Account

Trump Investigations Where the Inquiries Stand Tracking the Cases How the Cases Compare What if Trump Is Convicted? Possible Trial Dates

As Trump Prosecutions Move

Forward, Threats and Concerns
Increase
As criminal cases proceed against the former president, heated
rhetoric and anger among his supporters have authorities worried
about the risk of political dissent becoming deadly.

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Supporters of former President Donald J. Trump outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse after his
indictment in April. Ahmed Gaber for The New York Times

By Michael S. Schmidt , Adam Goldman , Alan Feuer , Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush
Sept. 24, 2023, 1:38 p.m. ET

At the federal courthouse in Washington, a woman called the

chambers of the judge assigned to the election interference case
against former President Donald J. Trump and said that if Mr.
Trump were not re-elected 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 F.B.I.
supervisor recently testified to Congress.

And the top prosecutors on the four criminal cases against Mr.
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 Mr. Trump have accelerated, so too have

threats against law enforcement authorities, judges, elected
officials and others. The threats, in turn, are prompting protective
measures, a legal effort to curb his angry and sometimes
incendiary public statements, and renewed concern about the
potential for an election campaign in which Mr. Trump 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 Mr. Trump, one survey

showed that 4.5 percent 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 Mr. Trump, that figure surged to 7 percent.

Given the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, scholars, security experts and others
are increasingly warning about the potential for lone-wolf attacks by angry Americans. Jason Andrew for The
New York Times

The indictments of Mr. 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 spur 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 B. 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 F.B.I. agents was menacing not only his
employees but also the rule of law.
 More on the Investigations of Donald Trump

Facing Consequences : Legal repercussions have arrived for Donald

Trump and other leaders of the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential
contest, in what could serve as a warning to those who meddle in future
elections.

The Trials : Three different prosecutors want to put Trump on trial in four
different cities next year, all before Memorial Day and in the midst of his
presidential campaign. It will be nearly impossible to pull off
.
Editors’ Picks
Divergent Strategies : The election interference cases in Washington and
Georgia rely on many of the same facts, documents and witnesses. But So You Think
the approaches of the two prosecutors could not be more different . You’re a Travel
Expert? Prove It.
Trump’s Lies: The former president faces multiple charges related to his
falsehoods about the 2020 election. We fact-checked some of his most With ‘Young Love,’
repeated claims . Matthew A. Cherry
Weaves a Warm
Chicago Tale

“Singling out individual career public servants who are just doing Netflix Prepares to
Send Its Final Red
their jobs is dangerous — particularly at a time of increased Envelope
threats to the safety of public servants and their families,” Mr.
Garland said.

“We will not be intimidated,” he added. “We will do our jobs free
from outside influence. And we will not back down from defending
our democracy.”

Security details have been added for several high-profile law

enforcement officials across the country, including career
prosecutors running the day-to-day investigations.

The F.B.I., which has seen the number of threats against its
personnel and facilities surge since its agents carried out the court-
uthorized search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. 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 percent, in part because the
identities of employees, and information about them, are being
spread online.

“We’re seeing that all too often,” Christopher A. Wray, the bureau’s
director, said 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, F.B.I.
agents confronting individuals suspected of making threats have
shot and fatally wounded two people, including one in Utah who
was armed and had threatened, before President Biden’s planned
visit to the area, to kill him.
Jack Smith, the special counsel, has sought a gag order against Mr. Trump. Doug Mills/The New York Times

In a brief filed in Washington federal court this month, Jack Smith,

the special counsel overseeing the Justice Department’s
prosecutions of Mr. Trump, took the extraordinary step of
requesting a gag order against Mr. Trump. He linked threats
against prosecutors and the judge presiding in the case accusing
Mr. Trump of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election
to the rhetoric Mr. Trump had used before Jan. 6.

“The defendant continues these attacks on individuals precisely

because he knows that in doing so, he is able to roil the public and
marshal and prompt his supporters,” the special counsel’s office
said in a court filing .

Mr. Trump has denied promoting violence. He says that his

comments are protected by the First Amendment right to free
speech, and that the proposed gag order is part of a far-ranging
Democratic effort to destroy him personally and politically.

“Joe Biden has weaponized his Justice Department to go after his

main political opponent — President Trump,” said Steven Cheung,
a spokesman for the former president.

But Mr. Trump’s language has often been, at a minimum,

aggressive and confrontational toward his perceived foes, and
sometimes has at least bordered on incitement.

