A Mercer County man who threatened to kill FBI agents and then briefly confronted them with an assault rifle because he was upset that the bureau raided former President Donald Trump’s house is headed to federal prison for two years.
U.S. District Judge William Stickman imposed that term Wednesday on Adam Bies, whose lawyer said he never intended to hurt anyone and “took his political rhetoric too far.”
Prosecutors said he did more than that — he said he would murder “pedophile scumbag” agents, insisted that the entire FBI deserved to die, expressed a desire to leave agents’ children without parents and indicated to his girlfriend that he hoped to die in a shootout with the feds.
He did come out onto his porch with a gun but dropped it when SWAT officers told him to put it down.
Had he not, it’s a sure bet they would have killed him. In a similar case in Cincinnati, a gunman attacked the local FBI office with a gun and police ended up shooting him after a standoff.
Both men were angry that the FBI searched Trump’s Florida estate in August 2022 to find classified documents that the former president is now accused of hoarding for himself. That case is one of four criminal prosecutions Trump faces in New York, Washington and Georgia.
Prosecutors had asked Stickman to give Bies 30 to 37 months behind bars for his series of vile threats on Gab.com after the raid. His lawyer wanted time served, about 14 months, saying Bies is just passionate about politics but is really a nice guy who wouldn’t harm anyone.
The case began shortly after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022. The next day, Bies went on social media and posted, “Is it time for Civil War yet? Seriously, how much longer before we finally do what needs to be done?”
In the following days, he launched into various threats against the FBI, calling them pedophiles and expressing his belief that the entire bureau — including the janitors — should be killed because of the Trump search.
At one point, he taunted agents by saying he would “water the tree of liberty with your blood” and promised that he would be “waiting for you to kick down my door.”
In her sentencing memo, his public defender, Sarah Levin, said he didn’t believe agents would actually come to his house.
But on Aug. 12, they did — and they did kick down his door after he ignored orders to come out.
He then grabbed his assault rifle — he had a dozen guns in the house — and went out on a side porch. The Pittsburgh FBI’s SWAT team was out there along with a state police SWAT unit. Instead of engaging in the shootout and dying as he said he would, he gave up and went to jail. He’s been there ever since.
He ended up pleading guilty to 14 counts related to interstate threats against federal officers. Jeff Bengel, a federal prosecutor, said Bies deserves an enhanced sentence because he encouraged others to attack the FBI at a time when the bureau was receiving many threats.
But Levin disputed that, saying the government hasn’t proved that he was trying to reach a larger audience. He posted his rants on Gab, she said, as opposed to other media sites that would reach more people.
What’s more, she said, he’s familiar with how to engage with others online because he had previously founded a website, www.penndotsucks.com, to criticize PennDOT and encourage the disgruntled to do the same. Levin said he didn’t take any of those actions against the FBI.
She also said he’s already suffered from his crimes, losing his job, his house and time with his family since he’s been in jail for more than a year. He’s now a felon who can’t vote and can never have a gun again.
“These punishments have been severe, and Adam will continue to suffer their consequences for a lifetime,” Levin said.
The judge settled on 24 months in prison and three years of probation.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
