In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 20-3269 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ROBERT A. HAAS, Defendant-Appellant. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 19 CR 00486 — Edmond E. Chang, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED JANUARY 5, 2022 — DECIDED JUNE 21, 2022 ____________________ Before KANNE, 1 WOOD, and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges. WOOD, Circuit Judge. After posting death threats against former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley on her Instagram page, Robert Haas was (not surprisingly) visited by diplomatic se- curity officers. He reiterated his violent message during that 1 Circuit Judge Kanne died on June 16, 2022, and did not participate in the decision of this case, which is being resolved under 28 U.S.C. §46(d) by a quorum of the panel. 2 No. 20-3269 conversation, and then escalated matters by posting vile, anti- Semitic statements on a Russian social-media website called VK.com. An FBI agent questioned him about the new round of threats, but Haas just doubled down with additional threats via texts and voicemails, this time against the agent. Criminal charges for transmitting threats in interstate com- merce and for the threats against the FBI agent followed. A jury convicted him on all counts, and the district court sen- tenced him to 51 months in prison. Haas now appeals, raising four issues. Only one of those points, however—a multiplicity challenge to the indictment— was properly preserved in the district court. His contentions that the government’s evidence was insufficient to support the verdict, that the indictment was constructively amended, and that some counts were improperly grouped for sentenc- ing, were all forfeited. We therefore review them only for plain error. Because we conclude that Haas failed to support his multiplicity argument and his other arguments do not un- dermine the district court’s judgment, we affirm. I Robert Haas believes that Jews are responsible for crimes against humanity, that Israel is “the biggest racist organiza- tion on the planet,” and that anyone who supports Israel or Jews is a traitor to the United States who deserves to die. In 2018 Haas posted a threatening comment along these lines on the public Instagram page of Ambassador Haley. The com- ment drew the attention of federal authorities, who visited Haas in his home to speak with him about it. Displeased with the visit and believing that federal authorities were in cahoots with the Jews, Haas turned to VK.com, a Russian social-media No. 20-3269 3 site, where he made several posts vowing to kill Jews and the officials that protect them. These posts caught the attention of FBI Task Force Officer Joseph Kostuchowski, who arranged to meet with Haas at his job site to discuss the posts. When Kostuchowski arrived, Haas refused to speak with him. After Kostuchowski gave up and left, he began receiving phone calls, text messages, and voicemails from Haas. In many of these communications, Haas conveyed his belief that Kostuchowski deserved to die for supporting …
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