A Buxton man will spend a year in prison for a social media post in which he threatened to kill Jewish people.
Judge Jon Levy handed down the sentence against Brian Dennison, 27, on Thursday at U.S. District Court in Portland.
In sentencing him to a year and a day in prison, Levy called Dennison’s threats corrosive and said that they undermine the liberties enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Dennison also will serve three years of supervised release, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
On Sept. 8, 2021, Dennison posted on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that “I’m going to kill jews with my ar15 tomorrow.”
The FBI identified Dennison as the author, and during a search of his home, agents found approximately 1,700 rounds of ammunition used with AR-style rifles and evidence of a “long-standing animus toward Jewish people,” the U.S attorney’s office said.
A subsequent search of his home in October 2021 turned up an AR-style rifle and more ammo hidden in the woods, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
“Brian Dennison communicated his violent anti-Semitic threat on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year celebration,” said Darcie McElwee, the U.S. attorney for the District of Maine. “Such repugnant threats have no place in any society. … Under the First Amendment, you have a right to believe hateful things, and to express those hateful beliefs in lawful ways. But when your speech constitutes a true threat to kill or injure others, you will be held accountable.”
Dennison went to trial in 2022, but the proceedings ended in a mistrial when an FBI investigator learned he was positive for COVID-19 shortly after testifying at the federal courthouse in Portland.
A jury subsequently found him guilty on Dec. 7, 2023.
BDN writer Ethan Andrews contributed to this report.
