Here is a story of how a MAGA goes from threatening emails to looking at a 10+year jail sentence. Note: Authorities have withheld the names of law enforcement personnel from the public. And the following information comes from a criminal complaint filed by the FBI.
On September 18, Stephen Jike Williams, an N.C. insurance salesman and part-time musician sent an email to the Good Information Foundation, a left-leaning nonprofit founded after the 2020 election to fight liars. The email went as follows,
“You are hereby ordered by we the people under the laws of the constitution to cease and desist all defamation and slander of Maga [sic] Republicans and Donald Trump. This is Treason an act of war and we will treat you accordingly. You have till [sic] the end of the month to print a retraction whistle blow on yourself or I will shut you down personally.
Lethal action will be necessary if any physical detainment is attempted when I shut you down. Leave peacefully or your children will forget who you are.”
Williams is neither a lawyer nor well-versed in prose writing. However, he does make his point reasonably clearly, and his threat, while not specific, is trenchant.
On September 19, the Foundation's lawyer forwarded the email to the FBI. Agents in the Washington Field Office sent the Bureau’s investigative assessment to the Bureau’s Greensboro Resident Agency Office for follow-up. Note: Williams had made the follow-up a breeze as he had sent the email from his private account.
On October 3, an FBI agent and a local cop showed up in plain clothes and in an unmarked car at his house in rural Stokesdale NC, to ask him what the feck he was thinking. As they pulled into the driveway, Williams exploded from his front porch and ran toward their car to ask the question that was weighing on him. “Why the fuck are you on my property?
The FBI agent showed Williams her credentials through the car’s open window. Willaims went nuts. He began yelling that the Department of Justice and the FBI hired a Russian agent to steal the election. He was so angry he showered the FBI agent with so much spittle that the cop told him to quit it. Williams did, although he continued to yell. According to the complaint,
“Williams stepped back and continued being irate and hostile. Williams called [the agent] a ‘bitch’ multiple times and stated [the cop] should arrest [the agent] and have her executed for treason and sedition. Williams stated to [the agent], ‘I’m going to take you out.’”
When the two warned Williams that he could be charged criminally for threatening a federal agent, he began repeatedly screaming, “Get the fuck off my property!” The FBI agent and cop decided that an interview was unlikely and left.
On October 7, the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center received a tip from a person identified as J.K., who reported that they had “observed a TikTok video in which a male subject was threatening to kill FBI agents.” J.K. provided a link to the offending clip.
Williams had taken exception to the FBI visit and posted a video to TikTok entitled “Fuck the FBI” in which he shared his thoughts on the subject. He parroted Trumpian claims about the FBI being “corrupt” adding, “all agents are considered to be ‘enemy combatants.’”
Williams then got to his core thinking,
“I’m not playing with the fucking FBI. They’ve been put on fucking notice, if you step back foot on my fucking property, I ain’t gonna sit there and talk to you. I’m going to bust your fucking head open with fucking .308s, man. I’m going to kill every single one of you, stack you up in your cars, and drive you back to headquarters and finish the fucking job… They are absolutely out of control. Stand up to em, fight em, shoot em on sight.”
In a series of follow-up videos, Williams boasted of having “kicked [the FBI] out of the yard,” and detailed his shooting skills. He also held forth on the “new world order” and said he was upset because TikTok had suspended one of his accounts. In one of the videos, he declared,
“I’m ready to shoot fucking FBI agents, CIA agents, and any federal law enforcement agent working for Joe Biden or anybody like [German economist and World Economic Forum founder] Klaus Schwab… Australian police, any of them. Execute those motherfuckers on sight. If they wanna fucking de-populate, de-populate them.”
Williams continued by complaining that the government "wants to take away our weapons,” as well as people’s “ability to communicate,” and that a “purge” of the citizenry was in the offing. He threatened to assassinate Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and asked why he was not allowed to display his rifles on TikTok while “they’ll show you a syringe that kills little kids in their sleep.”
He ended the video by urging his viewers to “Fucking fight, man. Fight!”
On November 18, law enforcement arrested Williams and charged him with threatening to murder a federal law enforcement officer and transmission of interstate threats. They detained him for a hearing on November 23. If a jury convicts him on both counts, he faces more than a decade in prison.