just last week, an armed man tried to breach an fbi field office in cincinnati. let s bring in cnn contributor garrett graph to discuss these threats. he s also a contributing editor at wired magazine. good morning, garrett. grateful to have you. help us understand what s driving these online threats? kwho are these extremists? and where do you find them most often? yeah. so i think it s important to say that the people who are driving this level of extremism right now are the leadership of the republican party. you know, this is the president president trump and other senior gop officials who are stoking this rhetoric, stoking this extremism in the same way that we saw leading up to and now have a much better understanding of the events leading up to january 6th. president trump and his supporters are hoping that the threat of further violence from their supporters will chill the
enforcement, though, of quote unquote destroying our country. and we ve seen that his attacks on the fbi, on law enforcement, since that august 8th rate, they ve been followed by people who follow him, acting upon it. i mean, just look at what s unfolded since then. i think, days after that, there was a group of heavily armed men, including with assault rifles, who stayed outside an fbi office in phoenix. on august 11th, there was a man who tried to attack this fbi office in cincinnati, and ended up in a deadly shootout with law enforcement outside. on august 12th, a pennsylvania man was arrested after posting a series of violent threats against fbi and law enforcement, saying that people who deserve, people who work there, pardon me, all deserve to die. and there s also, as you mentioned, really violent dangerous threats against the judge who signed that search warrant in the first place. so, we are seeing in many ways, when you talk to homeland security experts, national security exp
of increased threats against federal law enforcement as well as government personnel, and buildings in the wake of that mar-a-lago search. now, just moments ago, the department of justice unsealed charges against a pennsylvania man who was threatening to kill fbi agents on his social media page, including posts that had i sincerely believe if you work for the fbi, then you deserve to die, among others. you can see some of that heightened rhetoric. kristen holmes, thank you so much. leon panetta joins us. he served as secretary of defense and cia director for president obama and white house chief of staff under president clinton. former fbi director andrew mccabe said on cnn earlier today he s never seen this level of threats against the bureau in more than two decades he served there. we literally saw a trump supporter posting on trump s own social media company that he was headed to the fbi office in cincinnati, armed, and after a standoff, he ended up dead. you heard the new report
fast-developing story. areva martin, thank you for being here with us. appreciate it. christopher wray is warning bureau agents and employees to be vigilant due to unprecedented wave of threats against the agency following the mar-a-lago search. sources tell cnn that the two agents who signed the warrant, as well as the federal judge who authorized it are among those receiving threats. we re also finding out more about the suspect who attempted to breach an fbi field office in cincinnati. cnn s brynn gingras has the story. reporter: new details tonight about the armed suspect who was shot and killed after alemleged trying to get in the fbi s field office in cincinnati. after the search at mar-a-lago estate may have inspired him. the ohio state patrol identifying him 42-year-old ricky shiffer of columbus, a
kinds of analogies but the one i like is jiu-jitsu. using somebody s offensive move against him. and i think donald trump did count on the vacuum that the justice department operated. it was not a trump reversed raise this in the justice department would have got about this quietly and nobody would have known that the search had been executed. trump, raise it the best defense is a good offense and engage in a lot of bluster and i think one of the things that forced mary garland s hand was so many people were picking up on this. we were hearing all kinds of political leaders talking about all this is prosecuted in this conduct. gestapo tactics that biden had weaponized department of justice against a political opponent. and if they remain silent in, that i think it would ve created some real damage to the public perception of the fbi. in fact, we ve not the attack on thursday, in a cincinnati, fbi office by a man who came into the office with a gun. a nail gun and then the salt