Police say they had already interviewed the person whose Instagram post showed a handgun aimed at a sitting member of Congress. Prosecutors had seen that image too, according to the lawmaker who reported it. Yet there were no charges until a man was found shot behind an apartment complex in Portland.
The person at the center of both incidents is identified in reporting as Michael Richard Fadich, who also uses the name “Rem Heathen.” According to a detailed account in Fox News, Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, says she warned prosecutors in 2025 that an Instagram graphic targeting her was an apparent death threat. No criminal case followed. Late in the year, Portland police arrested the same individual on an attempted murder charge in connection with a nonfatal shooting.
From Instagram Threat to Unfiled Case
Mace has spoken publicly about the online post since 2025. She says that in May of that year, an Instagram account associated with Fadich shared an image of a handgun pointed at her face.
“The message was unmistakable: he wanted me dead,” Mace told Fox News, describing what she saw in the graphic. She said her office reported the post to authorities at the time, and that prosecutors reviewed the case. According to her account, no charges were filed, and she did not receive an explanation that satisfied her.
In the Fox News report, Mace refers to Fadich as transgender and as an “Antifa extremist.” Those are her characterizations. Law enforcement agencies quoted in the same report describe interviewing a suspect and seizing firearms, but they do not use those political labels in their statements as presented there.
Mace has since repeated her description of the incident on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. In one post quoted by Fox News, she wrote that a “transgender Antifa member who made violent death threats” against her had later been arrested on attempted murder charges. She also addressed prosecutors directly in the same post: “To every prosecutor who declined to act after we reported this man: you had the chance to stop him, and you didn’t.”
Michael Richard Fadich, Who Threatened To Kill Mace, Charged With Attempted Murder. @NancyMace pic.twitter.com/P3mpVbXJtY
— MyrtleBeachSC News (@MyrtleBeachesSC) January 28, 2026
The Fox News story does not name the specific prosecutor’s offices that reviewed Mace’s complaint. It also does not include a response from any local or federal prosecutor about why the original Instagram case did not result in an arrest or formal charge. That gap makes it challenging to map out who made the earlier decisions independently and on what legal grounds.
What Portland Police Say Happened
The later incident, as described in the same Fox News account, took place in Portland, Oregon in December 2025. Police there responded to reports of gunfire near an apartment complex. Officers found a man behind the building with gunshot wounds. His injuries were described as serious but not believed to be life-threatening at the time.
Portland police identified the suspect as the person known as Heathen. Investigators said that the individual was among those interviewed during the follow-up to the shooting. According to Fox News, officers seized multiple firearms during the investigation, including at least one rifle and several handguns.
Based on that investigation, authorities charged Fadich with attempted murder. The Fox News story does not include the complete list of counts or a case number, and it does not quote from a charging document. Without that paperwork, the public record in this account is limited to what police told the outlet and how Mace describes the alleged conduct.
The victim in the Portland shooting is not named in the Fox News report. There is no public indication in that story of any connection between the victim and Mace, nor any statement from the victim or their family.
Disputed Warnings and Missing Context
Mace has framed the Portland case as a preventable crime. Speaking to Fox News, she said, “Prosecutors did nothing. Now, eight months later, he is charged with attempted murder after allegedly shooting someone in Portland.” She added, “A man is in the hospital because the system failed to stop a violent extremist when it had the chance.”
She has also publicly criticized the housing assignment for Fadich, who she says is being held with women in custody because of gender identity. “This blood is on the hands of every prosecutor who looked at this threat and looked away,” she told the outlet. “I pray for the safety of the women he’s housed with.” Those comments reflect her view of risk and responsibility. They are not findings from an independent investigation.
Essential details are not available in the Fox News account. It does not include:
Item 1: A copy of the original Instagram post or a law enforcement description of the image in official paperwork.
Item 2: Written correspondence from the prosecutor’s offices that reviewed Mace’s complaint.
Item 3: A response from the Department of Justice or the FBI to her criticism.
Item 4: Court records from Oregon that would show how judges have handled bail, mental health evaluations, or other conditions in the attempted murder case.
Without those documents, readers are left with a clear factual outline from one news outlet and the congresswoman’s perspective on what went wrong, but not with the full decision-making trail inside the justice system.
How Federal Law Treats Threats to Officials
Mace has said she wants the Department of Justice and the FBI to review why the earlier alleged threat against her was not charged, and to consider whether federal counts should still be brought. To understand that demand, it helps to look at how federal law defines a criminal threat against a public official.
Under 18 U.S.C. 115, it is a federal crime to threaten to assault, kidnap, or murder a federal official or a member of their immediate family with intent to impede, intimidate, or retaliate against that official for performing their duties. The statute can be read in full on Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute at this link.
Court decisions have also drawn a line between protected political speech, however harsh, and what the Supreme Court has called a “true threat.” In general, prosecutors must show that a reasonable person would see the words or image as a serious expression of intent to commit violence, not as hyperbole, parody, or fantasy. They must also consider the speaker’s intent and the context in which a statement was made.
Those legal standards help explain why not every offensive or aggressive social media post leads to federal charges. They, by themselves, do not answer whether the Instagram image reported by Mace met the threshold for a criminal case. That judgment depends on evidence and legal analysis that have not been made public.
Broader Stakes and Open Questions
Beyond the individual allegations, the sequence described in the Fox News report highlights tensions that regularly surface in threat cases involving public officials. Law enforcement agencies are expected to take potential threats seriously and to protect both the targets and free speech rights. Prosecutors must decide which cases can be proven in court under demanding legal standards. Those decisions happen largely out of public view.
Mace argues that in this instance, officials were too cautious or dismissive in 2025, and that a later attempted murder charge shows the earlier choice was dangerous. “When prosecutors do their job, lives are saved,” she told Fox News, citing another case in which a person accused of threatening her remains jailed. “But when they fail, like with Fadich, innocent people pay the price.”
Her public statements also show how identity and politics can become intertwined in the aftermath of a crime. Mace repeatedly ties Fadich’s alleged conduct to Antifa imagery and to being transgender. Law enforcement descriptions in the same reporting focus on acts, weapons, and charges rather than ideology or gender identity.
For now, several key facts remain unclear in the public record. It is not known precisely what evidence prosecutors reviewed from the original Instagram complaint, which offices declined to bring charges, or how they explained that decision internally. The status of any internal review by the Department of Justice or the FBI, if one has begun, has not been described on the record.
The attempted murder case in Portland will eventually generate court filings that can be examined line by line. Whether the same will ever be true for the unfiled threat case that preceded it is an open question, and one that will determine how fully the public can judge the choices Mace now condemns.
