The federal statute that makes it a crime to threaten the President is 18 U.S. Code § 871(a). It provides as follows:
Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits for conveyance in the mail or for a delivery from any post office or by any letter carrier any letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or document containing any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States. . . shall be fined . . . or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
This group is currently on Facebook. “Kill Obama” This speaks for itself. As of the posting of this blog it was still up and has apparently been up since at least November 2009
There are 122 members of this group.
**Update As of this morning, the Kill Obama Page Has Been Removed By Facebook. If the Secret Service is going to investigate a “Should President Obama Be Assassinated” Facebook Poll, I do not see how they can let this go.
**Update 1/6/10 Yesterday I spoke with the local Dallas office of the Secret Service and The Washington D.C office. I subsequently provided them the screen-caps of the group and the individual FB pages of the group administrators. This morning I received an email from Facebook’s Washington D.C. spokesperson Andrew Noyes stating that Facebook reported the threat to the Secret Service Tuesday evening. Will update if anything further develops.
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January 5th, 2010 at 4:00 am
Whoa…thats really shocking and disturbing that something hasn't been done about this group and the people that created it. This would not be tolerated if it were ANY other President
January 5th, 2010 at 4:10 am
So much hate in the world…
January 5th, 2010 at 4:12 am
What a bunch of losers!!
January 5th, 2010 at 4:15 am
I'm also afraid to share this because I don't want to encourage any more asshats to join or get ideas.
January 5th, 2010 at 5:39 am
u mean like Bush…??
(sarcasm)
not to say that is right for ANY president..
January 5th, 2010 at 10:37 am
So this is only wrong when people want to kill a president?
January 5th, 2010 at 10:51 am
As a person who generally votes for conservative candidates, I find this type of group appalling. I didn't vote for President Obama. I don't care for his politics, but I would NEVER wish harm on him.
On the flip side, when Rush Limbaugh was taken to the hospital for chest pains, I was following the Twitter trends stream. The comments were at least 50-1 in favor for hoping Mr. Limbaugh didn't make it and died.
While I don't see a "Kill Limbaugh" Facebook pages, comments like this one are on the anti-Limbaugh pages: "It would be a wonderful ending to 2009 if the big, fat idiot Rush Limbaugh dies….Happy New Year to all…"
Is there any difference? I don't see any.
January 5th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
There isn't any difference. Hate and ill wishes to ANYONE only bring darkness. I hope that the spotlight on this Facebook page will bring enough outrage to at least make people think. We can only hope.
January 5th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
I see little difference in this kind of hate and the hate the terrorists who try to harm us so greviously have for us.
January 5th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
It wouldnt be tolerated if it were any other President…I did not name names….but if you wanna talk about Bush…ok, I did not vote for him but I wouldnt want anything to happen to him..or any of our President for that matter…Its appaling that this went unnoticed for so long….and hopefully the ones responsible for it will have consequences for their actions.
January 6th, 2010 at 9:13 am
FB are a bunch of anti Obama hate mongers themselves … They lied to the media and SS about the poll and not knowing about it. Was up for days and was reported to them by over 10,000 people, yet they did nothing till the press got wind of it, and SS was called.
They pulled the Application down, which was up and running again days later, and still is. Todays death poll, Jan 5th, is who would you kill first, naming Obama, Biden, Nancy P and if you're a liberal, turn the gun on yourself, etc .. FB has been warned yet this remains .. SS notified again ..
FB has zero watchdogs approving both fan pages and application pages and takes no actions against these violent groups ..
FB needs to take some of their billions and hire a team to approve every single fan page, and Application, and police it's own. Maybe if the SS wasn't so busy calling on FB all the time, gate crashers would not get past them!
Please write to FB, don't bother calling, they wont pick up a phone, & let them know, unless they start acting, not only will they lose users, they can continue at their own peril, as God -forbid something happens as a result of one of these hate groups or polls, they should be criminally libel, and under the Federal law, and their home state, they are .. So Mr Zucker ….. stop changing your format, which everybody hates anyway, and start doing what every other social net service does .. approves an admin before allowing any old person to sign up and post death threats .. & acts of violence towards anyone .. Im not saying ban free speech, but not all speech is free ..
January 6th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
OBAMA RULES!!! these people should be lynched!!!!
January 7th, 2010 at 5:12 am
I dislike the policies of President Obama, I very much respect the office of President. The thought that someone would advocate this action, whether real or in jest, is contrary to everything we should believe. I only wish the left would be so adamant in regard to leftist attacks on opposition thought. That said, look at who would succeed him. ohmygod!
March 14th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Well, what if i told you, all of you, that here in Venezuela we have more than 20 groups in facebook that says in spanish "kill chavez" "asesinate chavez", etc etc… does anybody do anything about it? not really we dont, we allow that because we dont censure internet, but i do belive we have to do something about it, i have email Facebook with all this links, but nothing has happend..
April 13th, 2010 at 5:36 am
OBAMA SUCKS Were going to hell in a handbasket and OBAMA's bringing us there
June 22nd, 2010 at 12:53 am
STOP the MADDNESS PLEASE!!!
November 25th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Why kill a Facebook group that could be left open for the intelligence services to get intelligence from?
Also, we don't know if group's like these are honey trap sting operations to lure real criminals and terrorists into. There is more than one dimension to keeping these kind of group's online.
To me there is more intelligence value leaving these groups up than there is removing them.
Because you're only going to drive these kind of group's more underground, where they might be less noticed and monitored.