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After Donald Trump’s Florida residence was searched with a legal warrant last week, his supporters have erupted with “unprecedented” violent threats against the FBI and the Department of Justice and, with a handful of exceptions, Republicans are intentionally looking the other way.
The FBI Agents Association called for leaders to condemn the threats, stating, “this is not a partisan or political issue. It is a matter of public safety and basic decency” – but have largely been met with silence from the political party that once championed “law and order.”
Calls for dirty bombs, assassinations and civil war – these don’t seem to bother Republicans who have joined with right-wing media voices to describe the Mar-a-Lago search as “tyranny,” “corrupt,” “an abuse of power,” akin to the Gestapo, and on and on.
When a man fired on an FBI office in Ohio last week, and was killed by law enforcement before he harmed anyone, Republicans said nothing. A Pennsylvania man was arrested after posting threats to “slaughter” FBI agents he referred to as “police state scum,” and Republicans said nothing. When Breitbart, likely the recipient of a leak by Trump or his allies, published the search warrant in full with names of personnel involved in the search, not one Republican stepped up to decry the danger Breitbart had put those men and women and their families in.
In the face of this, Mike Pence, the former vice president targeted for death by rioters during the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, is the only high-profile Republican who has spoken out.
“Our party stands with the men and women who stand on the thin blue line at the federal and state and local level, and these attacks on the FBI must stop,” Pence said Wednesday. “Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.”
Pence seems as isolated and alone as he was hiding on a loading dock during the insurrection, when then- President Trump sicced a mob on him. Hours after Pence spoke, former chief strategist Steve Bannon called him “a disgusting coward,” insisting that the party must defund the FBI because it is a “police state.”
Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Rep.
