Hours before a man identified as Ricky Shiffer died in a standoff with law enforcement on Thursday after allegedly attempting to breach the FBI’s Cincinnati field office, Shiffer appeared to post on former President Donald Trump’s social media platform “TRUTH Social” expressing his desire to kill federal agents.
The tweet, which the site’s administrators have since deleted, surfaced soon after the FBI raided the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday.
“Kill them when they arrive for you,” the suspect wrote. “Be a steer, not an American.”
Shiffer was in Washington, D.C., on or around January 6, 2021, however he was not detained as a result of the assault on the United States Capitol.
The messages are a small sample of the violent extremist propaganda that has flooded far-right message boards and social media platforms in the aftermath of the FBI’s raid on the Mar-a-Lago property. “Civil war” and “lock and load” were popular phrases on Telegram channels, Gab, Reddit, and TheDonald, a prominent forum among Trump fans. Anti-Semitic accusations have also been hurled at the Florida magistrate judge who approved the search warrant authorizing the FBI to search for and retrieve boxes and papers containing possibly secret data from the former president’s house. The amount of invective has not yet approached the proportions observed in the days preceding up to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
Threats ranged from assaults on the FBI and others engaged in the investigation to calls for Trump supporters to arm themselves against the government.
“Ballot box, soap box, jury box, and ammunition box… choices are becoming restricted,” one user said. “It’s time to bare guns and take down the FBI,” another said.
According to Jessica Reaves, the editorial director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Extremism, “there was simply an eruption of furious speech throughout right-wing media, across right-wing social media accounts.” “What stands out to us is the consistency of demands for civil war across, quote, unquote, extreme and…’mainstream’ platforms and from individuals across the board in the right wing arena.”
Reaves went on, “What we’re seeing today is a level of loudness and pitch that we haven’t seen before… in at least 18 months, if not longer.”
Far-right platforms, pro-Trump message boards, and Twitter users attacked the Florida magistrate and released what seem to be the judge’s home location and phone numbers, as well as the names and images of prospective family members. The threats, which were initially discovered by the non-profit investigative organization Advance Democracy Inc., were also posted on the social media accounts of the far-right militia group the Proud Boys and another militia group, the Three Percenters.
Furthermore, users have latched on allegations that the judge represented workers of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein while practicing law, playing into the bogus QAnon-driven narrative that there is a conspiracy of pedophiles and Satan-worshippers running a worldwide sex-trafficking enterprise.
The judge’s biographical page was removed this week after people on far-right websites doxed him by sharing his contact details with threatening threats.
The outrage over Trump’s false allegations about a rigged 2020 election hasn’t subsided among his most ardent supporters, according to Rita Katz, CEO of Site Intelligence Group, which tracks extremists online, but she also noted that the level of online extremism hasn’t yet reached the pre-Jan. 6 peak.
“While the incitements and themes of this hazardous language do certainly match those witnessed before to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, we have yet to see it approach the same volume and prominence,” Katz said.
“There are more developments to come,” she warned, “and we must not operate under the foolish notion that a comparable incident cannot happen again.”
Although Republican politicians’ language is more subdued, extremism experts observe that violent rhetoric echoes concepts propagated on far-right forums, such as those depicting the US government as a “banana republic” or “police state.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that law enforcement’s actions at Mar-a-Lago constituted a “increase in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents.”
Rep. Paul Gosar tweeted on Monday, “Failure is not an option.” “The FBI must be destroyed. America must be saved. I support Donald J. Trump.”
“What goes around will come around,” wrote Florida Senator Marco Rubio. “And then we become Nicaragua under Ortega,” the Florida legislator said, clearly referring to the dictator known for imprisoning political opponents.
Attorney General Merrick Garland praised the work of FBI agents and everyone engaged in the investigation during a news conference Thursday announcing his department’s request to a federal court to unseal the search warrant used by federal investigators to acquire papers from Trump.
“The FBI and Justice Department men and women are committed, patriotic public servants,” Garland added. “They defend the American people from violent crime, terrorism, and other dangers to their safety every day, all while protecting our civil rights. They do it at significant personal cost and danger to themselves.”
In a statement issued Thursday afternoon, FBI Director Christopher Wray condemned the “violence and threats,” adding that “unfounded assaults on the integrity of the FBI degrade respect for the rule of law.”
“Every day, I witness FBI agents executing their duties professionally, objectively, and with a deep dedication to our purpose of safeguarding the American people and defending the Constitution,” Wray wrote. “I’m honored to serve with them.”
This article was co-written by Andy Triay, Rob Legare, and Pat Milton.