Merrick Garland warns threats against officials imperil democracy

For Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, the session was a show to advocate for former president Donald Trump, now a convicted criminal facing additional charges in state and federal courts even as he pursues the White House again.

“Threats of violence targeting any public servant are abhorrent … these threats are infuriating,” Garland said Tuesday in an email to The Washington Post. “The people who we ask to ensure the function of our democracy, many of whom already risk their lives every day to do so, should not have to face death threats just for doing their jobs.”

His email echoed his remarks at the June 4 hearing, where he said: “Our democracy cannot continue if the people who make the democracy run are afraid, if they make their decisions based on fear of being threatened or of being assaulted. No democracy can survive under those circumstances, and we will do everything we can in our power to investigate, deter and prosecute anyone who makes threats against public servants.”

The threat to democracy was all but ignored by Republicans, despite the risks confronting members of Congress, police officers and legislative staffers when Trump inspired insurrectionist supporters to raid the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

A scary and vivid display of Trump’s threatening words was offered last month by Jack Smith, the Justice special counsel prosecuting the former president on charges related to the assault on the Capitol and the alleged misuse of classified documents. Smith asked U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon to stop Trump from making “statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of” the documents case.

Smith’s motion included an exhibit with a fundraising “Breaking Trump Alert,” sent by email to Trump supporters, that said “Biden’s DOJ was authorized to shoot me” during a search for classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. He also requested money by telling fans that “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.” The message grossly distorts standard FBI language used in search warrants.

Trump’s Republican supporters largely overlooked Garland’s pleas concerning threats to civil servants. A spokesperson for the Judiciary Committee’s chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), said in a statement that “we’ve been consistent in denouncing political violence, but Attorney General Garland is trying to conflate that illegal behavior with legitimate criticism about the weaponization of the Justice Department.”

That deflection doesn’t fly with Randy L. Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. “What some politicians on the far right do not understand is that the typical anti-government-obsessed individual does not care if a federal employee is an engineer, teacher, nurse or firefighter,” he said. “They just view all federal employees as their enemies. It is a scary situation, and it is getting worse.”

Justice doesn’t record threats by the occupations of victims, but “threats prosecutions are generally on the rise and potentially higher than they have ever been, with the last few years being the highest we have seen in the last decade,” according to a department email. “Notably, if you look at the last 10 years and divide them into two 5-year periods, 2014 to 2018, then 2018 to 2023, you get a 46.81% increase in threats prosecutions.” That includes “a substantial increase in threatening communications received by individuals in public service.”

Recent examples of threats against civil servants cited by Justice officials include:

● This month’s arrest of a Fort Worth man accused of threatening the life of an FBI agent and his family if Trump loses the election. A 65-second voicemail to the agent from the defendant allegedly said: “The the last thing you’ll ever hear are the horrified shrieks of your widow and orphans. And then you know what we’re going to do? … We’re going to slaughter your whole [expletive] family.”

● The May 1 sentencing of a Billings, Mont., man to 30 months imprisonment for threatening to kill the family of Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.). In voicemail messages, the caller said he would “kill every single one of your (obscenity) family members,” who would experience a “horrendous death.”

This election year, threats and political violence are feared again against the workers who staff voting operations in 10,000 independent jurisdictions across the country.

“I've been worried about this since 2021,” Garland told the committee.

He launched the Election Threats Task Force that year. During a task force meeting last month, Garland pointed to “a dangerous increase in violent threats against” election workers. He provided examples, including:

● The “guilty plea of a man who threatened an election worker in Michigan. The defendant made vile threats, saying that the election worker deserved a ‘throat to the knife.’”

● “A 3½-year prison sentence for a man in Texas, who threatened the lives of Arizona election officials and their children and advocated for a mass shooting of poll workers and election workers in precincts he believed had ‘suspect results.’”

● “A two-year prison sentence for a man in Texas who threatened Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election, including threatening to ‘put a bullet … behind the ears’ of an election worker.”

● A “2½-year sentence in prison for an Iowa man who threatened to lynch an election official in Arizona.”

Bullying civil servants is alarming, frightening and all too common.

“It has to be intimidating,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said by phone, when “you get threats just because … you’re doing a job for the American citizen. It makes it uneasy for a person to even go to work.”