Musk X Post About Biden, Harris Threats Leads to Secret Service Investigation
Welcome to a special edition of FOIA Files. The Secret Service’s Protective Intelligence Division takes threats directed at its protectees very seriously. Just ask Eminem, John Mulaney and John Schneider who all were investigated by the agency. Well, it now appears Elon Musk is the latest public figure under scrutiny by the Secret Service. If you’re not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here.
Musk may have poked the bear one too many times.
On Sunday, shortly after the second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, an X account called DogeDesigner posed the question, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?”
Musk responded to his 198 million followers: “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” he wrote, adding a ???? at the end of his post. Musk later deleted the post after it was widely condemned and said it was intended as a joke. But it was already seen by tens of millions, including the Secret Service.
The Secret Service investigates when they’re trying to determine whether a person poses an imminent threat to one of their protectees. Threatening the US president or vice president is a felony that can carry a hefty fine or up to five years in prison.
FOIA Files sent Freedom of Information Act requests to the Secret Service’s Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division, Office of Protective Operations and Office of Investigations for documents and emails referencing Musk’s post.
On Wednesday, the agency responded to the requests by saying records it has about Musk’s post were “compiled for law enforcement purposes” and are being withheld because “disclosure could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”
We followed up with the Secret Service’s FOIA division and were told that the Protective Intelligence Division advised that it cannot release any records because of “enforcement proceedings.”
The agency “is aware of the social media post made by Elon Musk,” said Nate Herring, a spokesperson for the Secret Service. “As a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence. We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees.”
But don’t jump to any conclusions. I’ve written a handful of stories over the past eight years based on FOIA documents pertaining to prominent public figures who landed on the Secret Service’s radar. The worst that will likely happen if the Secret Service pays a visit to Musk is he’ll be inconvenienced and he’ll have to prove he doesn’t pose an imminent threat to President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris.
He may never even hear from the Secret Service, which was the case when former Dukes of Hazzard star John Schneider called for Biden and his son, Hunter, to be hanged in a post on X last year. (The Secret Service determined Schneider’s post was only a “veiled threat” and declined to take any action.)Or, he may never have the opportunity to “rap along with” Secret Service agents, as was the case with Marshall Mathers, AKA the rapper Eminem, after he was summoned in 2018 to answer questions about some of his song lyrics.
But on Monday, Musk did try to offer a rationalization for his tweet and the reason he deleted it.
“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X,” he wrote on X.
“Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text,” he added in another post.
Musk and his attorney, Alex Spiro, did not respond to requests for comment about whether he was contacted by the Secret Service about his post.
By the way, FOIA Files also requested the same type of records from the Secret Service about a far more explicit threat also posted on Sunday on X by the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire that said “anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be considered an American hero.”
The post was deleted. The Secret Service said records about it were also being withheld because of “enforcement proceedings.”
Given all the chaotic news this year, you may have forgotten about this, but in January the federal judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s election interference case was the victim of a swatting incident. Swatting is when someone calls police with a false report of an emergency in order to stoke a menacing law enforcement response.
The incident was widely reported at the time. News coverage was based almost entirely on police reports. But there wasn’t any input from the US Marshals Service, which is tasked with protecting federal judges. I filed a FOIA request in January to learn more. I also filed one with the US Marshals a few months earlier for data about threats that targeted all of its protectees in 2022 and 2023. I just got the documents for both requests, which includes some revealing new details.
Let’s start with the incident involving US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan.
At around 10 pm on Sunday, Jan. 7, Metropolitan Police Department officers in Washington, DC showed up “in force” at Chutkan’s home in response to two emergency calls that claimed a “male shot a female” there. Police checked the premises and spoke with Chutkan, who told officers no one was in her home. Officers determined no shooting actually took place. Instead, they concluded Chutkan was the victim of swatting.
A Marshals Service security officer visited Chutkan that evening to check in on her. She said “she was fine and not worried.” She seemed pretty rattled that audio of the dispatch call included her home address, and at around 1 a.m. on Jan. 8 she sent a senior official at the agency a post on X about it.
The next day, the Marshals Service briefed a federal prosecutor and launched an investigation. Personnel were instructed to scour social media for comments about “possible swatting and this incident.” One intelligence officer noted in an email a possible motive.
“For the Judge Chutkan swatting incident, something to add into the assessment, Friday she sentenced another Proud Boys member to jail, following that it gained media attention, to include a large article by the Washington Post which identified USDJ Chutkan as the only judge that has sentenced every J6 defendant to jail,” the person wrote.
The swatting incident happened after Trump posted disparaging statements about the judge on his social media platform, Truth Social. It’s the second time Chutkan has been targeted. Last summer, a Texas woman was charged with threatening to kill the judge and anyone else “who went after former President Trump.”
The person responsible for the swatting call on Chutkan hasn’t been caught.
The US Marshals Service protects more than 2,700 sitting judges and more than 30,000 federal prosecutors and court officials. For years, agency officials have been sounding the alarm about an uptick of “explicit threats and inappropriate communications” targeting its protectees.
The new data I obtained from the US Marshals Judicial Security Division shows that there were 568 such incidents against federal judges in 2023, up nearly 60% over the prior year. There were 168 threats against federal prosecutors, nearly double during the same period. Threats against the Office of Special Counsel Jack Smith amounted to 20 in 2023, but data wasn’t provided for 2022. (Smith was also swatted a couple of weeks before Chutkan).
Overall, the number of threats covering all the Marshals Service’s protectees decreased to 1,061 in 2023 from 1,362 in 2022. The data reveals that the number of threat-related cases the FBI was notified about increased to 298 in 2023, up from 224 in 2022. The actual number of investigations the FBI launched into the threats, however, is much lower. It was 124 in 2023 and 82 the year before.
Watch for a future installment of FOIA files, where I’ll lay bare the contents of the threats and the Marshals Service’s response to it.
Speaking of enforcement proceedings...
The June 7 edition of FOIA Files was about investors in Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social. I described how they had complained to the Securities and Exchange Commission about short sellers manipulating the stock. I obtained copies of the actual complaints, which covered the first few weeks after Trump’s media company went public. But the SEC was still expected to turn over more records to me.
Last week, the agency sent me a letter. And, the plot thickens.
The SEC said all of those other documents I requested, which includes copies of additional investor complaints and emails, are now being withheld in their entirety. In particular, they cited a FOIA exemption that “protects from disclosure records compiled for law enforcement purposes, the release of which could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement activities.”
In its letter, the SEC added, “It is the general policy of the Commission to conduct its investigations on a non-public basis.”
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Got a tip for a document you think I should request via FOIA? Send me an email: [email protected] or send me a message on Signal: +1-917-623-1908.
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