A warrant has been issued for a Houston area man accused of threatening to kill Texas Senator Ted Cruz and other Republican lawmakers over the party’s 2022 platform related to voting rights.
Isaac Ambe Nformangum, 22, was scheduled to appear in court Friday but reportedly did not show up. Court documents indicate after his initial arrest in late June, Nformangum was released on a personal recognizance bond.
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According to the probable cause court document in this case, Nformangum faces a felony charge of terroristic threat for threatening violence and murder against Sen. Cruz and other members of the Texas Republican Party.
The document states he did it “with the intent to place a substantial group of the public in fear of serious bodily injury and to influence the conduct and activities of Senator Rafael Edward “Ted Cruz” and other Republican public servants of the Federal and State Government.”
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office began investigating the threat on June 27 after a United States Capitol Police Officer reported that a threatening call had been made to Sen. Cruz’s Houston office on Smith Street one day earlier.
A transcription of the phone call appears in the court document.
“[Sigh] Okay [spoken quietly]. Hello and good afternoon Senator Rafael. This is one of the many Afro-American constituents of whom you are representative of here in Texas, as you currently serve from the Senate. [Sigh] I have just read the, uh, Texas Republican parties platform for this current 2022 year, uh, wherein it is apparent that your colleagues intent, intend to have the voting rights act repealed and not reauthorized? Every last one of your Republican colleagues to have signed off on that platform is to be and found and, is to be found and killed....”
The transcript of the call then goes on to detail how the Republican leaders should be followed and killed and uses profanity to address Sen. Cruz. The call ended with 30 seconds of silence.
The court document indicates the phone number used to make that call was registered to a woman with the same last name is Nformangum. Shortly after, the investigator on the case uncovered an Instagram account belonging to Isaac Nformangum in which a YouTube video was shown that had a recording of his voice. The investigator played the YouTube video alongside the audio of the threatening call.
The investigator in the court document wrote: “I believe the voice on the recording left on Senator Cruz’ voicemail is the same voice heard while watching the YouTube video on the Instagram account associated with Issac (sic) Ambe Nformangum.”
That evidence, along with cell phone records, led to the case being referred to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.