Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, said on Saturday that domestic threats in the United States now look like international terrorist threats, with people “willing to die for a cause” who back former President Donald Trump.
Trump has previously faced criticism for making alleged threats following his criminal indictments and is currently facing 78 felony charges in total, spread across three cases. Those cases, which he has plead not guilty to and accused them of being a politically-motivated witch hunt, include charges related to claims he orchestrated a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election, mishandled classified documents, and broke the law attempting to reverse the 2020 election outcome.
During the former president’s arraignment in April on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York, acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan warned him against making comments about the case with the “potential to incite violence, create civil unrest, or jeopardize the safety or well-being of any individuals.”
However hours later, Trump told supporters gathered at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, that he had “a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family whose daughter worked for [Vice President] Kamala Harris and now receives money from the Biden-Harris campaign.”
Merchan’s daughter Loren is president of Authentic Campaigns, an agency that has worked with President Joe Biden, Harris, and other Democrats. However, conservative and progressive lawyers have said this is not considered a conflict of interest for the judge.
While appearing on MSNBC on Saturday, Figliuzzi was asked why he thinks there will be more right-wing extremist threats like the one in Utah that happened earlier this week, where Craig Deleeuw Robertson was fatally shot by FBI agents after previously posting ominous messages on social media, including ones aimed at Biden while also showing support for Trump.
“If you remember back to after 9/11, we had this color-coded threat level system that many people thought was confusing and ultimately went away. But if we still have that in place, with regard to domestic threat, we’d be moving from yellow to orange to likely threat occurring. And all of the markers are there,” Figliuzzi said, who also works as a contributor to NBC News and has been a frequent critic of the former president in recent years.
In addition, Trump who is running for president again in 2024 has repeatedly come after special counsel Jack Smith, who was chosen by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to oversee its probes into him.
The former president called Smith a terrorist in an appearance on The Mark Levin Show in January and said, “The prosecutor [Smith] should resign, he’s got a conflict. He is a terrorist. He is a Trump hater. His best friends are Weissmann and all of these characters, Lisa Monaco at the Justice Department, one of the top officials. This is a disgraceful situation. He should resign!”
During his MSNBC interview, Figliuzzi added: “You referenced Trump now elevating attacks on the people prosecuting him. Judges, witnesses, this is coming. It’s already in the works, and when you look at extremist websites, chat rooms, you see the rhetoric. Particularly even against a potential witness, [former Vice President] Mike Pence, who in some corners of the dark web is targeted for being hung again, as if we needed to see that again.”
Pence has struck the ire of a section of Trump’s base who are furious with the former vice president for refusing to back Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. When a mob of Trump supporters, allegedly motivated by his unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, stormed the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, in an effort to stop Congress from certifying the election, some chanted “hang Mike Pence.”
“So, it’s likely we’re going to see more of this. And really what’s troubling here is the domestic threat looks now really like the international terrorism threat, which is people have lost their self-preservation instincts and are willing to die for a cause. A recent survey back in June showed that at least 12 million Americans are okay with violence to put Trump back into office. So, in that environment, we’ve got a real challenge up ahead,” Figliuzzi added.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s campaign via email for comment.
However, political analyst and Dillard University professor Robert Collins told Newsweek on Saturday that the former president’s “rhetoric is not turning off his voters.”
“It works for Trump because Americans are increasingly getting their information sources from news outlets that only propagate their particular point of view. Trump has news outlets that reinforce his rhetoric,” Collins said. “The two sides of the political spectrum no longer share the same information sources, which means there’s no shared reality.
Collins added: “Americans have always disagreed on policy, but in the past, we started from a place of shared meaning and shared reality. The sides no longer talk to each other. They talk past each other. Regardless of what happens in the trials or election, Trump will continue his attack rhetoric. So, we can expect threats of political violence to continue to increase over the next few years.”
