Several of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees and administration appointees were targeted with dangerous threats over the last 24 hours, the Trump team announced on Wednesday.
“Last night and this morning, several of President Trump’s Cabinet nominees and Administration appointees were targeted in violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them. These attacks ranged from bomb threats to ‘swatting.’ In response, law enforcement and other authorities acted quickly to ensure the safety of those who were targeted. President Trump and the entire Transition team are grateful for their swift action,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
“President Trump and the Transition are focused on doing the work of uniting our nation by ensuring a safe and prosperous future,” she added. “With President Trump as our example, dangerous acts of intimidation and violence will not deter us.”
In a statement, the FBI acknowledged the threats to Trump’s nominees and appointees.
“The FBI is aware of numerous bomb threats and swatting incidents targeting incoming administration nominees and appointees, and we are working with our law enforcement partners,” the bureau said. “We take all potential threats seriously, and as always, encourage members of the public to immediately report anything they consider suspicious to law enforcement.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Trump’s pick to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, later revealed she and her family were targeted by a bomb threat.
“This morning, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, her husband, and their three year old son were driving home to Saratoga County from Washington for Thanksgiving when they were informed of a bomb threat to their residence. New York State, County law enforcement, and U.S. Capitol Police responded immediately with the highest levels of professionalism,” Stefanik’s congressional office said in a statement.
“We are incredibly appreciative of the extraordinary dedication of law enforcement officers who keep our communities safe 24/7,” Stefanik’s office added. “We want to share our best wishes to the Upstate NY community for a happy and safe Thanksgiving. We are especially grateful to our law enforcement officers and military families who are on duty over the holiday season.”
Others followed with announcements that they, too, had been targeted.
Former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Trump’s nominee for EPA administrator, said a “pipe bomb threat targeting me and my family at our home today was sent in with a pro-Palestinian themed message.” He added that his family was not at home at the time and said they are working with law enforcement.
Trump’s pick to lead the Agriculture Department, Brooke Rollins, said on X that on Wednesday morning “we learned that a threat was issued against our home and family. She also thanked the Fort Worth Police Department for their “swift efforts” and noted that she and her family were safe.
Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), Trump’s selection to be the next secretary of Labor, said she and her family were targeted by a pipe bomb at their Oregon home. The congresswoman also thanked the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office for its “quick response” and said they were safe.
Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Scott Turner, said his home was targeted by a bomb threat on the eve of Thanksgiving and expressed gratitude to law enforcement for their “swift and professional” response.
Punchbowl News reported former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Trump’s nominee to be U.S. attorney general until Gaetz withdrew from consideration last week, received a pipe bomb threat that prompted a bomb squad response in Florida. Fox News reported defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth and CIA director nominee John Ratcliffe also received threats while Bloomberg reported commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick’s home in Manhattan received a bomb threat.
A spokesperson for the White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the threats to Trump’s picks.
“The President has been briefed. The White House is in touch with federal law enforcement and the President-elect’s team, and continues to monitor the situation closely,” the White House spokesperson said. “Federal law enforcement’s response, alongside state and local authorities, remains ongoing. The President and the Administration unequivocally condemn threats of political violence.”
A number of reactions, including from Trump’s allies and family, followed the Trump team’s announcement.
“The violent left has been calling in bomb threats and swatting incoming members of the Trump Administration. Enough is enough with this type of deranged crap!” Donald Trump Jr., the president-elect’s eldest child, said in a post to X.
“Dangerous and violent threats like this are disgusting,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL). “Unfortunately, there are evil people who will try to deter President Trump and his team…but they won’t be stopped. I am thankful for law enforcement’s quick response and pray for the safety of President Trump, his family and his entire team.”
President-elect Trump himself survived an assassination attempt this past summer during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in which he got shot in the ear, one rally-goer was killed, and two others were injured. The gunman was killed by Secret Service counter-snipers.
There was an alleged second attempt on Trump’s life at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, in September. The man accused of attempting to assassinate him, Ryan Wesley Routh, is facing charges and has pleaded not guilty.
Law enforcement needs to pursue those responsible for any and all threats and made an example of…..prosecute to the full extent of the law. I regret to say that some one just might enact on the threats. Hunt them down and deal with them…..very harshly.
Agreed. I think the two attempted assassins did just that. They reacted to the harmful, false rhetoric of fjb, kameleon, and the rest of the main stream media. The leftists are dangerously, evil things.
The Left’s SS troops are going to work. A Kristallnacht is coming.
Maxine Waters’ mob? A BLM blowout? A Pelosi-driven pushback?
