GUILTY AS CHARGED

72-Year-Old Lawyer With AR-15 and ‘To-Do List’ Admits Threatening to Kill Senate Dems

The 72-year-old’s wife said he revealed a plan to travel to D.C. to attack Senate Democrats during a fight in which he also threatened her life.

A former Pennsylvania attorney charged with threatening to kill Democratic members of the U.S. Senate has pleaded guilty, according to court records. Kenelm Shirk III, 72, was arrested less than two weeks after the riot at the Capitol when his wife contacted authorities to say he had threatened her life during an argument over the 2020 presidential election. Shirk had also told her he was planning to attack a number of unnamed federal lawmakers, according to police. State police stationed along an interstate subsequently spotted Shirk’s car at a gas station and arrested him. In his car, officers found an AR-15 rifle, two handguns, and a box of ammunition. During a mental health evaluation, a nurse later told police, she had been looking through Shirk’s belongings and stumbled upon a “to-do list” with things like “guns, ammo, rope, tools, meds, magazine” listed alongside more quotidian items, like birthday presents. She told police that Shirk seemed like “more than just a guy who was having a bad day and [was] angry about the election.”