The raid was in connection with an investigation into alleged threats against President Joe Biden and others, according to two officials briefed on the case.
A Utah man was shot and killed during an FBI raid early Wednesday morning, the FBI confirmed to ABC News. The raid was in connection with an investigation into alleged threats against President Joe Biden and others, according to two officials briefed on the case.
One of the officials told ABC News that the investigation began in April and the U.S. Secret Service was notified by the FBI in June. In addition to threatening posts, the official said, the man under investigation suggested online he was making plans to take physical action. The threats had been deemed "credible," the official said.
The FBI in Salt Lake City said the shooting occurred around 6:15 am. local time while special agents attempted to serve arrest and search warrants at a residence in Provo.
"The FBI takes all shooting incidents involving our agents or task force members seriously," the FBI said in a statement. "In accordance with FBI policy, the shooting incident is under review by the FBI's Inspection Division. As this is an ongoing matter, we have no further details to provide."
The deceased suspect was Craig Robertson, according to multiple sources and a federal complaint obtained by ABC News.
Robertson was facing three counts, according to the complaint -- interstate threats, threats against the president, and influencing, impeding and retaliating against federal law enforcement officers by threat.
The complaint includes numerous social media posts believed to have been made by Robertson threatening to kill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as several officials involved in prosecuting former President Donald Trump.
The president is scheduled to visit Utah on Wednesday.
Among the posts allegedly made by Robertson was one published on Aug. 6, three days before Biden's scheduled visit, according to the complaint. "I hear Biden is coming to Utah. Digging out my old ghillie suit and cleaning the dust off the M24 sniper rifle," the post said, according to the complaint, which referred to the post as a "willful true threat to kill or cause injury to kill President Biden."
Senior staff briefed Biden on the incident Wednesday morning, a White House official told ABC News.
We often hear reports about right-wing terrorism in the USA. But how many other incidents like this happen, where the person is caught beforehand? This wouldn’t be a top headline if he hadn’t died, it would be just another story relegated to the bottom of a news site.
the guy that showed up at obama's place with weapons, too.
and there's a lot of right-wing hate causing disturbances not directly at leaders that are written off as just more violent crime rather than hate crimes or politically motivated crimes.
Was mostly FedBois, the 4 goons who got arrested had a supporting cast of 20+ members of Federal Law Enforcement. They paid for travel, put together meetings with other people and groups, and helped them plan it.
News is constantly reporting on people being arrested for threatening officials. I disagree that this is being treated any differently than those reports.
I don't want to jinx it because it may still happen, but it's an outright miracle a straight up war didn't break out at any of these events like Charlottesville
This guy actually posted "Merrick Garland u demented weasel send your FBI swat, you won't because I'm a MAGA trumper and I'll fight back" ??? Phew boy, major case of finding out.
This is republicans and Trump's fault. They lie to people and get them angry about democrats eating babies or letting men rape children in restrooms. They know that there are mentally unstable people out there and that they will believe them. Trump KNOWS this. And now these brainwashed and programmed people are going out and attacking Trump's enemies. Remember when Trump got Ashli Babbitt killed?
OR maybe this guy was a fascist. Guess we'll find out.
No. Something of value was lost, because this guy didn't need to die. He was brainwashed and fed fear throughout his life which compounded with a lack of clear thinking or education, into a need to project a mask of what he thought was bravery.
Our anger should be directed at the remorseless pieces of shit that build this machine that injects fear into the gullible, and engineers the deaths of people who didn't need to die.
If you find it difficult to empathise with this man, try to imagine that one of your family members went off the deep end and made the stupid ass decisions this guy did. Will you still feel that his death was justified? Will you feel like this was the preferable end to this guy's life?
This is why I have to laugh when my firearms enthusiast friends tell me they need assault weapons in case they need to overthrow the government. This guy had a lot of assault weapons. Like tons of them. This is how it turned out. This is how it will always turn out.
Yeah so freedom of speech in America doesn't apply to threating the president. Like they don't fuck around. They will go after musicians who allude to it in music for example. I believe Eminem has had Secret Service turn up at his house multiple times.
I'm pretty sure they'll even track down people who make threats on pseudo anonymous websites like reddit.