The federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump has sparked a wave of calls for violence from his supporters and an uprising to defend him, unnerving observers and raising concerns of a dangerous atmosphere ahead of his appearance in the court in Miami on Tuesday.
In social media posts and public comments, close allies of Mr. Trump, including a member of Congress, has described the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries guns. Allies have painted Mr. Trump as the victim of a Justice Department controlled by President Biden, his potential opponent in the 2024 election.
Calls to action and threats have been amplified in right-wing media and have been met with supportive responses from social media users and cheers from crowds, which for several years have been conditioned by Mr. Trump and his allies see any effort to hold him accountable as attacks against him.
Experts on political violence warn that attacks on individuals or institutions are more likely when elected officials or prominent media figures are able to issue threats or call for violence with impunity. The pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was drawn to Washington in part by a Twitter post by Mr. Trump weeks earlier, promising it would be “wild.”
The former president alerted the public to the indictment Thursday evening in posts on his social media platform, attacking the Justice Department and calling the case “THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.”
“An eye for an eye,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., wrote in a Twitter post on Friday. His warning came shortly before the special counsel in the case, Jack Smith, spoke publicly for the first time since taking over the investigation into Mr. trump
On Instagram, the fiancee of Trump’s eldest son, Kimberly Guilfoyle, posted a photo of the former president with the words, “Retribution coming,” in all caps.
In Georgia, at the Republican state convention, Kari Lake, who refused to concede Arizona’s 2022 gubernatorial election and is a staunch supporter of Mr. Trump emphasized that many of Mr. Trump owned guns.
“I have a message tonight for Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden, and the guys in the fake media, you should listen too, this one is for you,” Ms Lake said. “If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans like me. And I’ll tell you, most of us are card-carrying NRA members.”
The crowd cheered.
Ms Lake added: “This is not a threat, this is a public service announcement.”
Experts on political violence say that even if aggressive language by high-profile individuals does not directly result in physical harm, it creates a dangerous atmosphere in which the idea of violence becomes more accepted, especially if it rhetoric is not controlled.
“So far, the politicians who have used this rhetoric to inspire people to violence have not been held accountable,” said Mary McCord, a former Justice Department official who has studied links between extremist rhetoric and violence. “Until that happens, there are few deterrents to using this kind of language.”
The language used by some right-wing media figures was harsher.
On Pete Santilli’s talk show, the conservative provocateur declared that if he were the commandant of the Marine Corps, he would order “all the Marines” to grab President Biden, “throw him with zip ties in the back of a pickup truck”. truck” and “get him out of the White House.”
One of his guests, Lance Migliaccio, said that if it were legal and he had access, he would “probably go in and shoot” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and someone Mr. Trump has identified as one of his enemies.
So far, reactions from Trump supporters have been more intense and explicit than those expressed after Trump was indicted in a separate case by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg in late March.
Shortly before this accusation, Mr. Trump posted an article on Truth Social, his social media platform, that included a photo of himself holding a baseball bat to his side and Mr. Bragg in an adjacent photo. A crowd of pro-Trump and anti-Trump protesters appeared in Lower Manhattan when Mr. Trump was tried there in April.
On Saturday, in his first public statements since the latest indictment on seven counts related to the withholding of secret documents and efforts to obstruct justice, Mr. Trump attacked those investigating him as “crazy persecutions.”
The FBI has been the target of much criticism from far-right Republican lawmakers and supporters of the former president. In the wake of heated partisanship, FBI field offices report all threats involving their personnel or facilities to Washington headquarters, in an unusual step. A police officer familiar with the move said the FBI was trying to control the number of threats across the country directed at the agency.
Despite the security precautions taken for the appearance of Mr. Trump on Tuesday, security experts said the rhetoric and threats are unlikely to ease and will likely become more pronounced as the case progresses and the 2024 election nears.
“Rhetoric like this has consequences,” said Timothy J. Heaphy, the lead investigator for the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Mr. Trump to remain in the White House after his presidency. “The people we interviewed for the Jan. 6 investigation said they came to the Capitol because politicians and the president told them to be there. Politicians think when they say things it’s just rhetoric, but people listen and take it seriously. In this climate, politicians need to be aware of this and be more responsible.”
On Instagram on Saturday morning, Mr. Trump posted a combined video of himself swinging a golf club on the course and an animation of a golf ball hitting President Biden’s head, overlaid with images of Mr. Biden falling in a public event. in the last few days after tripping over something on stage.
It was not the first time right-wing figures had called for war or violence to support the former president, nor the first time Mr Trump appeared to call on his supporters to rally on his behalf.
In the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol, the idea that a civil war was coming prevailed in right-wing circles. Extremist leaders like Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the militia Oath Keepers, and Enrique Tarrio, the president of the Proud Boys, often rallied their groups with incendiary references to the cleansing violence of the American Revolution. Both men have been convicted of sedition in connection with the attack on the Capitol.
More broadly, on far-right websites, people shared tactics and techniques for attacking the building and talked about building gallows and trapping lawmakers in tunnels.
The recent onslaught of bellicose language in response to Mr. Trump echoed what happened between Republican officials and media figures last summer after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, the private club and residence of Mr. Trump in Florida as part of the document investigation and pulled about 100 classified records.
“This. Means War,” wrote The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump outlet at the time, setting the tone for others. Hours later, Joe Kent, a Trump-endorsed House candidate in Washington state, posted a podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former political adviser, and declared: “This just shows everybody what a lot of us have been saying for a long time. We are at war.”
Indeed, just days after the heated language that followed the Mar-a-Lago search, an Ohio man armed with a semiautomatic rifle tried to break into the FBI’s field office near Cincinnati and died in a shootout with the local police.
Jonathan Swan contributed to this report.
