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Officials in the US state of Georgia are investigating online threats against members of the grand jury that indicted Donald Trump on Monday.
Personal information, including addresses and photos of jurors, has been shared on right-wing platforms.
The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office said it is aware of the threats and is trying to track down who is behind them.
The identity of the jury in the case was made public, a routine practice in Georgia.
But after the jurors’ identities were made public, supporters of former President Trump apparently compiled information available online and posted photos and addresses on forums, including on the social networking site Telegram.
It comes just days after the jury voted to indict Trump on 13 counts, including racketeering and election interference. Trump said the accusations were politically motivated.
The officials said that along with the jurors’ personal information, threats against them were also exchanged. Police say the threats may amount to jury intimidation.
“Our investigators work closely with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to track down the source of the threats in Fulton County and other jurisdictions,” the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
He added that they took the matter very seriously and would respond quickly to ensure the safety of the jurors.
In a message posted on Facebook, the user wrote: “I thought it was only fair to share some of the names of the grand jury members.”
The post, which included possible addresses and phone numbers for several jurors, was later removed.
Users posted other messages on Trump’s Truth Social platform, urging supporters of the former president to “make sure jurors can’t walk down the street and discredit them.”
Some of the posts reportedly include violent rhetoric against Fannie Willis, the attorney general overseeing Trump’s case in Georgia.
Reuters reported that two NBC News reporters who reported on the jury incident posted their addresses online.
Media Issues, a non-profit organization that monitors conservative media organizations, condemned the sharing of the jurors’ information as “targeting them”.
Georgia is revealing the identity of the jurors, which it says allows the public to have more confidence in the legal system.
But they do not publish their address or any other personal information.
Trump, the front-runner to win the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election, has criticized the continuation of these cases against him.
Earlier this month, US prosecutors informed a judge of a post Trump wrote on the Truth platform that they said was intended to intimidate people who brought cases against him.
Meanwhile, a Texas woman has been charged with threatening to kill a judge overseeing another case against Trump.
And last week, FBI agents killed an armed man in Utah who reportedly made death threats against Joe Biden, just hours before the president was due to arrive in the state. Federal agents became aware of the suspect after a threat was posted on the TruthSocial platform. The platform alerted the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center.
On Thursday, a Canadian woman was sentenced to 22 years in prison in the United States for sending a letter laced with toxic substances to Donald Trump when he was president.
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2023-08-18 11:29:39