On Friday, Mr. Trump baselessly suggested in a social media post

that Gen. Mark A. Milley, the departing chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, might have engaged in treason, “an act so egregious
that, in times gone by, the penalty would have been DEATH.”
(General Milley has been interviewed by the special counsel’s
office.)

The day before the threatening call last month to Judge Tanya S.
Chutkan’s chambers in Federal District Court in Washington, Mr.
Trump posted on his social media site: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME,
I’M COMING FOR YOU!” (A Texas woman was later charged with
making the call.)

Mr. Smith — whom Mr. Trump has described as “a thug” and

“deranged” — has been a particular target of violent threats, and
his office is on pace to spend $8 million to $10 million on protective
details for him, his family and senior staff members, according to
officials.
 Members of his plainclothes detail were conspicuously present as
he entered an already locked-down Washington federal courtroom
last month to witness Mr. Trump’s arraignment on the election
interference charges — standing a few feet from the former
president’s own contingent of Secret Service agents.

On Friday, a judge presiding over a case in Colorado about whether

Mr. Trump can be disqualified from the ballot there for his role in
promoting the Jan. 6 attack issued a protective order barring
threats or intimidation of anyone connected to the case. The judge
cited the types of potential dangers laid out by Mr. Smith in seeking
the gag order on Mr. Trump in the federal election case.

There have been recent acts of political violence against

Republicans, most notably the 2017 shooting of Representative
Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Last year an armed man arrested
outside the home of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said he had
traveled from California to kill the conservative Supreme Court
jurist.

But many scholars and experts who study political violence place
the blame for the current atmosphere most squarely on Mr. Trump
— abetted by the unwillingness of many Republican politicians to
object to or tamp down the violent and apocalyptic language on
social media and in the conservative media.

In one example of how Mr. Trump’s sway over his followers can
have real-world effects, a man who had been charged with
storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 was arrested in June looking for
ways to get near former President Barack Obama’s Washington
home. The man — who was armed with two guns and 400 rounds of
ammunition and had a machete in the van he was living in — had
hours earlier reposted on social media an item Mr. Trump had
posted that same day, which claimed to show Mr. Obama’s home
address.

At his rallies and in interviews, Mr. Trump has described the Jan. 6 rioters who have been arrested as
“great patriots” and said they should be released. Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

In his first two years out of office, Mr. Trump’s public comments
largely focused on slowly revising the history of what happened on
Jan. 6, depicting it as mostly peaceful. At his rallies and in
interviews, he has described the rioters who have been arrested as
“great patriots,” said they should be released, dangled pardons for
them and talked repeatedly about rooting out “fascists,” “Marxists”
and “communists” from government.
 Mr. Trump’s verbal attacks on law enforcement agencies
intensified after the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago, as they pursued
the investigation that later led to his indictment on charges of
mishandling classified documents and obstructing efforts to
retrieve them. Some of his most aggressive comments were made
as it became clear that the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L.
Bragg, was likely to indict him last spring in connection with hush
money payments to a porn actress.

He posted a story from a conservative news site that featured a

picture of Mr. Bragg with an image of Mr. Trump wielding a
baseball bat right next to it.

In another post, Mr. Trump predicted that there would be

“potential death and destruction” if he were charged by Mr. Bragg.
The district attorney’s office found a threatening letter and white
powder in its mailroom hours later. (The powder was later
determined not to be dangerous.)

Professor Pape, of the University of Chicago, said that while the

numbers of people who felt violence was justified to support Mr.
Trump were concerning, he would rather focus on a different group
identified in his survey: the 80 percent of American adults who
said they supported a bipartisan effort to reduce the possibility of
political violence.

“This indicates a vast, if untapped, potential to mobilize

widespread opposition to political violence against democratic
institutions,” he said, “and to unify Americans around the
commitment to a peaceful democracy.”

Kirsten Noyes and Matthew Cullen contributed research.

Michael S. Schmidt is a Washington correspondent covering national security and

federal investigations. He was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 — one
for reporting on workplace sexual harassment and the other for coverage of President
Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. More about Michael S. Schmidt
Adam Goldman reports on the F.B.I. and national security from Washington, D.C., and is
a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. He is the coauthor of “Enemies Within: Inside the
NYPD's Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden's Final Plot Against America.” More about
Adam Goldman
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence. He joined The Times in 1999. More
about Alan Feuer
Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent and the author of “Confidence
Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.” She was part of a team
that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their
connections to Russia. More about Maggie Haberman
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice. He joined The Times in 2017 after
working for Politico, Newsday, Bloomberg News, The New York Daily News, The
Birmingham Post-Herald and City Limits. More about Glenn Thrush

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