Law enforcement is having to contend with a spike in threats to elected and judicial officials — as well as against their own number, the Justice Department’s top national security official warned Sunday.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told ABC’s “This Week” that investigators were monitoring “an unprecedented rise in threats to public officials across the board.
“Law enforcement agents, prosecutors, judges, election officials,” she told reporter Pierre Thomas. “And we are seeing that and responding to it.”
“Just this week, just this week, Pierre, we’ve had cases involving threats to kill FBI agents, a Supreme Court justice and three presidential candidates,” Monaco added.
Last week, a New Hampshire man was indicted on charges of texting death threats to a trio of White House contenders.
Days earlier, a Florida man pleaded guilty to one count related to threats against Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Monaco explained that she receives so-called “urgent reports” from US attorneys across the country detailing the threats.
“Many of these reports and these threats, or tips, are resolved without incident. But many also develop into investigations. And today as we sit here, the FBI has opened more than 100 investigations coming out of those reports,” she said.
Monaco’s warning followed testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month by FBI Director Christopher Wray, during which he said he sees “blinking lights everywhere” warning of potential terror attacks.
“I think we are in a very, very challenging threat environment,” she said Sunday. “I think we’re in a unique moment where what we’re most worried about are individuals or small groups who are often radicalized online and who are motivated by and influenced by a range of ideologies.”
Meanwhile, some Republicans in Congress have slammed the FBI and DOJ for political bias in its investigations — mainly of both former President Donald Trump and current first son Hunter Biden.
Monaco shrugged off those accusations, saying they “bear no resemblance to the Justice Department that I know.
“The Justice Department that I know is filled with dedicated men and women, investigators, lawyers, prosecutors, analysts, professional staff who get up every day … without regard to who’s in the White House or who’s in Congress,” she said. “It really bothers me when I hear those claims because it does a disservice to the men and women of the Justice Department.”
Monaco also denied that President Biden has tried to influence either the investigation into his son, the two special counsel probes into Trump, or the examination of Biden’s handling of classified documents going back to his time as a US senator.
The deputy AG has faced Trump’s wrath on Truth Social in the past. Last month, he called her and other officials at the DOJ, including special counsel Jack Smith, a “team of losers and misfits.”