Threats against US Congress members skyrocket

ILLINOIS, US

US Capitol Police are reporting a 107% increase in threats made to members of Congress so far in 2021, compared to the same period in 2020, and they are "confident" the number of threats will increase.

The USCP called it a "significant" increase, in a statement released on Friday, and said it expects the numbers to go up because of "the unique threat environment we currently live in."

A full report from USCP Inspector General on the findings is expected to be discussed at a hearing by the House Administration Committee next week. The hearing is called "Oversight of the January 6th Attack: United States Police Threat Assessment and Counter Surveillance Before and During the Attack."

Two previous reports from the Inspector General pointed to "deficiencies" leading up the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

The latest findings appear to back up what the Chief of the Capitol Police told Congress two months ago: that threats to individual members of Congress were already up by 93% in the first two months of 2021, compared to a year earlier.

In addition, the Cox Media Group, using information provided by USCP, reported this week that between Jan. 1 and March 11 of 2021, Capitol Police investigated 4,135 threats to lawmakers. That's an average of almost 60 threats per day, and represents a big jump from the total number of threats against lawmakers in all of 2020: 8,613.

Cox reports the majority of threats to lawmakers are coming from emails, social media and phone calls.