Hardcore followers of Donald Trump are calling for riots, insurrection, and assassination after he was criminally convicted of falsifying business records on Thursday.
A New York jury found the former president guilty on 34 counts of falsifying records to cover up payments to porn star Stormy Daniels as part of a conspiracy to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
Republican politicians widely refused to accept the verdict from the Manhattan trial, decrying the process as "rigged", "corrupt", "ridiculous", and "bulls***".
But in messages seen by The Independent, and others reported by Reuters, Trump loyalists on right-wing social networks went much further.
"Find the jurors. All of them. Take no prisoners," wrote one user on a Trump-focused message board.
"Just give them the rope," said another, in an explicit reference to lynching. "The time for talking has long gone. Let them swing outside the courthouse."
Some posts used coded language, such as one which urged "short drops" – that is, execution by hanging – for the people responsible for Trump's trial.
Another user replied with "short walks and long drops", plus a helicopter emoji – an apparent reference to "death flights" such as those used by right-wing dictators in Argentina and Chile to dispose of dissidents.
One post seen by Reuters claimed that "someone in New York with nothing to lose needs to take care of Merchan," referring to the judge who oversaw the trial, while another declared: "Time to start capping some lefties."
The overwhelming sentiment from MAGA loyallists is that Trump's conviction is wholly unjustified, and proves that the American political and justice systems are irretrievably rigged.
"One million men (armed) need to go to Washington and hang everyone. That's the only solution," said one message quoted by Reuters.
The majority of posts seen by The Independent did not preach violence but instead were advocating electoral solutions or non-violent civil disobedience. But calls for extrajudicial murder were not difficult to find.
A thread urging Trump supporters to "LEGALLY destroy the professional lives" of Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo, and trial judge Juan Merchan attracted particular scorn.
"That’s a lot of unnecessary words to say 'try and hang'," replied one user. "All the ghillie suits in America and you want to use the broken and corrupt judicial system. F*** off," said another, referring to a type of camouflage suit used by military snipers.
Other responses included "my AR-15 is legal", "rope", and "they have addresses. you know".
Some of the messages found by Reuters were posted on Trump's own social network, Truth Social, which has rules against violent language. Some of the posts highlighted by the news agency were later removed.
"It’s hard to believe that Reuters, once a respected news service, has fallen so low as to publish such a manipulative, false, defamatory and transparently stupid article as this one purely out of political spite," said a spokesperson for Truth Social.
Republicans' comments on the trial, and their adoption of Trump's rhetoric of "rigging" and "corruption", closely mirrored the language of the former president and his allies in the run-up to the attack on the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021.
Back then, Trump's team repeatedly claimed without any compelling evidence that the 2020 presidential election had been "rigged" and "stolen".
Many experts and critics of Trump have blamed that rhetoric for the violence of January 6, and some now fear that similar violence could follow from the hush money trial.
"I do think a lot of these folks have been looking for an excuse to maybe mobilize for a while," terrorism researcher Amy Cooter told Reuters.
"I hope I’m wrong. I’ve said for a long time, though, that I would not be shocked to see violence result from a guilty verdict, either directed toward the jurors [or others]."
The Independent has asked Donald Trump and his staff for comment.