This TDS turbulence is too organized to be just random rage… The DEI-infected FBI and the Secret Service can’t be trusted (two assassination attempts already), so what is a POTUS supposed to do? Maybe Homan, Musk and Ramaswamy can put together a team to provide protection for Trump and his team while they get to work rebuilding the DOJ, the CIA, the FBI and the Secret Svc (don’t forget Pelosi’s private hit squad, the Capital Cops).
Maybe the Blackwater troops are available to do the work that the FBI and the Secret Service can’t or won’t do…That rot is deep. There is a lot of work to do. There is a lot of ex-military (expelled because they wouldn’t take the jab) available. Being brought back to protect POTUS and his people, this is another source of reliable manpower…
Just thinking…People getting busy, producing results instead of Lefties burying incidents under tons of bureaucratic regs and boilerplate… it boggles the mind and stirs the soul…Catch up, get busy or get lost, and hard time for the criminals and the mischief makers. What a concept! Who’da thought! Suddenly the Red, White and Blue are shining a lot more brightly…
The name Trump carries a lot of Gravis. With Trump headed back to the office of POTUS, Hezbolla and Hamas are starting to make nice, talking truce w Israel. Will the Houthis come around as well? Leadership change is happening in Iran and things could quiet down for awhile. Pezeshkian is a post-revolutionary reformist, a new face who could bring some new thinking to the table. Expect any real changes made to be subtle, not radical. With Trump’s dealmaking skills and the resumption of the Abraham Accords, options other than war could be developing. Putin is making sounds about working positively with Trump. Hearing that Biden OK’d Zelensky to lob US missiles into Russian territory in an attempt to make any Putin-Trump-NATO negotiations a more distant possibility.
The Biden Crime family is like an STD or an HIV, more than a nuisance and very hard to get rid of. Biden is already claiming credit for being part the work that Netanyahu, and the Trump presence, did to bring Hezbollah to the table. So the new round of death threats from the Left, against the Trump team, is just one more critter attack from the insurrectionist Swamp Camp to disrupt the incoming administration.
There are a great number of Americans expecting to see some bare-knuckled justice administered in the days ahead. Progressive DA’s and judges should be expecting short terms in their futures, and criminals should be going to jail. Overcrowding the jails? Maybe Pres Trump can negotiate for the use of some of Pres Sheinbaum’s prison cells in Mexico for the US’s overflow…
With the number of new leaders taking office around the world, new goals, new energy, new alliances and new technologies present new options, and a more positive outlook, in the days ahead. The media’s forecast of the nearness of WWIII is starting to look as lame as their pro-Kamala polls were mere weeks ago. That is the sunshine that the Trump presence is bringing to the stage. Competition in the marketplace instead of the battlefield makes a much better option for interaction between nations and a lot more sense.
A rapidly expanding tech industry in the northern hemisphere will increase demand for resources, resources that are found in the southern hemisphere, so Africa, South America and Australia should see a lot more development dollars flooding in and more, subtle, political wars, not nuclear wars, for control of that access, could start emerging as well.
That same demand for chemical, metal and oil resources will also swell Russian markets, and treasuries, as well, making the growing BRICS alliance an interesting competitor for Western markets. China’s growth hangs on that same access as well. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is building the infrastructure into Russia, Europe and Africa for that same development and access.
Musk, Ramaswamy and most of Trump’s team are aware of this shift in international development and have their eyes open to take the US in that direction and away from the useless, senseless, resource-consuming internecine wars that Biden and the radical Left are consumed w wading into while the ground is shifting beneath their very feet. Kamala and her Marxist supporters will soon be a bad memory, but still remain a latent cancer in the body politic, as new tech and competitive economic growth pulls nations forward in entirely new and different directions. DEI, BLM and CRT will soon sit on the shelf beside KKK and HUAC as just more bad ideas that have consumed political and social attention for a while.
With a new increase in jobs, putting people back to work may keep people busy enough that they won’t have the time, or interest, in making bomb threats anymore. Time that is better spent earning a paycheck rather than sitting in a jailhouse for making threatening calls using radical apps on their not so smart phones. Being productive instead of destructive is a much more fulfilling way to live.
Bravo and nicely done. I agree with 99% of this. However, I don’t think that an increase in jobs will keep the radical left from being the radical left. There are many financially successful and highly educated leftists who suffer and act upon TDS. They are just mentally weak and damaged. They rely upon unreliable single-source information.
As always lefties are the most dangerous and evil group. They are sympathetic to all terrorism
These people need to be caught and convicted to the fullest extent of the law. They need to be made an example of, by being imprisoned for a lengthy period of time. There should be no mercy shown to these unhinged, emotional, leftwing terrorists.