The ugliness of President Trump’s attacks on the whistleblower who first exposed his scheme to extract political favors from the Ukraine government has reached its logical culmination.
Mark Zaid, the whistleblower’s attorney, received a death threat last year that has resulted in the arrest of a supporter of the president.
The email came from Brittan J. Atkinson, said Michigan federal prosecutors, who was indicted on charges of making death threats against Zaid. The newly unsealed court filing was first reported by Politico and noted by Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. Atkinson sent the menacing message from Gladwin County, in northern Michigan, the indictment said. He is charged with violating federal interstate communication laws, which prohibit “any threat to injure the person of another.” The felony offense is punishable by up to five years in prison.”
At campaign rally in Louisiana lat year Trump called Zaid “a sleazeball.” He ended his digression by saying: “These people are bad people, and it’s so bad what they do to our country. They rip the guts out of our country.”
“Keep looking over your shoulder,” Atkinson is alleged to have written. “We know who you are, where you live and who you associate with. We are all strangers in a crowd to you.”
“I hope this indictment sends a message to others that such behavior will not be tolerated by a civil society that is governed by law,” Zaid said in a statement.
