Taking MAGA Death Threats Seriously
When Trump’s followers tell us they intend to harm his enemies, we should believe them.
A FEW FOLKS OUT THERE might want to murder me for saying this but, in my experience, reports of death threats are often greatly exaggerated. People in the public eye say they are inundated by calls and letters and emails threatening their lives; but, when you look into it, as I have done as a reporter and editor, what it usually comes down to is that they’ve gotten a whole bunch of vulgar, unhinged, and outrageously meanspirited communications, as well as one or two that hint at the possibility of physical harm.
I don’t blame people on the receiving end of truly atrocious name-calling and saber-rattling for feeling as though their safety and that of their families is at risk. It probably is. But unless someone threatens to kill someone else, it’s not really a death threat. And even some of the planet’s dumbest people—the ones who send angry, often incoherent messages to public figures—are smart enough to bring some ambiguity to their threats, so as not to get in trouble.
A few years back, I wrote a couple of stories on the voicemail messages that were received in December 2020 by members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which narrowly rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the state’s election result. (He lost by just under 21,000 votes.) It was the closest that any court in the country came to siding with one of Trump’s ludicrous challenges, and his supporters were piping hot.
Justice Brian Hagedorn, the lone court conservative to balk at Trump’s gambit (albeit on procedural grounds) received a number of messages like this: “You said you were a Republican conservative. You’re not. You’re terrible. Hopefully someday, you’ll get paid back on this. Resign. You’re a piece of garbage.” Ouch.
Meanwhile, Justice Jill Karofsky, who wrote the 4–3 majority opinion and who during oral arguments for the case told Trump’s lawyer “you want us to overturn this election so that your king can stay in power, and that is so un-American,” got this bit of feedback:
You refer to Trump as a king? Yet you are the tyrant bitch. You are the tyrant bitch who allows cheating and fraud to put a socialist puppet of China in the White House. Trump is not a king. Trump is a president legally elected by the people, not the fraud you allow, you fucking bitch. You’re the socialist tyrant bitch. Trump is an American patriot. And you’re fucking garbage, you fucking piece of shit pig.
In all, Karofsky received 35 sharply critical voice messages (and only two positive ones) in the days following the ruling. Many were as crude and ignorant as the one just quoted. But there were no actual death threats. The closest anyone came was an afterlife threat: “You and all the other corrupt pieces of garbage like you that are supporting voter fraud and destroying freedom in this country will burn in hell for eternity.” Praise the Lord.
I bring this up by way of explaining my genuine shock at seeing how readily some supporters of Donald Trump now resort to threats of physical violence, as documented in the 331-page motion filed last week by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. (The brief itself fills thirty pages, the rest is exhibits.)
Bragg, who is prosecuting Trump on thirty-four felony charges stemming from his hush-money payments to a porn star, is asking the court to issue an order restricting the defendant from making extrajudicial statements targeting jurors, witnesses, and court staff. Notably, his request, which is still pending, does not seek to prevent Trump from harshly and unfairly criticizing Bragg himself.
“Defendant has a long history of making public and inflammatory remarks about the participants in various judicial proceedings against him,” the pleading states. “Those remarks, as well as the inevitable reactions they incite from defendant’s followers and allies, pose a significant and imminent threat to the orderly administration of this criminal proceeding and a substantial likelihood of causing material prejudice.”
Trump’s lawyers on Monday opposed the motion, describing it as an attempt to muzzle him and contending, “American voters have the First Amendment right to hear President Trump’s uncensored voice on all issues that relate to this case.”
BRAGG’S BRIEF RECOUNTS Trump’s use of violent rhetoric in speeches and social media posts, one of which “included a picture of defendant holding a baseball bat and wielding it at the back of [Bragg’s] head.” It states that the former president’s proclamations have “resulted in credible threats of violence, harassment, and intimidation directed at the District Attorney, his staff, and the District Attorney’s Office.”
Cited in the brief and included as an exhibit is an affidavit from Nicholas Pistilli, a New York Police Department sergeant who oversees the security detail for Bragg’s office. It states that in 2022, only one of the 483 threat cases against public officials logged by the NYPD concerned the DA’s office. In 2023, 89 of the 577 threat cases involved the district attorney, his family, or employees of his office.
The first of these was logged on March 18, 2023, just hours after Trump falsely asserted on social media that he was about to be arrested and urged his followers to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” It was a social media posting by a Trump supporter named Craig Deleeuw Robertson, and it looked like this:
Soon after, a letter containing white powder was sent to Bragg at his office with a note stating, “Alvin: I’m going to kill you.” No ambiguity there.
