It was just basic nuttiness, combined with a facile lie and banal Trump ignorance. No, there was nothing about the Mar-a-Lago search warrant that in any way suggested that Biden authorized Trump’s assassination. This was unadulterated lunacy, and naturally swept in the usual lunatic suspects.
I made sure that he knew.
The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light.
Does everyone get it yet???!!!!
What are Republicans going to do about it?
I tried to oust our Speaker who funded Biden’s DOJ AND FBI, but Democrats stopped it. https://t.co/XSTevEQsNI pic.twitter.com/o0lUjcEdix
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
(@RepMTG) May 21, 2024
The concern is that some Trump acolyte will fail to realize this is lunacy and believe, in his deepest heart, that this is real and that, as a patriot, he must act to prevent the murder of his fearless leader. Whether it will manifest in attempting to kill an FBI agent or someone else can’t be known in advance, but the fear that someone will do something is, sadly, real.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has sought an order to Judge Aileen Cannon to modify the terms of Trump’s release in order to prevent him from riling up his minions in a way that could cause them to engage in violence.
Federal prosecutors on Friday night asked the judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case to bar him from making any statements that might endanger law enforcement agents involved in the proceedings.
Prosecutors tendered the request after Mr. Trump made what they described as “grossly misleading” assertions about the F.B.I.’s August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida. This week, the former president falsely suggested that the F.B.I. had been authorized to shoot him when agents discovered more than 100 classified documents while executing a court-approved search warrant there.
Whether Judge Cannon will issue such an order, and whether she will do so within a meaningful time frame, has yet to be seen. But so what? If it isn’t Trump saying so, it will be any one of the red tie brigade spewing his talking points as his proxies. Even if Trump is gagged, there’s a gaggle of congressfolx happy to say that words Trump can’t. They are not subject to the court’s jurisdiction, even if Judge Cannon is inclined to act. That they put the FBI, and perhaps others, at credible risk of violence in service of one of the most ridiculously stupid and dangerous claims possible does not appear to concern them.
By falsely suggesting that F.B.I. agents “were complicit in a plot to assassinate him,” prosecutors wrote, Mr. Trump exposed them “to the risk of threats, violence and harassment.”
“Those deceptive and inflammatory assertions irresponsibly put a target on the backs of the F.B.I. agents involved in this case, as Trump well knows,” prosecutors wrote.
While there may be little more that Smith can seek beyond a gag order, or modification of his release terms, this will hardly end the threat. In another time, such an accusation would have spelled the end of a candidacy, as someone so flagrantly insane, stupid or both, would be publicly recognized as totally unfit for office. No more.
There is no depth to which Trump won’t sink, and no depth to which his sycophants won’t follow him, to paint himself the victim in need of saving by his supporters because he’s so weak and helpless. And send money too, because he’s really rich but would really prefer to spend your money rather than his so he can stay really rich.
The problem isn’t whether Judge Cannon should modify his release terms, although she should. The problem is that there is no fix when there is no shame, no limit to the lies one is thrilled to spew to remain in the good graces of a graceless man. The law doesn’t provide a solution for every wrong man can conceive, and so we rely on the sense of propriety and integrity of the public to reject such lunacy as this.
And yet, that is cold comfort should some unduly passionate Trump supporter believe that he is saving America by acting to protect Trump.
To bolster their point, prosecutors reminded Judge Cannon that days after the search of Mar-a-Lago — a legal investigative step that Mr. Trump condemned on social media as an attack against him — an armed man in Ohio tried to shoot his way into an F.B.I. field office near Cincinnati.
The man, Ricky W. Shiffer, had said at the time that “patriots” should head to Florida to defend Mr. Trump and kill F.B.I. agents. Mr. Shiffer was ultimately killed in a shootout with the local police.
Would Ricky Shiffer, who almost certainly believed he was serving his nation by killing FBI agents, have been less inclined to commit murder if Trump’s words came out of a proxy’s mouth? No gag order can fix the sincere and “well-intended” belief of a nutjob brought about by the lies and/or ignorance of another nutjob. This is where we are now. They can’t be stopped from spewing lunacy, but we can recognize it as lunacy, reject it and condemn those proxies so devoid of shame as to spew it.