FBI Becomes Rent-A-Cops for CEOs
Feds are watching your sarcastic posts online as part of Trump's new war on terrorism
America’s top law enforcement agency is pimping itself out to corporate America to protect business executives from the American people, according to an FBI threat assessment marked “Law Enforcement Use Only” and reported here for the first time.
The FBI assessment, “Heightened Threat to Chief Executive Officers Following the Shooting of a Healthcare Senior Executive,” is dated February 19, and is a striking illustration of the new and growing Domestic War on Terrorism that I’ve been writing about.
The assessment, and statements from top Trump officials, seek to label growing outrage against corporations as terrorism. The Trump administration is particularly spun up about the spate of arson and vandalism attacks against Tesla automobiles and facilities since its CEO became plenipotentiary to the world’s most powerful man.
The FBI document was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by transparency nonprofit Property of the People. “If the government truly cares about preventing death and suffering, perhaps tax dollars should be spent on healthcare for the people instead of mass surveillance and security for wealthy executives,” executive director Ryan Shapiro told me.
Part of the FBI’s campaign involves monitoring social media posts supposedly threatening corporate executives. The assessment claims that there has been a spike of such threats across multiple industries since Luigi Mangione’s alleged murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December. That month, I reported on a separate NYPD threat report warning that “online reactions” to the Thompson murder suggest “extremists may view Mangione as … an example to follow.”
The new FBI assessment follows the same line of thought, saying, “This rhetoric has displayed an elevated threat of violence to executives and highlighted a need for increased situational awareness among private sector partners.” Social media threats have “risen” across all sectors and industries, it adds.
FBI Director Kash Patel said during his swearing in that the Bureau is going to carry out “the world’s largest manhunt” against “anyone that wishes to do harm to our way of life,” as I’ve previously reported. On Monday, Patel announced a “crack down” on vandalism directed at Tesla, calling the acts “domestic terrorism.”
Despite the new counter-terrorism obsession, the FBI itself says that anti-corporate rhetoric rarely rises to the level of illegality. “Lone actors, unaffiliated with specific ideological groups, are using social media to intimidate high-profile employees,” it says. “While these threats often fall short of federal prosecution, they create fear and highlight the need for heightened vigilance against potential copycat attacks.”
The report goes on to list a half dozen examples of alleged threats to CEOs. All take the form of online posts, a pretty clear sign of how closely law enforcement is keeping tabs on social media.
“I’ll shoot the CEO of [U.S. company] before I pay that light bill,” one of the examples reads, with the company name (Con Edison) redacted. I searched Twitter and found one post matching those words, belonging to user “@stat1c_da_king.” The post had zero likes and just one retweet.
The post was not a threat. It was actually a snarky response to an attached video from another user depicting ornate Christmas lights around a large house in Texas. “I know that light bill gonna be high!” the narrator of the video says.
This is not exactly the makings of an anti-CEO pogrom, but FBI intelligence, it would seem, is not big on humor. (This is an issue I’ve often seen when law enforcement relies on automated tools to identify threats based simply on keyword searches.) It wasn’t the only joke that sailed over the Bureau’s head.
Another example from the FBI document:
“On 10 December 2024, a social media user’s post threatened healthcare CEOs and referenced Thompson’s homicide. The post stated, ‘copycat killers identified,’ and named the CEOs of multiple major U.S. healthcare companies.”
The poster in this case is obviously saying the healthcare CEOs (presumably health insurance companies) are “copycat killers” because of all the Americans who die from lack of coverage.
Again, it’s as if the FBI didn’t bother to think through what it was reading and just saw the words “copycat killers” and jumped to conclusions. Brilliant detective work from our premiere law enforcement agency!
This next example is more disturbing and gives a sense of how the FBI is not just spying on our posts but acting on what they collect. The laid off employees of a digital music distribution service posted images and messages of their former company’s CEO including altered images and references to CEO Thompson’s homicide. The description is so vague, it’s impossible to tell if these posters were clowning on the CEO or making real threats. Even though “the posts did not meet federal prosecution criteria,” the FBI didn’t stop there, kicking the matter to local law enforcement for further “investigation.”
What’s especially creepy about conflating anti-corporate sentiment with terrorism is that it opens the door to spying on the American people. Counter-terrorism is literally the business of “pre-crime,” in which law enforcement and its intelligence arm work to seek to prevent hypothetical crimes of the future, even where no information exists to suggest any preparations. This is the post-9/11 standard that has become the norm when it comes to well-resourced terrorist organizations like al Qaeda and ISIS. But it should have no place against random shitposters online.
If it sounds like I’m exaggerating when I say there’s a new War on Terrorism, consider Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent remark calling Molotov cocktails thrown at Teslas “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
“We are not negotiating” with the vandals whom she has elsewhere deemed “terrorists,” Bondi also declared, as if she were speaking of airline hijackers bargaining to release hostages on an airplane.
Even the military is getting in on the frenzy, with the Army recently warning Tesla drivers in its ranks to better protect themselves. Telling a bunch of trained killers to keep their heads on a swivel for lurking Tesla extremists seems like a recipe for trouble.
Honk if you hate Tesla! Just kidding, wouldn’t want to get put on a watchlist.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
Ka Ching goes our tax dollars. CEO lives matter more than working stiff lives. I don't feel safe in America anymore haha call the ADL
Good work, Ken. God forbid! A wealthy "comfortable" highly compensated class of corporate executives are at increased risk for theoretical harm Including physical violence when in fact untold numbers of persons who retain everyday moderately paid jobs and responsibilities face normalized-by-the-media risks of harm to life, limb and mental health-simply by-living-in-America. The hypocrisy and selective coverage by corporate media can make the mind reel. Important to stay focussed on new directions and staying positively engaged!