Police in Georgia are investigating online threats to members of a grand jury that voted to indict Donald Trump and 18 of the former president’s allies accused of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in a sprawling criminal case.
The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office is “aware that personal information from members of the jury” has been shared across social media platforms, the agency announced on 17 August, less than three days after a sweeping charging document was unsealed.
As required under state law, the names of the jurors are listed in the 98-page indictment from the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
The sheriff’s office is working with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to “track down” the origins of the threats in the county and in other jurisdictions, according to the statement.
The former president’s supporters have published the jurors’ names, social media profiles, addresses and phone numbers as part of an apparent harassment campaign following right-wing outrage over a sweeping criminal indictment, the fullest accounting yet of an alleged effort among Mr Trump and his allies to coerce officials into a fraudulent scheme to subvert the votes of millions of Americans.
Far-right message boards and platforms dominated by pro-Trump users such as Gab and Truth Social have been flooded with comments and posts surrounding the case and the jurors, with pledges to “doxx” or publish a person’s personal information online with the intent to harass them.
Accounts on fringe far-right message boards such as 4chan and The Donald have threatened to follow jurors home and “photograph their faces,” labelled their names a “hit list,” posted images of jurors’ alleged profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn, tried to determine their political affiliations and religious and ethnic backgrounds, and promoted violence against them.
The Independent’s review of posts across Truth Social, where users vie for the audience of the former president himself, shows users rushing to Mr Trump’s defence while trying to identify and smear members of the jury who indicted him.
Users on the far-right, pro-Trump message board The Donald, frequently a hotbed for violent rhetoric targeting political opponents, have promoted the killing of jurors and suggested igniting civil war.
“It’s becoming all too commonplace to see everyday citizens performing necessary functions for our democracy being targeted with violent threats by Trump-supporting extremists,” former FBI investigator Daniel J Jones, who founded nonpartisan research group Advance Democracy, told NBC News. “The lack of political leadership on the right to denounce these threats – which serve to inspire real-world political violence – is shameful.”
Threats to election workers and public officials have surged in recent years, migrating from once-fringe corners of online spaces into daily life, fuelled by conspiracy theories and increasingly volatile political rhetoric.
This week, a Texas woman was charged with threatening to kill a federal judge overseeing Mr Trump’s criminal case in Washington DC after she left a voicemail pledging to kill anyone who went after former President Trump,” according to a criminal complaint.
Abigail Jo Shry left the message for US District Judge Tanya Chutkan on 5 August. She called the judge, who is Black, a “stupid slave n*****” in the voicemail, according to court filings.
“If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, b****,” she said in the message, according to prosecutors. “You are in our sights, we want to kill you.”
The former president himself has also been reprimanded and could face court sanctions for his ongoing attacks against the prosecutors and judges overseeing the multiple criminal cases against him.
Former federal judge J Michael Luttig told CNN that Mr Trump’s “unprecedented” and “inexcusable” attacks are “a grave disservice to the nation” and could imperil his defence.
