A McLean man will spend more than a year in prison for threatening violence against former Kennedy Center president and longtime Trump ally Richard Grenell.
Scott Allen Bolger, 33, was sentenced today (Wednesday) to a year and three months in prison after he pleaded guilty in February to transmitting a threat via interstate commerce, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced.
According to court documents, Bolger used a Google Voice account registered to a “fictitious” email to send a text message on Dec. 23, 2025 telling Grenell to “step on U street and get a bullet put between your eyes, loyalist pig skin p—y.”
At that time, Grenell was still serving as president of the Kennedy Center, an appointment he received in February after President Donald Trump ousted Debra Rutter as the performing arts venue’s president as well as several existing board members, including its chairman, and had himself named as the new chair.
Prosecutors say Bolger had conducted research online to find Grenell’s phone number and called him first before sending the text.
The threat was reported to the FBI, which traced it to Bolger “based on information in a law enforcement database,” according to an affidavit. FBI agents went to Bolger’s house on Dec. 24 to investigate.
“When federal investigators arrived at Bolger’s residence to investigate the threat, they identified themselves as federal law enforcement officers, and Bolger falsely identified himself as Brian Black,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. “Bolger told them he did not know anyone by the name of Scott Bolger.”
Bolger was arrested on Dec. 26 and indicted on one count of transmitting a threat using interstate communications by a grand jury in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Jan. 15.
In addition to pleading guilty to the threat against Grenell, Bolger admitted at a plea hearing to creating social media and email accounts to send harassing and threatening messages to a former girlfriend between December 2022 and October 2023. Some of the messages included “indecent” images of the victim, who he continued to track online through at least November 2025, prosecutors said in a statement of facts.
Justice Department prosecutors had sought a sentence of two years in prison for Bolger, followed by three years of supervised release. He faced a maximum possible prison sentence of five years.
Grenell stepped down as the Kennedy Center’s leader in mid-March after months of turmoil that included staff layoffs and artist cancellations, but he remains involved in the Trump administration as a “special missions” envoy. In May, he joined the board of directors of Live Nation, which settled an antitrust lawsuit filed by the federal government in March.
During Trump’s first administration, Grenell served as an ambassador to Germany, special presidential envoy for peace negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo, and briefly, as an acting director of national intelligence.
Photo via White House/Flickr
