Threats against public officials on the rise as 2024 nears

New data suggests threats against public officials are on the rise, and experts say they’re concerned the trends will only continue to worsen.

With 2024 rapidly nearing — where an already-heated presidential election is set to be coupled with multiple trials of former President Trump, who is also a candidate — the risk of menacing talk escalating into action could increase due to inflamed political rhetoric and increased media coverage, they said.

Data shows that since 2013, 501 threats against public officials have resulted in federal charges, according to a report by the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education (NCITE) Center. Nearly 80 percent of those cases ended in convictions.  

The threats sharply went up in 2017 and 2021, both years following pivotal U.S. elections. The COVID-19 pandemic and immigration policy changes also served as catalysts for increases in threats against public officials.

According to the report, threats against law enforcement and the military — including judges and prosecutors — were the most common among public officials, but the targets recently have spanned multiple political offices, including in the White House.

Earlier this month, a Utah man was shot and killed during an FBI raid linked to threats against President Biden and other Democratic officials.  

A Massachusetts man pleaded guilty to sending a bomb threat to an election official in the Arizona Secretary of State’s office, and an Indiana man was charged with sending threats to a Michigan election worker. 

An Illinois woman was accused of threatening to kill former President Trump and his teenage son, Barron, while a Michigan mother was charged with making false statements when purchasing firearms later found with her son — who is accused of threatening Biden and other Democrats.  

And the judges and grand jurors tied to Trump’s legal matters in Georgia and D.C. have faced increasing threats as those cases progressed — including as targets on Trump’s social media account.

“Threats to public officials are increasingly becoming a strategy or a tactic that’s relied on,” Chapman University sociologist Pete Simi, the study’s principal investigator, told The Hill. “As people develop grievances about various things, the idea of threatening a public official is becoming increasingly normalized.” 

Katherine Keneally, a senior research manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said it’s very common for judges, public defenders and prosecutors to face threats from people involved in a case, like a defendant’s family member or a gang member during a gang-related case.  

But more recently — especially following Trump’s indictments in four criminal cases — threats by unrelated actors are increasing.

“What’s separate with what we’re seeing now is that people are threatening judges, prosecutors — because those individuals are now being perceived as being representative of a very politicized government,” Keneally said.  

Last week, a Texas woman was charged with threatening to kill U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s 2020 election case in Washington. She called Chutkan’s chambers five days after Trump was indicted, called her a racial slur and threatened to kill anyone who comes after Trump. 

In the Georgia case, grand jurors who voted to indict Trump faced threats and a torrent of racist comments online. Their purported addresses were also posted on right-wing forums.  

Most individuals menacing public officials have a criminal history and align with anti-government or racist ideologies, the report says. 

Although the report found that phone calls are still the most likely method for communicating threats, social media has played a large role in making it harder for law enforcement to determine whether threats could result in real-world violence, according to Alex Friedfeld, an investigative researcher with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. 

“When you have lots of people in a space engaging this type of rhetoric, it becomes very hard to discern who is the real threat, which creates possibilities that someone slips through,” Friedfeld said. 

Justice Department prosecutors must find ample evidence before charging Americans for making threats because of the thin line between threats and protected speech, Keneally said.  

“Because of the First Amendment, it’s very difficult to charge someone for these threats,” she said. “I hope that we continue to see more charges, but I do not envy [the DOJ’s] position.” 

 Still, an increase in federal charges for making threats against public figures has accompanied the rise in threats itself, the report found. 

“My concern is a lone individual who is in these spaces reading day in and day out that what has happened in this country is a threat to not just himself, but his family, his community and the country he loves,” Friedfeld said.  

“He is watching people talk about this in ways that normalize violence — hang them, shoot them, kill the traitors, whatever it may be — and starts to internalize that, rationalize this rhetoric and start to believe that this is what is necessary,” he continued. “And, that that lone individual decides to act.” 

The Justice Department and FBI did not respond to The Hill’s requests for comment about increasing threats against public officials. 

Politicians who amplify violent or hateful rhetoric online could also increase the likelihood of a bad actor taking their threats offline.  

“Powerful individuals are helping push these extremist beliefs into the mainstream and reaching a broader audience that they likely would not have previously,” Keneally said. “They’re validating their causes, which is extremely dangerous.” 

But whether threats are acted upon at all doesn’t diminish the harm they cause to America’s greater system of democracy, Simi said.  

“Sometimes we forget that the threats themselves — especially as their volume increases — have a very corrosive and damaging impact on our system of governance and society more broadly,” he said. “And that’s something I think we really need to consider more carefully and seriously.”