After Attorney General Pam Bondi pledged to prosecute threats of violence against public officials, Rep. Eric Swalwell was furious.
“This is rich,” Swalwell posted to X on Tuesday. “AG Bondi has REFUSED to prosecute MULTIPLE direct death threats against me and my family.”
Swalwell’s post gained traction — so much so that Bondi called him to ask “what I was referring to,” the California Democrat told NOTUS on Thursday.
“We sent her the two most recent cases where DOJ declined to prosecute, and they were cases where the person explicitly said he was going to kill me and my family,” Swalwell said. “One of them, I think, said, ‘Now you will die.’”
“I’ll take her at her word that she’s going to look at them,” Swalwell continued. “Hopefully there’s some action.”
But Swalwell is just one of multiple House Democrats who say they’ve experienced violent threats but the Justice Department has declined to prosecute or look into them. NOTUS spoke to a dozen House Democrats, many of whom spoke anonymously because they feared repercussions from President Donald Trump and his administration, who said they worry for their safety and believe those threats will not be taken seriously.
While Charlie Kirk’s assassination triggered a broader (and bipartisan) discussion on Capitol Hill about the need to increase security for members of Congress, those conversations had already been taking place among Democrats for months.
“Every single person in the caucus,” one House Democrat said, “is scared right now.”
“We worry about our children answering the door. We worry when random people stop by our houses. I was on a run and I saw a car following me,” the lawmaker said, starting to cry. “It turned out to be fine … but this stuff is triggering us over and over and over again.”
Members on both sides of the aisle are making their concerns known to Speaker Mike Johnson. Several lawmakers gathered with Johnson on the floor on Wednesday, shortly after the House Administration Committee announced that additional funding for member security was available, to complain about their safety.
“It was Republicans also in there, saying to the speaker, ‘You have a [security] detail, you have a detail. The rest of us don’t,’” the House Democrat, who was part of the conversation, recalled to NOTUS.
Johnson’s office pointed to a press gaggle where the speaker was asked about the interaction.
“I want to make two points very clear: Members of Congress are secure. They’re secured in their residence and in their person,” Johnson told reporters. “There are all sorts of resources available, both here in the Capitol and at home. But that said, every time there is an act of political violence or tragic assassination like the one that we all witnessed, everyone reassesses to see if there are ways to improve upon that. And so that’s what we’re doing right now.”
Trump and some of his allies in Congress have quickly blamed Democrats and liberal advocates for the spike in political violence. In public addresses, Trump has talked about the two assassination attempts against him and Kirk’s killing, but has not addressed how Democrats have also been targeted: Minnesota state House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed by a shooter in June; the home of Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, was set on fire while he and his family slept inside in April; Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked by a man who broke into their San Francisco home in 2022.
Even as Bondi publicly promises to prosecute those who attack politicians — regardless of political party — Democrats fear that Trump’s rhetoric will impact how Bondi and the Justice Department approach their threat reports.
Trump has “demanded strict, absolute, unconditional loyalty from the people he’s placed in offices to effectuate their jobs,” Rep. Julie Johnson told NOTUS. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Pam Bondi will not fulfill her oath as attorney general, will not fulfill her job responsibly to truly protect all the people in this country from hate speech, hate acts, violence — but will, in fact, bend the knee to Donald Trump as every other member of his cabinet has done.”
Members pointed to instances in which the Justice Department has gone after Democrats — including the federal indictment against Rep. LaMonica McIver and the department’s investigation into Rep. Robert Garcia for saying Democrats should bring “actual weapons to this bar fight” — as reasons why they can’t rely on Bondi.
A second House Democrat recalled that their spouse “received serious threats,” with both the Capitol Police and FBI looking into them.
“Ultimately, they found that the guy was sort of just spouting off and didn’t really mean it,” the lawmaker said.
In a statement to NOTUS, the U.S. Capitol Police said, “All threats and concerning statements are taken seriously and investigated.”
“The Supreme Court recently clarified the high standard required for a prosecutable threat in Counterman v. Colorado. We now must look at threat cases through that lens. We are looking at a person’s behavior. The goal is to deescalate any behavior that could possibly lead to a tragic outcome. We work with our federal, state, and local partners, as well as mental health professionals, to achieve that goal,” the statement continued. (The Justice Department did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment.)
House Democrats have also relied far more on security funding than their GOP counterparts.
Following the Hortman shooting, the House Administration Committee, which oversees member security, increased the amount of funding available for “monitoring and maintenance” from $150 to $5,000 a month, and allowed members “to use the proposed allotment to hire licensed and insured individuals or companies to provide personal security” until Sept. 3.
A third Democratic member said that in a recent caucus meeting, they were shown data that said, “Democrats have utilized that extra funding by a margin of three-to-one over our Republican colleagues.” (A senior House Democratic aide confirmed the figure.)
House Republicans’ short-term continuing resolution to fund the government allocates an additional $30 million supplemental funding request for members’ security.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House Appropriations Committee’s ranking member, told NOTUS that money is “not enough.”
“What we would like to try to do is hiring of a law-enforcement coordinator” for individual offices, “so that there’s someone there who has an understanding of … what is necessary in order to deal with protecting members, their families, staff, et cetera,” DeLauro said.
But a fourth Democrat said that without real consequences from federal law enforcement or Capitol Police, the threats will continue — and they’re angry.
“I’ve heard many colleagues, especially those that have been here for, like, some time … that there have been threats and they have not been taken seriously,” the fourth lawmaker said. “You can get something via social media that says, ‘I am going to kill you,’ and it’s like, ‘Hey, we went to talk to that guy,’ and that was kind of it.”
“It’s like, no, I don’t need you to go just talk to the person. If a person puts something like that out there, you know, that should be a crime,” the lawmaker continued. “I have heard many, many stories … about not having an in-depth investigation and not having any consequences to these people who are threatening family members and members.”