Donald Trump Indictments May Lead to Violence, Ex-FBI Official Warns

A retired FBI official predicts right-wing violence will get "uglier" as supporters of Donald Trump issue threats against the prosecutor and grand jury that indicted the former president in Georgia, as well as the judge overseeing one of his federal cases.

Frank Figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the bureau, issued a dire warning while on a Wednesday evening MSNBC segment shortly after the outlet and NBC reported that Trump supporters had posted death threats and shared the addresses of Fulton County grand jury members online.

The jurors' names were included in the indictment, which charged Trump with 13 felony counts stemming from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' years-long investigation. The probe centered on Trump and his allies over their alleged attempt to reverse the 2020 presidential election outcome in Georgia. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and called the indictment, his fourth this year, "fake" and part of a political "witch hunt."

Figliuzzi said during an appearance on MSNBC's Deadline: White House with Nicolle Wallace that this kind of divisive language strengthens his prediction, saying people have already died as a result of Trump's "ideological incitement."

In an interview with Newsweek, the ex-FBI official said Trump's rhetoric of "dehumanizing, degrading and debasing" certain people or groups provokes his supporters. Figliuzzi also accused the MAGA leader of stochastic terrorism.

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, responded to Newsweek's request for comment with: "Frank is a moron."

Figliuzzi told Wallace that when he was looking across "extremist" websites on Wednesday before going on the show, he said he saw "vile, racist attacks on Fani Willis and others."

He blamed Trump for the racist rhetoric, saying that the MAGA leader used the term "riggers" in a social media post and ever since, his supporters have been using it in place of a derogatory term to refer to Black people, The Guardian reports.

Figliuzzi, who has been a vocal critic of Trump, said the attacks on Willis and the grand jury are just one example of many that foreshadow a spike in right-wing violence.

"Someone's going to get hurt," he said during the MSNBC segment. "And I can predict that, not because I'm clairvoyant, but because it's already happened. People have been killed because of the ideology and rhetoric and inciting of Donald Trump."

The ex-FBI official said Craig Robertson, the Utah Trump supporter who was shot and killed by agents last week, was one example of the multiple he listed during the show.

Robertson, who called himself a "MAGA Trumper" on social media, where he had posted numerous threats against President Joe Biden, was killed while FBI agents were serving a warrant. He had been charged with three felony counts relating to his threats against the president and FBI agents investigating him.

Figliuzzi also pointed to the law enforcement officers who died as a result of the January 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol as another example of the violence incited by the former president.

Trump faces four federal charges stemming from a Department of Justice probe into his actions in attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and the ensuing deadly January 6 attack where hundreds of the MAGA leader's supporters have been convicted for their participation.

A Texas woman faces federal charges over a threatening message left for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who's overseeing Trump's federal January 6 case.

The caller, identified as 43-year-old Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, called Chutkan's chambers on August 5, federal investigators said, and threatened the judge in a voicemail in which she referred to Chutkan as a "slave."

"If Trump doesn't get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, b****," she said in the call, according to court documents. Shry also told Chutkan, "You will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it," read the documents.

Figliuzzi, while speaking with Wallace, noted several mass shootings where the gunmen had expressed racist or white supremacist views.

"The people in the Walmart in El Paso, Texas, who were killed by a young man who adopted the rhetoric, the brown invader language, of Donald Trump," he said. "The people in the Tops Supermarket in Buffalo because the shooter there adopted the white replacement theory of the far right, so it's getting uglier."

Figliuzzi told Wallace that he's beyond "hoping" and "wishing" that U.S. lawmakers would do something to fix the lack of domestic terrorism laws in the country. He argued that not having domestic terrorism policy hinders law enforcement, saying the "tools in the toolkit, I think, are still not there."

"There's a gap in what law enforcement can do about it," he said. "They've got to balance civil liberties and free speech with getting ahead of the crime before it occurs. It's an incredibly challenging threat environment."

Figliuzzi, in a phone interview with Newsweek on Thursday, urged Congress to act, saying that the U.S. needs a domestic terrorism policy to give law enforcement the tools they need. The ex-FBI official also said having a domestic terror law also helps prevent violence while authorities currently have to "wait until it's too late."

"We've got to get that figured out, but while we are trying to figure that out, things are happening and people are getting hurt," Figliuzzi told Newsweek. "Donald Trump continues to incite violence in the process is called stochastic terrorism, which involves a leader figure, like Trump, dehumanizing, degrading and debasing a group or an individual, so much so that it becomes easier for people to act out violently against them. That's what he's doing, stochastic terrorism. He never laid a hand on anybody himself. But he has proxies who will do it for him."

Update 08/19/23, 4:31 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Figliuzzi.