As Trump prosecutions move forward, threats and concerns increase
At the federal courthouse in Washington, a woman called the chambers of the judge assigned to the election interference case against former President Donald Trump and said that if Trump were not reelected next year, “we are coming to kill you.”
At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, agents have reported concerns about harassment and threats being directed at their families amid intensifying anger among Trump supporters about what they consider to be the weaponization of the Justice Department. “Their children didn’t sign up for this,” a senior FBI supervisor recently testified to Congress.
And the top prosecutors on the four criminal cases against Trump — two brought by the Justice Department and one each in Georgia and New York — now require round-the-clock protection.
As the prosecutions of Trump have accelerated, so too have threats against law enforcement officials, judges, elected officials and others. The threats, in turn, are prompting protective measures, a legal effort to curb Trump’s angry and sometimes incendiary public statements, and renewed concern about the potential for an election campaign in which he has promised “retribution” to produce violence.
Given the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, scholars, security experts, law enforcement officials and others are increasingly warning about the potential for lone-wolf attacks or riots by angry or troubled Americans who have taken in the heated rhetoric.
In April, before federal prosecutors indicted Trump, one survey showed that 4.5% of American adults agreed with the idea that the use of force was “justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.” Just two months later, after the first federal indictment of Trump, that figure surged to 7%.
The indictments of Trump “are the most important current drivers of political violence we now have,” said the author of the study, Robert Pape, a political scientist who studies political violence at the University of Chicago.
Other studies have found that any effects from the indictments dissipated quickly, and that there is little evidence of any increase in the numbers of Americans supportive of a violent response. And the leaders of the far-right groups that helped cause the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 are now serving long prison terms.
But the threats have been steady and credible enough to prompt intense concern among law enforcement officials. Attorney General Merrick Garland addressed the climate in testimony to Congress on Wednesday, saying that while he recognized that the department’s work came with scrutiny, the demonization of career prosecutors and FBI agents was menacing not only his employees but also the rule of law.
The FBI, which has seen the number of threats against its personnel and facilities surge since its agents carried out the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, in August 2022, subsequently created a special unit to deal with the threats. A U.S. official said threats since then have risen more than 300%, in part because the identities of employees, and information about them, are being spread online.
“We’re seeing that all too often,” said Christopher Wray, the bureau’s director, in congressional testimony this summer.
The threats are sometimes too vague to rise to the level of pursuing a criminal investigation, and hate speech enjoys some First Amendment protections, often making prosecutions difficult. But the Justice Department has charged more than a half-dozen people with making threats.
This has had its own consequences: In the past 13 months, FBI agents confronting individuals suspected of making threats have shot and fatally wounded two people, including one in Utah who was armed and had threatened to kill President Joe Biden, who was planning to visit the area.
In a brief filed in Washington federal court this month, Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the Justice Department’s prosecutions of Trump, took the extraordinary step of requesting a gag order against Trump. He linked threats against prosecutors and the judge presiding in the case accusing Trump of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election to the rhetoric Trump had used before Jan. 6.
Trump has denied promoting violence. He says that his comments are protected by the First Amendment.
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