State Sen. Scott Wiener Target of Another Death Threat

State Sen. Scott Wiener on Tuesday said he had been informed by police and a local news outlet of a bomb threat targeting his home and Sacramento office, the second such threatening message the well-known San Francisco Democrat has received in recent months for what he says is his support of LGBTQ+ and criminal legal reform issues.

The threat comes after Wiener last week criticized what he called "homophobic" comments by conservative pundit Charlie Kirk and Marjorie Taylor Greene, the outspoken far-right U.S. representative from Georgia, falsely accusing him of "mutilating children" and being a "communist groomer."

"Tragically, I get a lot of death threats and I have for several years. And they're now starting again with all of the right-wing attacks on me," Wiener told KQED. "This extremist homophobic rhetoric online has consequences and sometimes people act. So it's just a really dangerous situation."

The threatening email was sent to The San Francisco Standard, with the subject line: "Scott Wiener will die today."

The sender, who is listed as Zamina Tataro, wrote that "several" bombs had been planted in Wiener's San Francisco home, and also threatened to shoot up his office.

"I'm willing to die today," the person wrote.

"The email said ‘we will f-ing kill you’ and called me a pedophile and groomer," Wiener said in a statement on Tuesday.

Wiener's home was searched by police early Tuesday morning and no bombs were found, the Standard reported.

The term "groomer" has increasingly been used by outspoken far-right activists to attack supporters of LGBTQ+ rights, with the completely false suggestion that teaching children about gay and transgender issues is a nefarious strategy of "grooming" them for sex.

Wiener was similarly threatened in June — prompting another police bomb search of his home — after he made a joke on Twitter about introducing legislation making "Drag Queen 101" part of the state’s K–12 curriculum, SF Gate reported.

"I don't like getting these death threats, but that's the modern political world that we're living in right now. And I'm a target for these people," he said.

This most recent threat against a Democratic lawmaker comes just over a month after a man, fueled by far-right conspiracy theories, broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco home and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, fracturing his skull with a hammer.

Wiener recently engaged in fiery Twitter exchanges with both Greene — over the use of anti-LGBTQ+ language in the wake of a recent mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs — and Kirk, who attacked Wiener for his bill seeking to make the state's statutory rape laws more equitable for LGBTQ+ people. Kirk claimed the law, which took effect last year, would result in the release of "thousands of pedophiles” from jail.

"It's not going to stop me from doing my work," said Wiener. "Whether it's around housing or protecting LGBTQ people, I'm not going to miss a beat with that work because I owe that work to my community."

KQED's Adhiti Bandlamudi contributed to this story.