The political became personal over the Christmas holiday as the homes of politicos and judges were targeted by threats, protests and “swatting” hoaxes by pranksters who call in fake emergencies to authorities in the hopes of prompting a forceful police response.
A swatting hoax targeted the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Authorities said they were investigating threats against the Colorado supreme court justices who ruled that Trump could not appear on the state’s ballots in the 2024 presidential election because he incited an insurrection on the day of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
And protesters staged demonstrations outside the home of two Joe Biden White House military advisers as the Israel-Gaza war continued.
On Tuesday, police in Rome, Georgia, said a man in New York called a suicide hotline claiming that he had shot his girlfriend at the home of Greene and was going to kill himself next.
Authorities said they contacted Greene’s security detail to confirm she was safe and that there was no emergency. Police also confirmed that Greene had been the target of about eight such “swatting” attempts.
The Rome police department said it quickly verified that the call was a hoax and did not send officers to the house.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Greene said: “I was swatted this morning on Christmas Day and a few days ago – Thursday Dec 21st. We received this death threat where this man is saying I will be shot in the head and skinned to make a ‘parasol’.”
She said the person was making a reference to Ed Gein, “a psychopath killer who would make things out of his victims’ skin”.
Greene added that the person also said “he would like to smash” the heads of her and her boyfriend, the far-right television broadcaster Brian Glenn, “on a curb”. Greene published the text of the threat, which named the purported sender of the message.
Meanwhile, in Denver, local police as well as the FBI said they were investigating threats to the Colorado supreme court justices after they ruled that the January 6 attack made Trump ineligible to appear on the state’s ballots as he seeks a second presidency in 2024.
A spokesperson at the FBI’s field office in Denver told the Guardian and other outlets that the agency “is aware of the situation and working with local law enforcement”.
“We will vigorously pursue investigations of any threat or use of violence committed by someone who uses extremist views to justify their actions regardless of motivation,” the FBI’s statement said.
A Denver police department spokesperson told Axios it was “investigating incidents directed at Colorado supreme court justices”. The spokesperson also said police “would thoroughly investigate any reports of threats or harassment”, and officers were “providing extra patrols around justices’ residences”.
Separately, CNN reported that the names of the four Colorado supreme court justices who ruled to disqualify Trump from the ballot had since appeared in “incendiary” posts on online forums.
In an apparent reference to the justices, a correspondent on a pro-Trump site posted: “All … robed rats must … hang.”
According to CNN, analysis by a non-partisan research group working for US law enforcement said that the justices had not been specifically targeted, but “there remains a risk of lone actor or small group violence or other illegal activities in response to the ruling”.
The intensifying political climate has given rise to increasing threats to government, judicial and public officials, according to experts. Bloomberg Law reported that the US Marshals Service – which is assigned to keep federal judges safe – cannot fully assess the security risks they face because of failures in its tracking system to cross-reference information.
The number of substantiated threats against federal judges climbed in recent years – from 178 in 2019 to 311 in 2022, according to the marshals service. In the first three months of 2023, there were more than 280 threats.
The marshal’s service, Bloomberg noted, attempts to distinguish between a “hunter” – someone who attacks a judge – and a “howler”, who threatens but does not act.
“It’s not tenable for a democracy to have people expressing their grievances and lacing that discontent with threats of violence at this volume,” Peter Simi at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center at the University of Nebraska Omaha, told the outlet, adding that the behaviour suggested “a certain lawlessness is acceptable and is becoming normalized”.
Elsewhere on Monday, pro-Palestinian protesters staged a demonstration near the homes of the US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, and the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.
Near Austin’s home, they held signs calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel has been waging war since Hamas attacked it on 7 October.
The protesters chanted: “Austin, Austin, rise and shine – no sleep during genocide.”
A crowd of protesters later adopted a similar tactic outside the home of Sullivan.
Posting on X, the activist group named the People’s Forum said it “woke up … Lloyd Austin as he tried to go on with his [Christmas] while arming & supporting zionist genocide against the Palestinian people. Now, we disrupt ANOTHER war criminal: [Jake Sullivan]. The people say NO XMAS AS USUAL!”
