Response to Trump Search Highlights Violent Rhetoric From the Right
As they did before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the former president and his allies are fueling outrage among supporters.
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By Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman
One week after a team of F.B.I. agents descended on his private club and residence in Florida, former President Donald J. Trump warned that his followers were enraged by the search — and that things could get out of hand if the Justice Department kept the heat on him.
“People are so angry at what is taking place,” Mr. Trump told Fox News. “Whatever we can do to help because the temperature has to be brought down in the country. If it isn’t, terrible things are going to happen.”
This week, one of Mr. Trump’s closest allies, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, issued a similar warning that Mr. Trump quickly reposted on his social media platform. Mr. Graham, in a Fox News appearance on Sunday, predicted that if the search of Mar-a-Lago led to a prosecution of the former president, there would be “riots in the streets.”
The assessments by both men were worded carefully enough that they could be defended as efforts to spare the nation unnecessary strife, and on Monday, Mr. Graham tried to walk back his remarks, saying, “I reject violence.”
But the statements could also be perceived as fanning the same flames of outrage they claimed to be trying to avert. They carried a distinct echo of Mr. Trump’s calls after the 2020 election to do what was needed to keep him in office, signals that contributed to the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol, soon after he urged his supporters to “fight like hell.”
In a broader sense, the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago has emerged as the latest rallying cry for those on the right who have long been suspicious that the powers of the federal government could be turned against them. It has prompted calls to dismantle or defund the F.B.I. and furious denunciations of what far-right supporters of Mr. Trump increasingly portray as an overreaching national security apparatus.
Over the past several years, intimations of violence have become more common in the Republican Party, a trend fueled in large part by Mr. Trump’s lies about his election loss. Threats of violent responses from the right have also shown up around policy changes such as the recent gun legislation signed into law by President Biden and surrounding hot-button social issues like transgender rights and the teaching of antiracism themes in schools.
Now the response by Mr. Trump and some of his allies to the search at Mar-a-Lago — including statements laced with fury at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. — is underscoring yet again the degree to which threatening undertones are creeping into Republican political speech, raising concern about words spilling over into violent action.
After the search, the F.B.I. reported a spike in threats against its agents, and a Trump supporter who was reported to have been in Washington on Jan. 6 tried to break into the bureau’s Cincinnati field office, subsequently dying in a shootout with the local police. Within days of that attack, another man, who mentioned it in social media posts, was arrested on charges of making a round of threats against agents.
The Trump Investigations
The Trump Investigations
Numerous inquiries. Since former President Donald J. Trump left office, he has been facing several civil and criminal investigations into his business dealings and political activities. Here is a look at some notable cases:
The Trump Investigations
Classified documents inquiry. The F.B.I. searched Mr. Trump’s Florida home as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into his handling of classified materials. The inquiry is focused on documents that Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, when he left the White House.
The Trump Investigations
Jan. 6 investigations. In a series of public hearings, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack laid out a comprehensive narrative of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. This evidence could allow federal prosecutors, who are conducting a parallel criminal investigation, to indict Mr. Trump.
The Trump Investigations
Georgia election interference case. Fani T. Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney, has been leading a wide-ranging criminal investigation into the efforts of Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. This case could pose the most immediate legal peril for the former president and his associates.
The Trump Investigations
New York State civil inquiry. Letitia James, the New York attorney general, has been conducting a civil investigation into Mr. Trump and his family business. The case is focused on whether Mr. Trump’s statements about the value of his assets were part of a pattern of fraud or were simply Trumpian showmanship.
The Trump Investigations
Manhattan criminal case. Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, has been investigating whether Mr. Trump or his family business intentionally submitted false property values to potential lenders. But the inquiry faded from view after signs emerged suggesting that Mr. Trump was unlikely to be indicted.
The threats are not limited to the F.B.I. or the Justice Department. Bruce E. Reinhart, the federal magistrate judge who approved the warrant to search Mar-a-Lago, has been the target of online attacks, with some people posting messages threatening him and his family. Shortly after the search, Judge Reinhart’s synagogue in Florida, citing the threats, canceled its Friday evening services. Similarly, officials at the National Archives, in an internal email first reported by The Washington Post, described a surge of angry rhetoric directed at its staff.
At least so far, extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, both of which are being prosecuted for the roles they played in the Capitol attack, have not publicly echoed Mr. Trump’s rants about the F.B.I. in any significant way. But pro-Trump websites are regularly filled with violent posts about doing harm to employees of the bureau.
From the Russia investigation to two impeachment trials, Mr. Trump has often tried to demonize his adversaries, portraying their efforts to hold him accountable for his behavior — or even to examine it — as outrageous attempts directed by political foes to deprive him of power.
“The Raid on my home, Mar-a-Lago, is one of the most egregious assaults on democracy in the history of our Country,” Mr. Trump wrote this weekend on his social media platform, Truth Social. He went on to say that the nation was “going to places, in a very bad way, it has never seen before!”
The former president’s response to the Mar-a-Lago search, which prompted a tidal wave of anger on the right, is just one example of how he has portrayed those who are investigating him as malicious and warned of the consequences of their actions.
“If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had,” Mr. Trump said in January at a rally, “in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere.” He was referring to the three Black prosecutors who are leading separate inquiries into him, including possible fraud at his company in New York and his actions in Georgia to subvert the results of the 2020 election. “Because our country and our elections are corrupt.”
The consequences of provocative statements by Mr. Trump and his allies was placed into sharp relief by the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. In the months that preceded the riot, Mr. Trump used tactics similar to those that he employed after the Mar-a-Lago search, incessantly whipping up his followers by telling them that he — and they — had been wronged, and that they could not let the situation stand.
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