![]() Marjorie Taylor Greene, have warned that any protests against an arrest of Trump could be infiltrated by federal agents. One law enforcement expert said that the level of engagement on some of the most aggressive posts they had seen was much lower than they had expected. “The risk here is that narratives surrounding the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and potential arrest of President Trump may converge as influencers like Posobiec foment conversation around a potential run-on banks as a form of nonviolent protest,” said Lisa Kaplan, founder of tech firm Alethea Group, which tracks online disinformation campaigns. Right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec took to Trump’s preferred social media platform, Truth Social, to call for a “nationwide bank run” after Trump announced that he expected to be arrested. Some posts from influential right-wing figures in recent days have seemingly been more geared at creating chaos than at sparking violence. “The steady stream of anti-government hostility and increasingly violent rhetoric is worrying, but it hasn’t reached the volume of what we saw in the run-up to January 6 yet,” Ben Decker, the CEO of online threat analysis firm Memetica, told CNN. On top of that, online rhetoric has been relatively muted compared to 2021. Still, federal, state, and local law enforcement officials are wary of underestimating the potential violence, as they did before January 6, when a deadly attack at the Capitol was followed by weeks of online threats.ĬNN further reported that officials in Washington were preparing for demonstrations surrounding any indictment of Trump that could erupt into violence.īut FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials are also wary of opening themselves up to political attacks by Republicans, the senior US official said, who are eager to call out both agencies for anything perceived as infringing on people’s First Amendment rights. He said that one group that was scheduled to come decided not to out of apparent fear of being arrested. “There has been nothing specific or credible - both in terms of large-scale activity or violence,” the senior official said.Ī senior law enforcement official also told CNN that while the online chatter is growing with time, it’s all “familiar” to the intelligence community, meaning nothing that rises to the level of major concern as of now.Ī key difference two years after January 6, sources told CNN, is the threat of arrest has risen in the minds of many potential protesters.Ī senior law enforcement official said that a small protest on Monday in New York City was a good example of the current situation. Several media outlets have reported that chatter includes comments like “civil war,” and “worse than January 6.”īut the online discussion has been just that – and has not had the coordination, information, and volume before the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, US officials and security experts told CNN. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondentįederal officials, including those at the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, are monitoring what they say has been an uptick in violent rhetoric online since former President Donald Trump asked his supporters to “protest” what he said was his imminent arrest.
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