U.S. election workers get little help from law enforcement as terror threats mount

Record ID: 1635563

  • Title: U.S. election workers get little help from law enforcement as terror threats mount
  • Date: 8th September 2021
  • Summary: CHAMAN, PAKISTAN (SEPTEMBER 8, 2021) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF PEOPLE IN AREA CLOSE TO CHAMAN BORDER (SOUNDBITE) (Urdu) ADDITIONAL DEPUTY COMMISSIONER FOR CHAMAN, MUNIR AHMED DURRANI, SAYING: “The government of Pakistan has a clear policy when it comes to Afghan refugees, which is anyone who enters Pakistan illegally will be sent back to their country. So far, around 50 famil
  • Embargoed: 22nd September 2021 13:04
  • Keywords: Biden Fulton County Georgia Raffensperger Richard Barron Trump U.S. election death threat election workers harassment intimidation threats
  • Location: VARIOUS
  • City: VARIOUS
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Government/Politics,United States,Elections/Voting
  • Reuters ID: LVA00KETVOW93
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDIT CONTAINS PROFANITY IN SHOTS #1, 11, and 13
    Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold's social media accounts lit up with threats after she adopted rules on June 17 forbidding partisan post-election audits in Colorado similar to those being conducted in Arizona and Wisconsin, which are led by pro-Trump politicians who have amplified his debunked election fraud claims.
    Reviewing the threats at home, Griswold took screenshots on her cell phone to preserve evidence. "Patriots will take care of you. I would move and change your address... quickly," read an Instagram comment. "Guess who is going to hang when all the fraud is revealed? (*Hint ..look in the mirror)." Another comment under a childhood photo she had posted online, to wish her dad a happy Father's Day, read: "Prepare for the gallows."
    The comments were from Instagram user stevet420, who had been posting harassing and threatening messages against Griswold since April, according to his posts, which have since been deleted.
    She sent the screenshots to the Colorado State Patrol, which responded by providing Griswold, 36, with around-the-clock protection for three weeks from late June as officers investigated.
    They identified stevet420 as Steven Telepchak, a 42-year-old information-technology manager in Pennsylvania, but did not pursue charges.
    "These posts have been thoroughly investigated, and there are no planned arrests based upon the findings," Colorado State Police said in a statement, declining to explain why the force dropped the case. Telepchak did not respond to requests for comment.
    Griswold said no one has been held accountable. While her police protection has ended, the threats of violence have not, she said.
    "Watch your back. I KNOW WHERE YOU SLEEP, I SEE YOU SLEEPING. BE AFRAID," said one Facebook message on Aug. 10.
    Another anonymous caller telephoned her office on Aug. 3 and said he was "going to shoot every employee in the building," Griswold said.
    Each day, a member of Griswold's staff with no background in security scours the Internet looking for threatening messages, she said. Griswold requested an additional security detail from state police after the most recent threats, but was denied.
    "The level to get security is not that 'I'm going to come kill you,' or 'I am going to come kill you with a gun,'" she said. "It's like: 'I am going to come kill you on a Tuesday with a gun,' and I have to send it to you 20 times."
    Colorado State Patrol said it decides on protection details on a case-by-case basis and declined further comment on why Griswold's request was not granted. "All messages of concern are reviewed and investigated thoroughly," a state patrol spokesman said.
    The case illustrates the glaring gaps in the protection that U.S. law enforcement provides the administrators of American democracy amid a sustained campaign of intimidation against election officials and staff. The unprecedented torrent of terroristic threats began after Trump lost the November election and continues today as the former president carries on with false claims that he was cheated out of victory.
    In an investigation that identified hundreds of incidents of intimidation and harassment of election workers and officials nationwide, Reuters found only a handful of arrests.
    Local police agencies said in interviews that they have struggled to identify suspects who conceal their identities and to determine which threats are credible enough to prosecute.
    The U.S. Justice Department acknowledges that law enforcement has not responded well to the surge in threats to election workers, from the lowest-level poll workers to elected secretaries of state, since the November presidential vote.
    "The response has been inadequate," John Keller, a senior attorney in the DOJ's Public Integrity Section, told a meeting of secretaries of state in Iowa on Aug. 14.
    Keller heads a task force created in July to investigate threats of violence to election workers and to coordinate with local and state authorities that receive most initial reports of intimidation.
    The FBI's Washington headquarters, along with field offices in several states, declined to comment for this story.
    The Reuters investigation revealed a breakdown in coordination and accountability among various levels of law enforcement.
    Some election officials fumed that police investigators or federal agents didn't appear to take the threats seriously and that it was unclear which agency, if any, was investigating.
    Some said they never heard from investigators again after reporting threats of violence. When pressed about the status of some cases, several police officials said they had no involvement and pointed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
    Federal officials, by contrast, bemoaned a lack of information-sharing by local authorities.
    Through public records and interviews, Reuters documented 102 threats of death or violence received by more than 40 election officials, workers and their relatives in eight of the most contested battleground states in the 2020 presidential contest.
    Each was explicit enough to put a reasonable person in fear of bodily harm or death, the typical legal threshold for prosecution.
    Almost all of the 102 threats of violence appeared to be inspired by Trump's debunked claims that the election was rigged against him.
    The messages often included highly personal, sometimes sexualized threats of violence or death, not only to the officials themselves but also to their family members and their children.
    A spokesman for Trump did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
    Reuters interviewed 26 election officials for this story, including eight secretaries of state.
    Only one of those officials, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, was aware of anyone being charged in connection to the intimidation. That incident is among just four nationwide in which Reuters was able to document an arrest, based on public records or news accounts, though it is possible that more arrests were made.
    Those four open cases have yet to result in a conviction.
