Violence poses threat to US public officials

DENVER, Colorado — Last week's confrontation that ended with FBI agents fatally shooting a 74-year-old Utah man who threatened to assassinate US President Joe Biden was just the latest example of how violent rhetoric has created a more perilous political environment across the United States.

Six days earlier, a 52-year-old Texas man was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for threatening to kill Arizona election workers. Four days before that, prosecutors charged a 56-year-old Michigan woman for lying to buy guns for her mentally ill adult son, who threatened to use them against Biden and that state's Democratic governor.

Threats against public officials have been steadily climbing in recent years, creating new challenges for law enforcement and civil rights.

Last year, the Capitol Police reported that they investigated more than double the number of threats against members of Congress as they did four years earlier. Driven by former president Donald Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, threats against election workers have exploded, with 1 in 6 reporting threats against them and many seasoned election administrators leaving the job or considering it.

"It's definitely increased in the last five years," Jake Spano, mayor of the Minneapolis suburb of St Louis Park and a board member of the National League of Cities, said. The league issued a report in 2021 finding that 81 percent of local elected officials reported receiving threats and 87 percent saw the problem worsening.

The threats are not simply an issue of coarsening of the national discourse. Experts warn they can be precursors of political violence.

In 2017, a man who belonged to a Facebook group called "Terminate the Republican Party" opened fire on GOP House members as they practiced for a charity baseball game, severely wounding now-House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

Last year, the 82-year-old husband of then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, was assaulted by a hammer-wielding man who had posted right-wing conspiracy theories online before breaking into the couple's San Francisco home.

Also last year, a man was arrested with knives, a pistol and zip ties outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh amid protests against the high court overturning women's right to obtain abortions. Then, an armed Ohio man in body armor who had been at the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol was shot and killed after trying to enter an FBI office following that agency's search last summer of Trump's Florida resort Mar-a-Lago.

Trump has repeatedly slammed the FBI and has called for a takeover of the Justice Department should he win the presidency again, as he faces additional charges related to his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Increasing risks

Experts warn the escalating rhetoric could increase the risks of violence, especially as the 2024 election and Trump's trials draw closer. Lone attackers acting impulsively, rather than mass violence such as the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol, are the greatest worry, said Javed Ali, a former senior FBI counterterrorism official now at the University of Michigan.

"That threat can materialize very quickly with no notice," he said.

In an affidavit from FBI agents, Craig Deleeuw Robertson sounded like he could be that type of threat.

Michael German, a former FBI agent who is now a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice, said social media can transform private venting into menacing-sounding threats.

"Things that may have been screamed at the television before now appear widely in public," German said.

He said the problem is that federal law enforcement has been slow to go after organized right-wing violence, such as violent acts committed by the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and similar groups before the 2021 assault on the Capitol.

While threats against public officials are a routine part of the country's history, German said the rhetoric by Trump and some of his supporters presents a new danger.

Agencies Via Xinhua