After Trump’s guilty verdict, threats and doxing attempts against jurors surge online

On online forums previously linked to mass shootings, users are now threatening violence and attempting to publicly identify the 12 New York jurors who convicted former President Donald Trump on Thursday.

The threats began immediately after the verdict was announced. Experts monitoring online extremism told CNN that the level of violent rhetoric in the past 24 hours rivals that seen after the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in August 2022.

“Hope these jurors face some street justice,” wrote one anonymous user on a pro-Trump forum. Another suggested, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if just one person from Trump’s legal team anonymously leaked the names of the jurors?”

Juror anonymity is intended to protect individuals performing their civic duties. Initially reserved for violent criminal cases, it is becoming more common. The judge in Trump’s New York trial ordered in March that most juror information be sealed, a decision with which Trump’s lawyers did not disagree.

Despite these precautions, anonymous users on hate-filled and harassment-prone sites began sharing what they claimed were names, home addresses, and other personal details of potential jurors—a practice known as doxxing.

This type of amateur online investigation can lead to real-world security threats. For instance, “swatting” involves falsely reporting a serious crime to trigger a heavy police response at someone’s residence.

Historically, those targeted by doxxing have been misidentified and had no connection to the issue at hand.

“Social media has spawned a generation of amateur sleuths who lack journalistic standards and ethics, leading to numerous cases of mistaken identity and wrongful accusations,” said Ben Decker, CEO of threat analysis company Memetica, to CNN. “While the sleuths face few consequences, their targets often endure violent threats both online and offline,” he added.

Researchers at Advance Democracy, a nonprofit conducting public-interest research, noted violent rhetoric directed at others involved in the case, including the judge, the district attorney, and journalists, according to the group’s president, Daniel Jones.

Last summer, purported names, photographs, and addresses of grand jurors in Fulton County, Georgia, circulated on far-right internet forums after they indicted Trump. Similarly, after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in 2022, a federal magistrate judge’s office address was removed from a court website due to threats from internet users.

John Cohen, former acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, stated that the violent online rhetoric seen in the 24 hours following Trump’s conviction is comparable to that seen after the Mar-a-Lago search.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a nonprofit tracking extremism, reported about 9,300 online posts mentioning civil unrest within a day of Trump’s conviction, compared to 9,900 posts following the Mar-a-Lago search.

In September 2019, after House Democrats announced Trump’s first impeachment inquiry and Trump quoted a pastor warning of a “Civil War-like fracture” if he were removed from office, unrest-related online posts reached nearly 20,000, ISD reported.

“False and misleading narratives about the verdict could incite individual acts of violence and other illegal activities, further eroding trust in our democratic institutions,” ISD analysts wrote.

Days after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, an armed man who had posted violent rhetoric online about the FBI attempted to breach the bureau’s Cincinnati office and was killed in a standoff with agents.

Some of the violent rhetoric in the past 24 hours “illustrates law enforcement concerns as we approach the election,” Cohen said, calling it a “harbinger of what’s to come.” He added that foreign intelligence services and terrorist groups would likely try to amplify the online vitriol in the coming days and weeks.