“I never interpreted it as a threat on my life … my feeling was that he was basically telling me that in the future anything I do [on Capitol Hill] is going to be interfered with,” Bomford said.
Bomford called it “a really dumb thing to do,” and said that it proved his point that Roe was “reckless.” “This is what I was concerned with Sandy,” he said.
Bomford said he went to Adams and asked her why she had told Roe what he said. According to Bomford, Adams responded, “that’s not my problem.” At which point, he said, he told her that his organization would not be supporting her in any way.
“I have nothing against Sandy at all, but this was just way over the line. And the fact that she claims to be former law enforcement, not to understand the gravity of someone sending you a knife through the postal service with a little threat attached really disappoints me.”
The Adams campaign tells the story differently.
“Mr. Bomford refused to show Sandy the letter, after several requests. She encouraged him to file a police report,” said Lisa Boothe, Adams’ communications director.
But ultimately, she said, the incident “has nothing to do with the campaign. He never showed her the letter, he never filed a report, and this continues to stay between the two of them [Bomford and Roe].”
Bomford provided TheDC with photographs of the pocket knife and the envelope it came in – which has a return address of Revolvis Strategies, Roe’s consulting firm. He did not provide a picture of the note.
Roe did send the knife, he confirmed to TheDC, but he explained that it was certainly not meant in a threatening way, and said that the note he wrote made that clear.
“That would be quite a variation on the reality,” he said, when presented with Bomford’s account of the story.
Roe said he met Bomford while working as chief of staff for Rep. Feeney, and described him as a “political gadfly … who was, what I would call, a constant troublemaker, and part of my job was to minimize the trouble that he could cause for the office.”
“We never had a hostile relationship, we actually developed at least a good working relationship,” Roe said.
All of this was before Roe was brought on as a consultant by Adams.
The way Roe explained it, “at some point [Bomford] approached Sandy and handed her a letter in which he accused me and my wife of being corrupt.” Roe assured TheDC that it was a letter, not a conversation, as Bomford had said.
“Needless to say, it kind of caught me by surprise that this happened … I was pretty aggravated by it. It was kind of uncalled for, he and I did not have an adversarial relationship, and I was kind of annoyed by it,” Roe said.
In response, Roe said, “I sent him a handwritten note that said, ‘Dear Jim, Sandy relayed to me what you said about me. I was disappointed and in the midst of it I extracted this knife from my back so you can use it on one of your other quote unquote friends. Sincerely, me. P.S. by the way, I hear you slandered my wife as well, who I’m pretty sure you’ve never even met.”
“He then, went on to tell everyone that I sent him a threat, which is not anywhere near the reality … the knife was making a point, I pulled this from my back,” Roe explained, saying that the fact that Bomford had not yet produced a note completely undermined his story.
“So I did send him a knife, and I unequivocally will say it was not a threat,” Roe said.
“Incidentally, if we’re going to go tit for tat on threats,” Roe said. “Mica has had lobbyists call me and tell me that if I stay with Sandy, that I will regret it and I will get no more clients out of Washington,” Roe alleged. He declined to give the name of any of the lobbyists who had called him.