    The 102 threats were the most egregious examples among hundreds of hostile messages received by local and state election workers, according to records documenting the threats and interviews with those who received them.
    Many officials said their offices have faced a barrage of harassing messages.
    Many did not include criminal threats of violence but were nonetheless disturbing, profane and sometimes racist or misogynistic.
    In Philadelphia, the three city commissioners and a senior official overseeing elections faced at least a dozen death threats in October and November, according to interviews with the officials and a Reuters review of the threatening messages sent to them.
    The Philadelphia Police Department considered the threats serious enough to station officers outside their homes.
    One official and the family of another went into hiding for a few days.
    No one has been arrested in connection with the threats.
    The FBI was called to investigate, the city officials said. The FBI's Philadelphia Division declined to comment. The Philadelphia Police Department declined to comment on whether it investigated threats against the city officials.
    Al Schmidt, a city commissioner, was targeted by a torrent of threats starting on Nov. 11, when Schmidt appeared on CNN saying he had seen no evidence of widespread election fraud.
    The appearance sparked a Twitter tirade from Trump, who questioned whether Schmidt was really a Republican.
    Over the next month, Schmidt received multiple death threats, according to the messages reviewed by Reuters. Some targeted his wife, Margaret, a lawyer, or threatened his children by name.
    One threat included a photo of his house taken from a real-estate website and said his family "will be fatally shot."
    "Cops can't help you," it went on. "Heads on spikes. Treasonous Schmidts."
    Police stationed officers outside Schmidt's home.
    His wife and children stayed with relatives for about a week, escorted by a security detail.
    Schmidt's elderly parents also received extra security, in part because they live nearby and Schmidt and his father share the same name.
    Schmidt said the FBI has investigated the threats, and the agents took them seriously.
    Philadelphia's two other city commissioners, Lisa Deeley and Omar Sabir, both Democrats, also received death threats and police protection. Sabir said he spent several nights in October hiding out at a hotel. Deeley said she suffers occasional anxiety attacks as a result of the threats.
    Some of the most severe threats documented by Reuters came in Georgia, where Republican state election officials were targeted as traitors by Trump and many of his supporters for refusing to overturn his election loss in the traditionally conservative state.
    Republican Secretary of State Raffensperger, along with his family and staff, received a deluge of death threats after he pushed back against Trump's stolen-election claims. His wife, Tricia, spoke with Reuters about the family's ordeal in June and recently.
    She said she forwarded every harassing message she received to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).
    "Every time I got one, I sent it off immediately," she said.
    In January, someone communicated a threat directly to the GBI that warned the Raffenspergers' home would be bombed, Tricia said.
    The bomb threat, which has not previously been reported, caused the Raffenspergers to take precautions, including starting their car remotely from a safe distance before driving anywhere.
    Senior officials in Raffensperger's office, who also received frequent death threats, said they too forwarded their messages to the GBI.
    The GBI investigated some of the threats and forwarded those considered "life-threatening" to the FBI, the Georgia AG's office said. In some cases, state investigators could not identify a suspect, the office said.
    In cases where they could identify and contact the person making the threats, the AG's office decided against filing charges.
    The office declined to comment on why the incidents did not meet the legal standard for prosecution.
    Following the June Reuters report detailing the intimidation of the Raffenspergers, the FBI contacted the Georgia Secretary of State's office, asking the office to share the threats again, said Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs. "I don't understand why they weren't taken seriously to begin with," said Fuchs. "We had already reported them."
    Brad Raffensperger, running for re-election next year, said he is concerned that communities nationwide will struggle to find enough poll workers to help run elections unless the people threatening election staff are arrested and punished. "People need to realize that what they say does have consequences," he said in an interview.
    Richard Barron, the election director in Georgia's biggest county, said he worries about the lack of accountability. His office in Fulton County has faced an unending stream of threatening messages since November, including a voicemail in June that warned: "time's running out." The anonymous male caller singled Barron out by name in a vulgar message calling him a "communist" and warning: "You're going to be served lead."
    Another caller on June 14 threatened to shoot the county's voter education and outreach staff and use his "second amendment right," a reference to the U.S. Constitution's right to bear arms, according to an email reporting the threat by an election worker who received it.
    Barron said he met last week with an FBI agent and a GBI agent seeking more information about the threats.
    The FBI agent, Barron said, told him that Reuters' reporting had pressured the Department of Justice to intensify the probe.
    The investigators, he said, asked for documentation of threats against Barron and said they also would investigate intimidation of others in his office.
    Barron said these previously unreported threats and dozens of others against his staff were sent to the Fulton County Police Department.
    The local department then liaises with the FBI and GBI, according to Wade Yates, the county police chief.
    None of the incidents have produced arrests. Yates said investigations into threats made online can be especially "cumbersome," particularly when senders mask their identity.
    The department, he said, also struggles to make cases because of free-speech issues. "Everyone who receives a nasty email or a threat has a right to be concerned about it, but we have to vet those and determine which ones are real threats versus free speech," said Yates.
    In Detroit, city clerk Winfrey has prepared to defend herself after receiving threats on her life.
    She began carrying a firearm after a man confronted her outside her home in November, accusing her office of rigging the election against Trump.
    That evening, the same man sent her a Facebook message threatening to blow up her neighborhood block, prompting her to alert Detroit Police, she said.
    Her children bought her a stun gun and mace. Winfrey got a concealed pistol license, a gun and training in how to shoot it. "I always have something with me now," she said.
    Winfrey said she reported the incident to police, who responded and took her statement.
    Detroit police spokesman Rudy Harper said that the department did not investigate the matter as a crime because the man did not threaten violence when he confronted Winfrey outside her home.
    Harper said the department had no record of the bomb threat made on Facebook.
    (Production: Linda So)
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