A Miami nurse was arrested this week after allegedly making multiple threats to kill Vice President Kamala Harris in a series of videos sent to the Wakulla Correctional Institution in Crawford where her husband is an inmate.
According to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Niviane Petit Phelps last month sent five videos to the prison via JPay, an app that allows inmates to exchange media with the non-incarcerated population. The messages contained two photographs and five videos, each 30 seconds in length, that were viewed by agents with the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and which depicted Phelps “speaking angrily to the camera about her hatred for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, among others.”
“Kamala Harris you are going to die. Your days are numbered already. Someone paid me $53,000 just to fuck you up and I’m gonna take the, I’m gonna do the job, okay,” Phelps said in a video sent on Feb. 13.
Niviane Petit Phelps is seen in an unrelated social media video obtained by WPLG-TV.
The next day Phelps sent another video in which she said, “If I see you in the street, I’m gonna kill your ass Kamala Harris,” adding, “I’m going to the gun range, just for your ass, until you fuckin’ leave the chair,” in a second video from that day.
On February 18, Phelps provided an even more detailed description of what she allegedly planned to do to the vice president.
“And fuckin’ Kamala Harris, I swear to God, today is your day — you’re gonna die. 50 days from today, mark this day down, stupid bitch, Kamala fuckin’ Harris vice president,” Phelps said. “You gonna fuckin’ die 50 days from today, I swear to fuckin’ God! Your day is . . .” The end of the quote is cut off because the video apparently ended.
Phelps then sent a photograph, dated Feb. 20, of herself at a shooting range holding a pistol next to a bullet-riddled target.
On February 22, Phelps sent in an application for a concealed weapons permit, per the complaint.
USSS agents and detectives from the Miami-Dade Police Department attempted to interview Phelps at her Miami Gardens home in early March. They recognized Phelps as the person from the videos, some of which were filmed in the residence. She also confirmed that that she planned on getting a gun in the near future. Agents read Phelps her Miranda rights, and she ended the interview.
Three days later, agents again spoke to Phelps, asking her if she thought her JPay messages would be seen by people other than her husband. She confirmed that she did believe others would view the messages, adding that she wanted to “let the justice system know what’s going on.”
Referring to her anger towards Harris, Phelps said she was “over it.”
The interview concluded with a secret service agent asking Phelps if she had plans to travel to Washington, D.C. and she said she did not.
“However, Phelps’s daughter, who was in the room during the interview, stated, ‘Didn’t we say we were going?” per the complaint.
She is charged with one count of Threats Against the Vice President.
Phelps’s mother, Herodia Petit, told Miami ABC affiliate WPLG-TV that Phelps may have believed former President Donald Trump would have gotten her husband out of jail if he was elected to another term. However, U.S. presidents are not able to grant pardons to state inmates. That power resets with state governors.
The hospital where Phelps worked released this statement to the TV station:
Niviane Petit Phelps had been employed at Jackson Health System since 2001. In the last couple of years, she worked as a licensed practical nurse at the Ambulatory Care Center West at Jackson Memorial Medical Center. She has been suspended without pay while we process her employment termination.
Read the charging documents below.
USA v Phelps by Law&Crime on Scribd
[Editor’s note: we’ve cleaned up some of the punctuation, but not the words themselves, in the alleged quotes from Phelps’s videos to make them easier to read.]
[image of V.P. Harris via Drew Angerer/Getty Image]
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