On August 9, 2016, at a rally in Wilmington, N.C., Donald Trump said the following while campaigning to become President of the United States:

“So here, I just wrote this down today. Hillary wants to raise taxes — it’s a comparison. I want to lower them. Hillary wants to expand regulations, which she does bigly. Can you believe that? I will reduce them very, very substantially, could be as much as 70 to 75 percent. Hillary wants to shut down energy production. I want to expand it. Lower electric bills, folks! Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick –if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day, if — if — Hillary gets to put her judges in.”

Immediately, the general public and media were outraged at the possible implication that Trump just threatened or incited violence against Hillary Clinton.

On September 26, 2016, I filed a FOIA request to the United States Secret Service for all records pertaining to this. I asked for:

“…any investigation, report, letter(s), memo(s), email(s), etc. that may pertain to this comment and possibly perceived threat.

I ask that you also include any correspondence between any member of the Trump presidential campaign, attorneys for Mr. Trump, and any communication to/from Donald Trump himself, that pertain to these comments.”

The following are the records received.

Document Archive

United States Secret Service

 Donald Trump’s ‘Second Amendment people’ comment Documents, Released by Secret Service September 20, 2017 [137 Pages, 34.8MB]

After a FOIA Appeal of the above release, I was able to get the Secret Service to release the additional documents:

 Donald Trump’s ‘Second Amendment people’ comment Documents, Released by Secret Service November 8, 2017 [103 Pages, 9.3MB]

 Letter from the Committee of Homeland Security, Bennie G. Thompson, Reporting Donald Trump to the Secret Service [5 Pages, 1.3MB]

The post Donald Trump’s ‘Second Amendment people’ comment first appeared on The Black Vault.

The Electoral College is a process, not a place. The founding fathers established it in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. The Electoral College process consists of the selection of the electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for President and Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress.

In December of 2016, after the election, I filed FOIA requests to various agencies to see what, if any threats, were investigated.

I will archive all the responses that come in below.

Document Archive

 United States Secret Service: Threats Against Electoral College Members, October 1, 2016 – November 28, 2016 [7 Pages, 1.3MB]

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/usss/electoralthreats-2016-usss.pdf

The post Threats Against Electoral College Members, 2016 Election Season first appeared on The Black Vault.

Since 1970, various corporations and public agencies in the United States have received extortion messages involving nuclear devices, materials, and facilities. Further, although the United States has enjoyed relative freedom from terrorism, internally, other countries have had to cope with increasing terrorist activities, including attacks on nuclear facilities. In 1974, the Energy Research and Development Administration established the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST) to help deal with deal with peacetime nuclear accidents and address the technical, behavioral, and operational problems generated by nuclear extortion threats. NEST is now under the jurisdiction of the Department of Energy (DOE) .

Among the thorniest problems is deciding if a threat is credible and, thus, merits deployment of NEST. Then, once the decision to deploy is made, NEST must assist FBI efforts to locate the threatening substance or device and the extortionists, and possibly negotiate with them. In 1977, DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) funded a project that brought together specialists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Syracuse Research Corporation, and The Rand Corporation. Under the technical direction of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, t~is project has developed
an operational capability to assess the credibility of nuclear threat messages. This assessment provides the basis for deployment decisions and the initial operational guidance for the NEST team after deployment.

The Report

 Using Stylistic Analysis to Assess Threat Messages, October 1985 [66 Pages, 8.5MB]

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/nuclear/usingstylisticanalysis.pdf

The post Using Stylistic Analysis to Assess Threat Messages, October 1985 first appeared on The Black Vault.