A federal judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation for the Collin County man accused of threatening President Donald Trump, after the man\u2019s attorney raised concerns about his mental competency.<\/p>\n
Court records filed Wednesday show defense attorney Michael Pannitto requested a psychological or psychiatric examination for Ronnie “Chip” Austin Jr., 56, of Allen.<\/p>\n
Austin was arrested June 4<\/a> and charged with threatening the president of the United State<\/a>s and transmitting threats in interstate commerce. Austin made his initial appearance June 5.<\/p>\n A 56-year-old Allen man faces federal charges after authorities say he made threats against the president. The case is being prosecuted in the Eastern District of Texas.<\/p>\n Federal authorities have not publicly released details about the alleged threats, and the criminal complaint remains under seal.<\/p>\n The FBI is investigating the case, which is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas.<\/p>\n In the motion, Pannitto wrote Austin has been admitted to mental health units on several occasions and suffers from schizoaffective disorder and psychotic combative disorder.<\/p>\n The attorney said those conditions may prevent Austin from understanding the proceedings against him or assisting in his own defense<\/p>\n The filing states Austin “may be presently suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering him mentally incompetent” and asks the court to determine whether he can understand the nature and consequences of the case against him.<\/p>\n Federal prosecutors did not oppose the request.<\/p>\n KERA News reached out to Pannitto and will update this story with any response.<\/p>\n U.S. Magistrate Judge Aileen Durrett granted the motion and ordered Austin committed to a federal medical center for up to 30 days for evaluation. The examination will determine whether Austin is mentally competent to proceed with the criminal case.<\/p>\n The court ordered evaluators to submit a report detailing Austin’s history and symptoms, testing, findings, diagnosis and an opinion on whether he is capable of understanding the proceedings and assisting his attorney.<\/p>\n A finding of incompetency would temporarily halt criminal proceedings while Austin receives treatment and is evaluated for restoration to competency.<\/p>\n Emmanuel Rivas Valenzuela is KERA’s breaking news reporter. Got a tip? Email Emmanuel at erivas@kera.org. KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members.<\/p>\n If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation for the Collin County man accused of threatening President Donald Trump,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":["post-333638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}