As the New York Times reports, the intimidation has targeted school board officials, poll workers, flight attendants, librarians and even members of Congress, often with few headlines and little response from politicians.
In recent days, allegations of violence after Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents searched Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
They allegedly seized 11 boxes of classified documents related to an investigation into whether Trump violated the Espionage Act, illegally withheld or deleted public records and obstructed an investigation.
The former president and his allies have repeatedly denounced the FBI, portraying the case as a politically motivated investigation.
Some called for the federal agency to be defunded in response to the raid, and Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called for a challenge to US Attorney General Merrick Garland after he publicly announced his consent to the raid.
Trump himself added fuel to the fire through his internet platform Truh Social, where he announced that his “beautiful house, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida” was “besieged, ambushed by a large group of people (…)” by the FBI -agents.”
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States,” Trump wrote, saying, “Lawlessness, political persecution and witch hunts must be exposed and stopped.”
The news resonated immediately with his supporters, as it did on January 6, 2021, before the Capitol attack.
A gunman was killed by police in a standoff when he used an AR-15 rifle to attack an FBI office in Cincinnati, Ohio on Thursday.
The next day, after registering in Mar-a-Lago, the Department of Homeland Security distributed an intelligence bulletin warning of “an increase in threats and acts of violence, including armed confrontations, against law enforcement, the judiciary and government personnel.”
To add to the sense of concern, another gunman drove a vehicle into a barricade in front of the federal capitol early Sunday.
After getting out of the burning car, he fired several shots in the air before killing himself, Capitol Police said.
Recent studies show that the use of political violence is not only limited to the right, but extends to sectors of other ideological currents and is justified.
Experts say support for political violence among Republicans doubled when Trump took office, but it also increased (more slowly) among Democrats.
FBI statistics confirm that there are around 2,700 pending domestic terrorism investigations — a number that has doubled since spring 2020 — and that doesn’t relate to minor incidents, but still to serious ones.
Last year, threats against members of Congress hit a record 9,600, according to Capitol Police.
Unfortunately for Democrats, passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which incumbent President Joe Biden and his party had long sought, became a sideshow of the main Trump-centric event.
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