Editor’s Note: This week, The Rabbit Hole, scours previously unreported court dockets around the country to get a better understanding of rising political violence in America. This is the last free issue of the series. Starting in December, The Rabbit Hole will transition behind a paywall. If you’d like to get access to future pieces and support our reporting, please consider a paid subscription. - Seamus
Threatening Times
“I’m not sitting here and I’m not waiting for s***. I’m going to kill every motherf****er here,” the post on X from January 2025 read. It was one of dozens of threatening posts in the last year by an account that targeted Supreme Court justices, FBI leadership, Charlie Kirk’s widow, conservative personality Tomi Lahren, the Obamas, and members of Congress across the political spectrum. The user behind the threats, according to a criminal complaint, was Daniel Verbanec, a man who authorities say nearly confronted Governor Greg Gianforte in Montana and surveilled for days reporters at a local news station in Arizona over paranoid beliefs that the government was conspiring to kill him and his family.
Verbanec, whose charges like many others in this story have not been previously reported, was arrested last week with communicating an interstate threat and threatening to murder a United States official, marking at least an eleven-year record high of criminal cases for threats against public officials. The uptick comes at a time when federal judges face an increasing number of threats and law enforcement has investigated more and more threats against members of Congress each year. With more than a month left before 2026, Verbanec’s arrest is one of 120 cases related to threats to public officials that federal prosecutors have brought nationwide this year, according to a preliminary review by NCITE and Chapman University. Its recent rise, at a rate of more than two cases a week, reflects the near ever-present tension that has come to define parts of American politics.
The recent escalation has not come from simply one side of the political aisle, but accounts for increases among individuals motivated by both left and right-wing causes, as well as those who do not fall into strict ideological boxes. On November 4, 2025, a man from rural Indiana was arrested after he reportedly retweeted a video of ICE agents with the caption “shoot on sight.” The charge was one of several recent arrests centered on allegations of threats against ICE. Meanwhile, in Florida that same day, FBI agents arrested a man with interstate threats for allegedly posting menacing comments on a message board for The Gateway Pundit, a conservative media site, that targeted former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. The Florida man also reportedly wrote that it was “past time to start whacking these judges” and stated “the communist activist judges will be exterminated.”
Media personalities haven’t been spared from the political ire either. Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, columnist Christina Rampell, and left-wing influencer Bryan Tyler Cohen were the reported targets of a second man from Florida in November. Shortly after the Kirk assassination, the Republican commentator Benny Johnson contacted the FBI after receiving a letter that stated, “Maybe someone will blow your head off.” The wife of conservative pundit Matt Walsh was also a recent target, as prosecutors charged yet another man from Florida with threats to injure. Even figures on the periphery of political discourse, such as the head of a national teachers’ union, received threats, with a Georgia man allegedly writing, “Liberal nazi deserves the bullet to head. Resign before she ends like what happened to trump at his speech” (SIC).
The atmosphere around this swelling number of threat prosecutions is a period of political violence and assassinations that is reminiscent of the United States in the late 1960s. Even amidst a prolific news cycle and a public jadedness towards politics, the killings of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Charlie Kirk, Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman, and the attempted assassinations of now President Trump left deep scars in American households and rattled faith in democracy. Meanwhile, many of the shooters themselves are products of pent-up rage and isolation that embody their own detached pathways on the internet and social media toward radicalization.
Image of Tweet, U.S. v. Thompson
In the past, many assassinations were organized by networks of militants. Gavrilo Princip shot Franz Ferdinand, but he was supported by The Black Hand, an underground ring of Serbian revolutionaries. Four were executed for their roles in the plot led by John Wilkes Booth to avenge the South after the Civil War. Conspirators in groups like the Weather Underground, the Irish Republican Army, and the Red Brigades in Italy worked together during the latter half of the Twentieth Century to carry out their attacks for political ends.
In contrast, the assassins who are, for lack of a better word, ‘successful’ in their attacks today are loners, making it difficult for law enforcement to infiltrate and monitor their plans. It has no doubt led to federal agents becoming ever more watchful for violent rhetoric in the online world. Thomas Lee Crooks, Luigi Mangione, and Tyler Robinson didn’t take to social media to explicitly allude to their respective plans. But if a political assassination is a heart attack, then threats are chest pains.
Some threat cases stemmed from individuals who took actionable steps to perpetrate violence. In March, Tucker Carlson’s media network tipped off law enforcement about a Tennessee man who had purportedly emailed the company about his plans to firebomb Nashville’s federal courthouse. A criminal complaint filled with images of homemade Molotov cocktails in mason jars spelled out the man’s paranoid delusions and wish to “expose” the government’s “treason.” The court filing also documented posts on X allegedly by the Tennessee man that contained pictures of the federal courthouse’s exterior, with the caption, “Will probably have to do it after court one day to minimize casualties.”
To be sure, many defendants who are charged with communicating threats suffer from significant mental health issues. One memorable criminal complaint from Delaware alleges an Air Force veteran posted on Facebook about the Toledo Police Department, “They can kill me with my own Katana, my Sword of the Spirit, my Ronin Samurai… I will implement the Kamikaze spirit.” Others are arguably less sincere, such as a man from Arizona who purportedly “troll[ed]” conservatives on social media until his comments surpassed constitutionally protected speech, despite multiple visits from the FBI.
Screenshot of Threat, U.S. v. Formicone
However, the overwhelming sense from a review of hundreds of court documents related to threats targeting public personas is that many of the cases originate from people who believe the threat of violence is the only way to shake the system. It’s the retiree on Social Security who becomes irate about the possibility of losing his benefits in phone calls to the office of his U.S. House Representative, or a fourth Florida man who allegedly threatens ICE after growing frustrated about his wife’s visa process. Some may argue that law enforcement and the courts’ time and money are better spent on cases with tangible action rather than mere words.
Yet, a climate of fear isn’t sustainable for a healthy democracy. It’s a normalization of violent rhetoric that emboldens actual violence. Threats act as a gateway drug, leading someone else to spiral down the path of radicalization, while overall social norms against political violence deteriorate to acceptance. School shootings were once shocking events that evoked national introspection. Now, targeted acts of violence and threats could soon become what feels like the norm.
A recent federal arrest speaks to that tragic normalization. This month, prosecutors say a California man was post a threat on X to “blow up every synagogue in a 20 mile radius." When confronted by law enforcement about his threat, he reportedly told officers, “That’s why? Uh, listen I have a car and a life to go back to. Can I just delete the post?”
As much as one would wish it to be true, addressing rising political violence in America will not be solved by a mere after-the-fact deletion.