WASHINGTON-
A man armed with an AR-15 is killed in a shootout after trying to break into the FBI offices in Cincinnati. A Pennsylvania man is arrested after posting death threats against officers on social media. In cyberspace, the calls for armed uprisings and civil war are growing louder.
This could be just the beginning, federal officials and private observers of extremism warn. A growing number of ardent Donald Trump supporters appear ready to strike back at the FBI or others they believe are going too far in investigating the former president.
Law Enforcement Officials Nationwide Warn and Warn of Increased Threats and Potential for Violent Attacks on Federal Agents or Buildings Following FBI Search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Home .
Experts who study radicalization and misinformation online, such as Trump’s aggressive false claims about a stolen election, say the recent spike was sparked by a lawful search of Trump’s home in Florida. What could happen in case of arrests or indictments?
“When the messaging reaches a certain level, things start to happen in the real world,” said former New Jersey Attorney General John Farmer, a former federal prosecutor who now heads the Eagleton Institute for Politics at Rutgers University. “And when people in positions of power and public trust start echoing extremist rhetoric, we’re even more likely to see real-world consequences.”
Amplified by the right-wing media, angry claims by Trump and his allies about the manhunt are fanning the flames of his supporters’ mistrust of the FBI, though it is run by a Trump appointee, and the federal government in general. general. And at least some of Trump’s supporters now seem to be acting on his anger.
Last week, a man wearing a bulletproof vest and armed with an assault rifle and a nail gun tried to break into the FBI office in Cincinnati. He was later shot and killed by police after exchanging gunfire with officers. Authorities say they believe the man had posted obscure messages on Truth Social, Trump’s online platform, including one that said federal agents should be killed on the spot.
Another man drove his car into a US Capitol barricade on Sunday and began shooting in the air before killing himself.
On Monday, the Justice Department announced the arrest of a Pennsylvania man who had repeatedly threatened the lives of FBI agents on Gab, a platform popular with Trump supporters.
“You declared war on us and now it’s open season for YOU,” he wrote in a post shared by authorities.
A joint FBI and Homeland Security intelligence bulletin warns of a rise in violent online threats targeting federal officials and government facilities. Those include “a threat to plant an alleged dirty bomb in front of FBI headquarters,” along with calls for “civil war” and “rebellion,” according to a copy of the document obtained by The Associated Press.
Mentions of “civil war” on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter increased tenfold in the hours immediately following the search for Mar-a-Lago last week, according to analysis by Zignal Labs, a firm that analyzes the content of social networks.
Many of the posts contained unsubstantiated claims suggesting that President Joe Biden ordered the FBI to search Trump’s home or that the FBI planted evidence to incriminate Trump.
“Biden sending the FBI to raid a former president, Mr. Donald Trump’s house is a declaration of WAR against him and his followers,” wrote a poster on the Telegram platform.
The intelligence bulletin also noted that federal law enforcement officials have identified multiple threats against government officials involved in the search for Mar-a-Lago, including calls to kill the magistrate judge who signed the search warrant.
The names and addresses of the FBI agents and other officials were posted online, along with references to relatives who could be additional targets, according to the intelligence documents.
The threats are ominously similar to online rhetoric that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, says Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chairs the House Jan. 6 committee. and the Homeland Security Committee.
“These threats of violence and even civil war, coming predominantly from right-wing extremists online, are not only un-American, they are a threat to our democracy and the rule of law,” Thompson said.
The search of Trump’s residence was carried out based on a warrant legally obtained and signed by a judge. But that is beside the point for Trump and his allies.
“This is an attack on a political opponent on a level never before seen in our country,” Trump wrote Monday in a post on Truth Social. “Third World!”
Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona likened the investigation to “tyranny,” tweeting, “We must destroy the FBI.”
Another Arizona congressman, Republican Andy Biggs, sought to blame the individual agents who ran the search. “This was more like something you’d see in the former Soviet Union,” Biggs said this week. “Why did all those agents willingly go ahead?”
Republican Sen. John Thune told reporters in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on Tuesday that while the Justice Department has shown that it followed legal protocols to obtain the search warrant, its reticence about the Trump investigation has caused the people question the motives of law enforcement.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions that, left unanswered, create a lot of suspicion among the American people, and the one thing you don’t want is for people to not trust law enforcement,” Thune said.
Other Republicans have tried to tone down the rhetoric, as Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson did during a weekend appearance on CNN. “We need to stop judging them,” Hutchinson said of the agents. “The FBI is simply carrying out its responsibilities under the law.”
But many in the conservative media have not heeded that advice.
“The Mar-a-Lago raid was not an act of law enforcement, it was quite the opposite,” Tucker Carlson said on his Fox News show Monday night. “It was an attack on the rule of law.”
Fox also shared a doctored photo falsely showing the judge who signed the order receiving a foot massage from Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell was sentenced in June to 20 years for helping her boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein molest underage girls. The original photo was not of the judge but of Epstein, who committed suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial. Brian Kilmeade of Fox News later said that the manipulated image was shared as a joke.
The roots of Republican anger at the FBI go back to the 2016 election and investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia and Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified material in a private email account. That fury has only increased as new investigations focus on Trump, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified material since he left office.
Unsubstantiated claims that the FBI secretly framed Trump supporters for their violent actions on January 6 also stoked the ire of conservative social media users.
“Well guys, you started this civil war,” wrote one poster on Gab, “and others will surely end it for you.”
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Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo and Stephen Groves contributed to this report.