Sen. Mike Lee Issues Threat to Japanese Prime Minister Over Imprisoned U.S. Soldier: ‘The Stake That Sticks Out Gets Hammered Down’

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) threatened Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida early on Thursday morning, promising to mobilize his colleagues and the American public to reevaluate the United States’ relationship with Japan if the longtime U.S. ally does not release Navy Lt. Ridge Alkonis, who is currently serving a 3-year prison sentence, by the end of the month.

Alkonis was driving with his family down from Mt. Fuji in May 2021 when he collided with another vehicle, killing an elderly woman and her son-in-law. While Alkonis maintains that the cause of the crash was a bout of mountain sickness that rendered him unconscious, the Japanese court system has ruled that he was negligent, falling asleep at the wheel without any accompanying illness.

On Thursday, Lee expressed his exasperation with the situation, addressing Kishida by proclaiming on Twitter that he had “made whatever point you wanted to make by imprisoning him and claiming (quite misleadingly) that you’re treating him the same as you would a Japanese national.”

“You’ve made your point poorly and counterproductively, but whatever—it’s time to bring your standoff to an end,” continued Lee, before observing that Japan has enjoyed the twin luxuries of a “really good security arrangement” with the U.S. and “not having that arrangement discussed or seriously questioned in Congress for a long time.”

“That’s about to change,” promised Lee.

The senior senator from Utah went on to offer Kishida the choice of returning Alkonis by February 28th or facing a sustained campaign by Lee to get the public and policymakers to reconsider Japan’s inclusion inside of the U.S.’s security umbrella.

“If you transfer Lt. Alkonis back to the U.S. before midnight on February 28, 2023, we will do our best to forget that this whole thing never happened. It will be hard, but we will try.”

“The stake that sticks out gets hammered down,” concluded Lee in an ominous conclusion to his thread, typed out in Japanese.

You’ve made whatever point you wanted to make by imprisoning him and claiming (quite misleadingly) that you’re treating him the same as you would a Japanese national. You’ve made your point poorly and counterproductively, but whatever—it’s time to bring your standoff to an end.

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) February 2, 2023

The Alkonis family has offered the victims’ family a restitution payment north of $1 million. Alkonis’s wife Brittany told CNN’s Jake Tapper that their lawyer had told them “that people that have been in situations like his that have made a complete settlement—0% of them have gone to prison.”

“Who is being punished the most by this injustice? It’s our three innocent children that miss their father every day,” she argued at a press conference in August.