Threatening government officials is a felony in the United States; both physical threats and verbal threats are criminalized. Threatening the president is a separate felony. Cases will be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Secret Service. Threatening government officials and judges can count as terrorism and obstruction of justice. The specifics of what the threatener can be sentenced under depends on the specifics of the case. The frequency of threats and threats prosecuted follows the trend of national crises. Various social media platforms have been used to issue threats.
Legality In the United States, threatening government officials is a felony under federal law. Threatening the president of the United States is a felony under , punishable by up to 5 years of imprisonment, that is investigated by the United States Secret Service. Threatening other officials is a Class D or C felony, usually carrying maximum penalties of 5 or 10 years under , and other statutes, that is investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. When national boundaries are transcended by such a threat, it is considered a terrorist threat.
When a threat is made against a judge, it can be considered obstruction of justice. Threatening federal officials' family members is also a federal crime; in enacting the law, the Committee on the Judiciary stated that "Clearly it is a proper Federal function to respond to terrorists and other criminals who seek to influence the making of Federal policies and interfere with the administration of justice by attacking close relatives of those entrusted with these tasks."
There are three elements of the offense of making an illegal threat: (i) there must be a transmission in interstate commerce; (ii) there must be a communication containing the threat; (iii) and the threat must be a threat to injure the person of another. Threats can also sometimes be punished under the statutes criminalizing assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain United States Government officers or employees or assassinating, kidnapping, and assaulting government officials of the United States.
United States Sentencing Guidelines take a number of factors into consideration in determining the recommended penalty, including evidence of the person's intent to carry out the threat; disruption to the government function; and the possibility of inciting others to violence. There is also a 6-level official victim enhancement, which makes the recommended penalty, per the sentencing table, approximately double that which would apply if an ordinary citizen were the victim. There can be many motives for making threats, including political motives or a desire to frame someone else for making the threat. The person's intent can greatly affect the sentence.
In determining what constitutes a true threat, the courts hold that what must be proved is that a reasonable recipient of the communication would consider it a threat under the circumstances. Thus, a statement to a judge that "You and your family are going to die" would be regarded as a true threat, even if the defendant claimed that he meant it as a biological fact of life that everyone will die. If a threat is made to multiple individuals, it may be considered to be outside of the guidelines heartland, and therefore to warrant an enhancement.
Incidents
Presidents
The Secret Service prefers not to publicize incidents of Presidential assassination threats, because it believes that it will generate more criminal behavior, especially among the mentally ill. Reports have circulated in the British press that Barack Obama received four times as many threats as his predecessor, a claim that Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan denies. Historically, prosecutions for presidential assassination threats have risen during periods of national crisis, such as the World Wars and the Vietnam War era.Comment, Threatening the President: Protected Dissenter or Potential Assassin, 57 Geo. L.J. 553 (1969) New communication technologies such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter have become vectors for investigated alleged threats against the President. After the 2016 Presidential election mashable.com reported 12,000 calls for President Donald Trump's assassination in Twitter.
Legislators There have been comparatively few physical assaults on Members of Congress. On May 22, 1856, Senator Charles Sumner was savagely beaten down to the floor of the Senate chamber with a gold-knobbed cane by Representative Preston Brooks after Sumner delivered a fiery oration against slavery. In 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire on the House chamber, wounding five Members of Congress. In 1978, Representative Leo Ryan was shot and killed in Jonestown, Guyana, becoming the only member of Congress to lose his life in the line of duty. Representative Gabby Giffords was shot and severely injured in January 2011 outside a supermarket where she met with constituents. Representative Steve Scalise was gravely wounded in 2017 when he was shot by a former volunteer for Bernie Sanders's 2016 Presidential campaign. Senator Rand Paul suffered several rib fractures and developed pneumonia after a November 2017 attack by a neighbor over a dispute over lawn care.
A data analysis by the Prosecution Project for the Monitor found that since the 1990s, the majority of felony prosecutions involved death threats by right-wing extremists against Democratic politicians. A similar analysis in 2018 that included felony and misdemeanor prosecutions – a larger data set – also found that Democrats were far more likely to be targeted.
