Almost as soon as the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Donald Trump ineligible to be on the state’s 2024 primary ballot, because he engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, dangerous threats from his followers erupted.
NBC News reported on what it called a “flood of threats” against the justices:
The threats fit into a predictable and familiar pattern, seen time and time again after legal developments against Trump. After the FBI searched Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, a man who had been at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, attacked the FBI field office in Cincinnati with a nail gun while holding an AR-15-style rifle. When a grand jury in Georgia indicted Trump, some of his supporters posted the grand jurors' addresses online. When U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan was assigned to special counsel Jack Smith's federal election interference case against Trump, she faced threats from Trump supporters. A federal appeals court pointed out the pattern when it upheld a narrowed gag order against Trump in his election interference case this month, noting that those he publicly targets are often threatened and harassed.
The threats are quite specific and offer means for them to be carried out. NBC noted that social media posts after the ruling included ways to kill, including hollow-point bullets, rifles, rope, and bombs. Email addresses, phone numbers and office building addresses of the justices were also posted.
Trump’s public criticism of the Colorado ruling has remained fairly muted, though he has been fundraising off the decision, The Guardian has reported, but I have no doubt his fingerprints could be found among the menacing crowd, directly or indirectly.
On Thursday, Trump posted on social media, “I’m not an Insurrectionist (“PEACEFULLY & PATRIOTICALLY”), Crooked Joe Biden is!!!" He was referring to remarks he made during his Jan. 6 rally, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Just this week, we learned from newly-revealed texts that the Jan. 6 rally organizers lied on their permit application when they claimed there would be no march to the Capitol that day. The texts also indicate the planners were in cahoots with Trump on the lie.
Regardless, just like Trump mobilized and did nothing to stop the violence at the Capitol for hours, just like he mobilized and did nothing to stop threats against Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, two innocent election workers in Georgia, he is doing the same thing here.
