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The last throes of Donald Trump’s presidency have turned ugly, even dangerous.
Death threats are on the rise. State and local election officials are being harassed into hiding. An attorney for the Trump campaign is publicly stating that a federal official who defended the integrity of the election should be “dismembered” or simply shot.
Neutral public officials, Democrats and a growing number of Republicans who won’t do what Trump wants are caught in a threatening post-election hangover sparked by Trump’s complaints about the election he lost.
“Death threats, physical threats, intimidation – it’s too much, it’s not right,” said Gabriel Sterling, a Republican election official in Georgia who implored Trump to “stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.”
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In response, Trump only pressed his baseless case that he unfairly lost, without discouraging problems or explicitly asking for them.
The unleashing of emotions has always been a Trump staple. His political movement was born in arenas that echoed with chants of “lock her up.”
His support has been encouraged for the past four years by his relentless mocking, his punches against “enemy of the people” and his raw talent for belittling political enemies with insulting nicknames like “Sleepy Joe” Biden. That is one of the best.
Pointer Alyssa / AP
“Death threats, physical threats, intimidation – it’s too much, it’s not right,” says Gabriel Sterling (right), a Republican election official in Georgia.
But in the final weeks of Trump’s presidency, the tenor has taken on an even more toxic tone as state after state has affirmed Biden’s victory, judge after judge has dismissed Trump’s legal challenges, and his loyalist cadre has contributed. to your frustrations.
As Biden builds the foundations of his new administration, Trump is drawing attention to the upheavals he will likely carry out when he leaves office.
“I don’t think this will go away on January 20,” said Eric Coomer, director of security for Dominion Voting Systems, from the secret place where he is hiding from death threats. “I think it will continue for a long time.”
Hard beans, Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani said of state officials who fear for their safety.
“They are the ones who should have the courage to step up,” Giuliani said Wednesday at Michigan.
“You have to make them remember that their oath to the Constitution sometimes requires criticism. Sometimes it even requires being threatened. “
For Coomer, the problem began when Trump’s campaign lawyers falsely claimed that his company rigged the election.
Far-right chat rooms posted her photo, details about her family and address.
Jacquelyn Martin / AP
Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani has shown little sympathy for state officials living in fear, saying, “Your oath to the Constitution sometimes requires criticism. Sometimes it even requires being threatened. “
“The first death threats followed almost immediately,” he told The Associated Press. “During the early days, the usual threats from Twitter online were ‘Hang him up, he’s a traitor.’
But then came targeted phone calls, text messages, and a handwritten letter to his father, an army veteran, from a suspected militia group saying, “How does it feel to have a traitorous son?”
Even now, weeks later and moved to a secret location, Coomer is receiving messages from people who say they know what city he has fled to and promise to find him.
“It’s scary,” he said. “I have worked in international elections in all kinds of countries that come out of conflict where electoral violence is real and people end up being killed for it. And I feel like we’re on the edge of that. “
This week Joe diGenova, a Trump campaign attorney, said on a radio show that a federal election official who was fired for contesting Trump’s fraud allegations “should be dismembered. Taken at dawn and shot “.
This, as election officials and voting system contractors in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, and elsewhere have come under sinister threats for doing their jobs.
“Threats like these unleash an avalanche of them,” said Louis Clark, executive director and CEO of the Government Accountability Project, an organization to protect whistleblowers. Of diGenova, Clark said, “This is proper behavior for a mob lawyer.”
Pointer Alyssa / AP
Intruders have been found on the property of Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (center), who has defended the integrity of his state’s election, which resulted in a narrow victory for Biden.
DiGenova later said that he was joking. The fired official, Christopher Krebs, said The Washington Post, “My attorneys will speak, they will speak in court.”
As “Anonymous,” former Homeland Security official Miles Taylor wrote an insider account about the Trump administration, prompting Trump to tell rallies that “very bad things” would happen to this “traitor.”
Taylor’s identity is now known and he has been assigned a security detail, as recommended by the Secret Service, due to the nature of the threats against him.
“This is unprecedented in America,” Taylor said. “This is not what we are. This is not how an open society is supposed to be. “
Taylor said intimidation has proven to be an effective tool for stifling dissent.
“I spoke with high-ranking former officials who wanted to come out and tell the truth during the presidential campaign, and many feared it would put their families in danger.”
But such pressure has not silenced some Republicans in Georgia, with telling results.
Intruders have been found on the property of Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who has defended the integrity of his state’s election, which resulted in a narrow victory for Biden.
And a young Dominion systems contractor has been harassed with death threats. Dominion is the only voting system provider in Georgia, which is why the company has been a lightning rod.
“There’s a tie to his name on it,” Sterling said of the contractor, in a barrage against post-election rhetoric and threats.
AP
Trump has continued to question the legitimacy of the election results.
Election security expert Matt Blaze angrily tweeted about the threats.
“This is disgusting,” he said.
“Every conversation I have with the people of the elections, we start with death threats that we receive. There is no excuse for this, no matter who the target is, but chasing the technicians on the ground and the rest of the personnel is a new low. Aren’t you ashamed? “
Sterling, the Republican election official from Georgia, said: “Someone will get hurt. Someone is going to get shot. Someone is going to die. And it’s not okay. “
Last week, Trump called Raffensperger an “enemy of the people,” Sterling noted, adding: “That helped open the floodgates to this kind of trash.”
In addition to watching people pass and enter her property, Raffensperger’s wife has been receiving obscene threats on her cell phone, Sterling said.
In Arizona, Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said she had faced threats of violence directed at her family and her office.
Trump’s spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said the White House condemned any violence.
“However, what I will also say is that the president’s lawyers (made) disseminate his private information,” he said, blaming “left organizations.”
“We are seeing that happen to people on both sides of the discussion and there is no place for that anywhere,” he said.
Pointer Alyssa / AP
Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger last week “enemy of the people.”
In fact, Republican election watchers said in election litigation affidavits that they felt threatened and booed by Democrats.
A key difference, however, is that the intimidation against Republican poll workers or officials by Trump’s opponents did not come from above. Biden has largely stayed out of the fray, even as Trump systematically smears the process, poll workers, state officials resisting his pressure, and some of the judges.
It has repeatedly persecuted Dominion Voting Systems, falsely calling it a “radical leftist company” responsible for a “stolen” election, in contrast to assurances from state and federal officials that the elections were conducted fairly and smoothly in the middle of a pandemic. , without any of the massive fraud alleged by the president.
Members of the Trump administration have affirmed the legitimacy of the election, although at least one, Krebs, was fired for it. Even Trump’s trusted ally, Attorney General William Barr, told the AP that he hadn’t seen any widespread fraud.
For Coomer, director of strategy and product safety at Dominion, “this choice was incredibly seamless across the board.”
But sometime around Eric Trump’s post-election tweets about Coomer and a strange press conference in which Trump’s attorneys Giuliani and Sidney Powell made up lies about Dominion and called him by name, the real trouble began for him. .
Dominion hired a third party security for him and was told not to return home.
A few nights ago, he said, he was told in text messages that people were watching him and that he had better run. Others had already said that they had rented a house in the town where he was hiding and that they would find him.
“It’s a daily thing,” he said, “and no, I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since all of this.