By contrast, the recent wave of indictments shows that pro-Trump individuals may be as likely to level death threats against Republicans as Democrats. No similar pattern has emerged on the political left.
Threats and intimidation directed against Members of Congress are more common than physical assaults. A prominent example was the burning of a cross, an intimidation tactic of the Ku Klux Klan, on House Speaker Sam Rayburn's front lawn in Texas during debate on civil rights legislation in the 1960s. The United States Capitol Police investigates threats against Members of Congress and reports to the chair and Ranking Member of the Committee on House Administration and/or the United States Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.
Social media have been used to publish threats and intimidating messages. Threats have been made through YouTube videos and Twitter (which hosted direct threats of violence against Members of Congress such as Representative Bob Goodlatte, and Senators Roy Blunt and John Hoeven). Concern has been voiced in the press over Twitter's failure in some cases to promptly remove threats made against Members of Congress. Kyler Schmitz's threats to shoot Senator Roy Blunt remained on Twitter after Schmitz had been arrested for illegally using interstate communications to make the threat. Christopher Michael McGowan was arrested in April 2018 for a series of Tweets threatening Representative Goodlatte and other lawmakers made from January to April 2018. Twitter's stated policy on "Violent threats and glorification of violence" says "You may not make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people".
2010 legislation for health care reform in the United States saw an increased number of threatening communications and actions directed at legislators. Several Members of Congress received threatening messages. Representative Eric Cantor received a threat from Norman Leboon, a donor to Barack Obama who had produced more than 2,000 threatening YouTube videos; the Democratic Party said that it would donate the funds to charity. Other lawmakers' windows were broken with bricks and other objects.
House Minority Leader John Boehner stated, "Violence and threats are unacceptable. Yes, I know there is anger, but let's take that anger, and go out and register people to vote, go volunteer on a political campaign, and let's do it the right way." Rep. Cantor, who received a bullet through his campaign office window, stated, "Security threats against members of Congress are not a partisan issue, and they should never be treated that way. To use such threats as political weapons is reprehensible." He accused Representative Chris Van Hollen of "dangerously fanning the flames by suggesting that these incidents be used as a political weapon." A spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center remarked, "I think it is astounding that we are seeing this wave of vigilantism."
After the 2016 Presidential election, personal attacks gained a more prominent place in dialogue between the President and legislators from both major US parties, with at least one Member of Congress advocating harassment of other Federal officials outside of work. In June 2018, Representative Maxine Waters, speaking at an outdoor rally said, "If you see anybody from that (Trump) Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere."
In July 2018, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was confronted with shouted personal insults and the threat "we know where you live" by a crowd of protesters; earlier, McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao were subjected to verbal abuse by a crowd as they left an event at Georgetown University. According to National Public Radio, at least three Trump administration officials — Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump adviser Stephen Miller and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, along with her family — have been forced out by vocal protesters from restaurants or denied service.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi denounced the tactic of harassing their political enemies. Both Schumer and Pelosi referred to President Trump's personal attacks on political opponents on Twitter while disavowing the tactics of Rep. Maxine Waters.
During Senate confirmation hearings on Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the US Supreme Court, Senator Ted Cruz's Houston campaign office received an envelope containing white powder just after two envelopes containing the poison ricin were mailed to US Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the Chief of Naval Operations. Sen. Cruz and his wife also had to leave their table at a Washington restaurant when protesters shouted them down at their table.
According to Newsweek, Senator Susan Collins's office received "threatening, profanity-laced phone calls and letters, telling her to vote against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court". One caller told a young woman working for Collins that he hoped she would be raped and impregnated, according to a voicemail provided to the New York Times by Collins's spokeswoman.
In 2020, Twitter announced that any posts wishing for Trump's death from coronavirus would be removed for violating the platform's terms of service. Democratic congresswomen Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley criticized Twitter for not taking threats against them seriously, pointing out posts calling for their deaths that had been allowed to remain on the site.