WEST PALM BEACH — A 60-year-old manicurist with no criminal record will spend a year in federal prison for threatening to kill President-elect Donald Trump — a crime her lawyer blamed on exposure to too much cable news.
Martha Jane Schoenfeld left voicemails in June threatening to detonate bombs at two Trump properties in Florida and Nevada. In exchange for her guilty plea, prosecutors recommended sentencing her to one year of probation instead of jail time.
The Secret Service agreed. Trump himself did that too.
However, the judge did not do so.
U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal on Tuesday took the rare step of exceeding prosecutors’ recommended sentence. Alerted by the two murder attempts that followed Schoenfeld’s arrest, he sentenced the Boca Raton woman to 13 months in prison.
The Boca Raton manicurist denied and then admitted that Trump made bomb threats
Schoenfeld apologized Tuesday for the bomb threats, which she said she had neither the means nor the desire to carry out. According to prosecutors, Schoenfeld made the threats on June 6 in voicemails to the Trump International Golf Club in suburban West Palm Beach and the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.
“There’s a bomb I left at the scene,” she said in one breath. “Hopefully you get everyone evacuated except Trump.”
Secret Service members traced the call within hours to Schoenfeld, a wife and mother of two adult children. A federal agent and a Boca Raton police officer arrived at her condominium the same day and she invited them inside.
Schoenfeld initially denied knowledge of the bomb threat, but backtracked when told investigators could determine where the call came from.
Investigators learned of a second bomb threat at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas shortly after leaving Schoenfeld’s home. The Secret Service agent called Schoenfeld, who again denied knowledge of the threat before admitting she made it.
She added that she left a threatening voicemail with Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio around the same time, an admission that did not culminate in a separate indictment.
Arrested soon afterward, Schoenfeld made his first appearance in federal court on July 12 — a day before the first failed assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Facing the possibility of a 20-year prison sentence, Schoenfeld pleaded guilty in September to one of two charges related to threats — waiving her right to a jury trial but ensuring that prosecutors would recommend that she would be spared from prison.
“This was a lady in an apartment who watched too much MSNBC and got carried away,” her attorney Mark McMann said Wednesday. ‘We agreed on a probationary period and the shame was enough. She’s been through enough.’
McMann said Tuesday’s sentencing hearing marked the third time in his 35-year career that he has seen a judge sentence a suspect to more prison time than prosecutors recommended. He attributed the surprising outcome to a combination of factors, including increased rhetoric about Trump and the two assassination attempts.
“It was just an environment where the judge didn’t want to be too lenient,” he said.
Schoenfeld, released on a $25,000 bond, is scheduled to return himself to federal custody on Jan. 15. With good time saved, McMann said she could potentially shave 60 days off her 13-month sentence.
Once released, she will have to complete a year of probation.
Hannah Phillips covers criminal law at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com. Support our journalism and subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Boca manicurist gets jail time for bomb threat at Trump golf course
