Earlier this month, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of a Pennsylvania man charged with threatening to kill FBI personnel after federal agents executed a search warrant at the Florida home of former President Donald Trump.
The FBI seal The FBI has come under intense criticism on the right for executing a search warrant on Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. For some extremists, the criticism is leading to physical threats. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images) More
Bies’s alleged posts were part of a deluge of violent and vulgar content that spread quickly across pro-Trump segments of social media in response to the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, which stemmed from an investigation into the possible mishandling of classified documents that were taken from the White House after Trump’s term in office.
Outraged Trump supporters called for civil war and circulated personal information about the federal judge who approved the warrant authorizing the search, along with antisemitic threats. But the bulk of the vitriol was directed at the FBI.
On Aug. 11, one day before Bies was arrested at his home in Mercer, Pa., a man in Ohio was killed by police after he allegedly attempted to attack an FBI field office in Cincinnati with a nail gun and an AR-15. He appears to have posted a call to arms against the FBI on Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, prior to the attempted attack.
For extremism experts and federal law enforcement alike, the Cincinnati incident highlighted how this kind of rhetoric can inspire real-world violence. But intercepting such threats can be complicated.
The Bies case offers a glimpse of how law enforcement identifies legitimate threats of violence online, and what the difference is between criminal threats and the rest of the hateful, vile and often violent — yet protected — speech that has become commonplace across social media.
No comments:
Post a Comment