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Washington (Trends Wide) — Federal officials, including those from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, are closely monitoring what they describe as a surge in violent rhetoric online, including calls for “civil war” since former President Donald Trump called on supporters to “protested” what he claimed was his impending arrest.
But online conversations have been just that, without the actionable information, coordination and volume that preceded the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, US officials and security experts tell Trends Wide.
A Capitol Police intelligence memo on Sunday downplayed the current threat, noting there was “no indication of large-scale organized protests and/or violence” like what was seen in the run-up to Jan. 6. . The document also warned that while Trump’s influence among moderate conservatives “has diminished since he left office, some of his most ardent supporters continue to condone political violence and remain willing to fight on the former president’s behalf.”
That dynamic has led to a cautious response from the Biden administration, which has refrained from making too much of the talks and has been careful about what it shares about potentially violent rhetoric with state and local law enforcement. a senior US official familiar with the online conversations told Trends Wide.
“There has been nothing specific or credible, either in terms of large-scale activity or violence,” the senior official said.
A senior law enforcement official also told Trends Wide that while online conversations are increasing over time, they are “known” to the intelligence community, meaning there is nothing of concern at the moment.
A key difference two years after Jan. 6, sources tell Trends Wide, is that the threat of arrest has grown on the minds of many potential protesters. As a good indicator of the current situation, the senior law enforcement official pointed to a small protest held Monday in New York City, noting that a group that had planned to attend decided against it for apparent fear of being arrested.
Still, federal, state and local law enforcement do not want to underestimate the potential violence, as critics say they did before Jan. 6, when weeks of online threats turned into a deadly attack on Capitol Hill.
Officials in Washington are preparing for demonstrations around any allegations against Trump that could erupt into violence, a district official told Trends Wide on Monday. But officials at the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are also wary of opening themselves up to political attacks from Republicans, who are eager to single out both agencies for anything perceived to be a violation of women’s First Amendment rights. people, the senior US official said.
And until Trump tells his supporters when and where to come to their defense, as he did before the Capitol riots, “it’s unlikely we’ll see another event of the magnitude of January 6, and even then, many people have lost faith in him,” said Meghan Conroy, a former researcher on the January 6 Select Commission who is now a researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Laboratory.
Also, the rhetoric on the internet has been relatively less inflammatory compared to 2021.
“The steady stream of anti-government hostility and increasingly violent rhetoric is troubling, but it hasn’t yet reached the volume of what we saw in the run-up to January 6,” Ben Decker, CEO of security analytics firm, told Trends Wide. Memetic online threats.
Some posts by influential right-wing figures in recent days seem more geared towards creating chaos than unleashing violence. Right-wing troublemaker Jack Posobiec took to Trump’s favorite social media platform, Truth Social, to call for a “national bank run” after Trump announced that he expected to be arrested.
“The risk here is that the narratives around the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the possible arrest of President Trump could converge as influencers like Posobiec foster the conversation around a possible bank run as a form of nonviolent protest. said Lisa Kaplan, founder of technology company Alethea Group, which tracks disinformation campaigns online.
Law enforcement and security experts told Trends Wide they have not recorded large groups showing interest around Trump’s Truth Social post calling for protest at a level anywhere near that recorded on January 6. A law enforcement expert who tracks extremist posts on social media said the level of engagement in some of the most aggressive posts they had seen was much lower than expected.
Some Trump allies, such as Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have warned that federal agents could infiltrate any protest against a Trump arrest.
It’s unclear whether Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office will press charges against Trump as part of its investigation into former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. . House Republicans, however, have already announced that they will examine Bragg’s investigation.
Three House Republican Party chairmen sent a letter to Bragg on Monday asking for his testimony and stating that his investigation was an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.”
The uncertainty surrounding Trump’s legal fate has security experts preaching vigilance.
“While we have not yet identified specific plans to engage in large-scale acts of violence, we remain concerned about singular acts of political violence occurring in the coming days,” Daniel J. Jones, president of Advance Democracy, an organization, told Trends Wide. nonprofit research.
— Priscilla Alvarez and Kristen Holmes contributed to this reporting.
