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A history professor at Fresno State has come under scrutiny after writing on Twitter that President Trump “must hang” to save American democracy.

Fresno State history professor Lars Maischak is seen in his profile photo on the school’s website.

The professor, Lars Maischak, tweeted that to his 28 followers in late February, but it wasn’t until the right-wing website Breitbart News wrote a story about it last week that the comment made national headlines.

The professor’s Twitter account has since been deleted and he issued an apology Wednesday.

“I ask forgiveness of those who felt threatened or offended by them,” he said in a written statement. “It was never my intent to harm anyone, nor to encourage others to harm anyone.”

Maischak said that before Breitbart’s article, nobody read his tweets as an “invitation, or endorsement of, violence,” but that in the aftermath of its publication he has received a “flood of threats and hate-mail.”

Read the full story on LATimes.com.