He pleaded guilty to the charge of interstate transmission of a threat to injure in February 2023. The sentencing occurred in Tampa federal court, where investigators detailed Braddock's campaign actions and threats made against Luna in 2021, marking her as “his only obstacle to winning” the election, according to HuffPost, The Hill, and CBS News.

Braddock's threatening remarks came during a phone call in 2021, where he stated he could use a “Russian-Ukrainian hit squad” to have Luna murdered if she continued to excel in her campaign. He reportedly said, “Luna's going to go down and I hope it's by herself,” expressing a willingness to make lethal choices for the purported greater good, as reported by HuffPost, The Hill, and CBS News.

After the threats became public, Braddock fled the U.S., first to Thailand and then to the Philippines, where he remained until surrendering to authorities in 2023. He was subsequently transported back to the United States to face trial, where the severity of his crime could have resulted in a maximum sentence of five years, but he received three years instead, according to HuffPost, The Hill, and CBS News.