The brief says this tally of threats and mailings “does not include thousands of harassing, racist, and offensive emails, phone calls, and text messages related to the People v. Trump prosecution and directed to the District Attorney, Assistant District Attorneys assigned to this prosecution, and members of the Office’s executive staff.”
And remember that this is just one of four criminal cases that Trump is facing as he sails toward his party’s nomination for president. Other cases have produced their own trails of threats, spurring court-imposed restrictions on what defendant Trump is permitted to say and do. Good luck with that.
As the Manhattan D.A.’s brief makes clear, many of those in Trump’s crosshairs have received real, and often quite credible, death threats. For instance, in August 2023, a Texas resident named Abigail Jo Shry was charged with threatening Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is hearing the case brought against Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election. She allegedly left a voice message that said, in part, “Hey you stupid slave n****r. . . . If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch. . . . You will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it.”
The case against Shry remains pending. An order imposed by Judge Chutkan barring Trump from making statements that could interfere with court proceedings was largely upheld by an appeals court in December.
Meanwhile, in Trump’s civil fraud case in New York that led to an $454 million judgment against him, Judge Arthur Engoron and his law clerk received what a security official stated in an affidavit were “hundreds of harassing and threatening phone calls, voicemail messages, and emails.” One voice mail, after making repeated reference to “filthy little Jews,” had this to say: “I mean, honestly, you should be assassinated. You should be killed.” And the case’s prosecutor, New York Attorney General Letitia James, was subjected to similar abuse. In that case, Judge Engoron imposed conditions on Trump’s out-of-court communications that Trump proceeded to twice violate, resulting in fines totaling $15,000.
The exhibits include dozens of Trump’s deranged social media posts viciously attacking the prosecutors and judge in the cases against him, as well as court personnel. These include his oft-quoted proclamation of August 4, 2023: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
Among the other exhibits are charging documents involving some ardent Trump supporters. These include the October 25, 2023, grand jury indictment of Arthur Ray Hanson II, of Huntsville, Alabama. It recommends charges for threats that Hanson allegedly made against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting Trump on charges related to his efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election result, as well as against Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat.
Hanson is accused of leaving a voicemail for Willis in which he said, among other things, “Watch it when you’re going to the car at night, when you’re going into your house, watch everywhere that you’re going”; “I would be very afraid if I were you because you can’t be around people all the time that are going to protect you”; and “There’s gonna be moments when you’re gonna be vulnerable.” The voicemail he allegedly left for Labat included “I’m warning you right now before you fuck up your life and get hurt real bad” and “you gonna get fucked up you keep fucking with my president.” Hanson’s case is pending.
But not even this prepared me for what Bragg included in his filing as Exhibit 10: the criminal complaint brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office against Craig Deleeuw Robertson.
THE FELONY COMPLAINT AGAINST ROBERTSON spills out over thirty-nine pages. It charges the seventy-five-year-old Utah resident with three criminal counts. As you may have guessed, one of them is for the above-mentioned threat he posted targeting Bragg on March 18, 2023.
Count two against Robertson is for allegedly threatening the lives of two FBI agents. The complaint says Robertson, wearing a Trump hat, refused to talk to the agents when they showed up to talk to him the day after his post threatening Bragg. A few days later, on March 24, Robertson posted this:
That missive was soon followed by this one:
Finally, count three of the indictment alleges that, on or about August 7, 2023, Robertson threatened the life of President Joe Biden, in a post that said: “I HEAR BIDEN IS COMING TO UTAH. DIGGING OUT MY OLD GHILLE SUIT AND CLEANING THE DUST OFF THE M24 SNIPER RIFLE. WELCOM, BUFFOON-IN-CHIEF!”
The complaint, dated August 8, 2023, contained other truly frightening social media posts from Robertson. Here are a few of them.
Some of the posts feature pictures of guns, including one from 2022 that includes the explanatory caption “Just getting ready for the 2024 election cycle.”
Robertson’s case is not still pending. On August 9, 2023, the serial death-threatener was shot and killed by FBI agents serving a warrant for his arrest at his home in Provo, Utah. The agents said he resisted arrest and pointed a revolver at them.
Neighbors said they never expected him to do anything violent. His obituary reads: “His commitment to making a positive impact on the lives of others was truly remarkable and served as an inspiration to many.”
Trump, too, has served as an inspiration to many—including people like Craig Robertson.
 | A guest post by
|