Did the FBI do the right thing? Analyzing the raid that killed a man who threatened President Biden
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Criticism of the FBI’s killing of a Utah man who had made death threats against President Joe Biden on social media quickly made its way through far-right circles with some calling it an “assassination.”
But law enforcement and legal experts say based on the information available the FBI’s actions were likely appropriate and justified given the man’s access to guns and the violent specificity of his threats, which went well beyond the bounds of free speech protections.
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“The First Amendment only goes so far. Not all speech is protected, and he crossed a line,” said Karl Schmae, a retired FBI supervisor and special agent who worked in the FBI’s Salt Lake City division for much of his 22 years of service, including as a supervisor of the domestic terrorism squad and 10 years on the SWAT team.
Early Wednesday morning, FBI agents went to Craig D. Robertson’s home in Provo to serve arrest and search warrants. Robertson had been under FBI surveillance for a number of months for making violent threats on social media against Biden and other top Democrats, including one Monday that said, “I hear Biden is coming to Utah. Digging out my old ghille suit and cleaning the dust off the m24 sniper rifle. Welcome, buffoon-in-chief!”
Robertson, who in his online bio says he is an “advocate and owner of many AR rifles” and other guns, also made threats to FBI agents if they showed up at his house. He was reportedly armed when agents arrived on his porch. The FBI has not released information about what led to the shooting.
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Will Craig Robertson become a martyr?
The self-described “MAGA Trumper” who agents shot during a raid on his home Wednesday just hours before Biden landed in Salt Lake City on the last leg of a Western states tour could be held out as some kind of hero.
“No doubt other extremists will look to him as a martyr,” said former Utah U.S. Attorney John Huber, who served in both the Obama and Trump administrations. “These people are very dangerous.”
Posts on social media questioned the FBI’s motive for the shooting.
“Was this assassination meant to be a threat toward Maga supporters; fearmongering Maga supporters into silence; so Maga will no longer spread the truths of corruption?” a user posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “I don’t believe in threats; I believe in voting out corrupt politicians through the voting process.”
Posts in the popular Reddit forum r/conservative expressed similar thoughts.
“The guy was 300 pounds, ‘walked’ with a cane and was 75 years old. They didn’t put any of those details out there. I’m sure he wasn’t a huge physical threat. IMO it’s the FBI sending a message,” according to one post.
Robertson’s death might be viewed by the far right like the death of LaVoy Finicum, an anti-government extremist involved in the 2016 armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. State police shot and killed Finicum during an attempt to arrest him on a highway. Members of the so-called “patriot movement” portray him as a martyr.
“We did see that with Finicum,” Huber said.
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Was the FBI justified?
Even though Robertson’s neighbors say they were shocked that the FBI would raid his home — describing him as a 75-year-old, overweight man with limited mobility — Schmae said the man’s access to guns made him a credible threat.
“Age doesn’t matter. If you’ve got a firearm, that’s the equalizer,” Schmae said. “I mean, a 75-year-old can shoot someone as easy as a 7-year-old or a 17-year-old.”
One post listed in the federal indictment against Robertson shows a photo of a nickel with hole through the head of Thomas Jefferson. Next to it is a card certifying Robertson apparently fired the shot from 100 yards with a Remington rifle equipped with a scope in 1982.
“Well, I did it to Jefferson right on the temple. Bet I can do it to old Joey and save the world!!!” Robertson posted in March, the complaint says.
Huber said that while Robertson’s age and physical attributes might differ from that of an athletic 20-year-old gang member, “when you’re talking about someone with an arsenal of firearms, it doesn’t matter if he’s in a wheelchair or on his deathbed, if he’s pointing a gun at you, that’s a very dangerous situation.”
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Chris Burbank, a former Salt Lake City police chief who now works as a law enforcement strategy consultant for the Center for Policing Equity, said anytime “someone loses their life or some sort of force is used against a member of the public” or a law enforcement officer, “that is a failure of our system.” That should always be a “last resort,” he said.
However, based on the information currently available, Burbank agrees the FBI appeared to act appropriately.
“They served the warrant at an appropriate time. They had a judicial review and (obtained a warrant),” Burbank said. “What we’re missing is what happened at that exact moment (of the raid), but given the circumstance as described, as well as the physical evidence after the fact, I would say it’s an unfortunate outcome ... but maybe unavoidable in this circumstance.”
Huber said he believes FBI agents had every intention to safely take Robertson into custody “but the unpredictable variable is the guy.”
A statement Thursday from the Robertson family says in part that they are “shocked and devastated by the senseless and tragic killing” of a good man.
“Though his statements were intemperate at times, he has never, and would never, commit any act of violence against another human being over a political or philosophical disagreement,” the family statement says.
“As our family processes the grief and pain of our loss, we would have it be known that we hold no personal animosity towards those individuals who took part in the ill-fated events of the morning of August 9, 2023, which resulted in Craig’s death.”
While shootings involving police officers are on the rise in Utah, FBI agents shooting people, let alone killing them, is rare, Huber said. He said he expects the FBI and other agencies to conduct a thorough investigation into whether the shooting was justified.
Robertson was reportedly noncompliant when agents ordered him out of his home. And if he was armed when agents broke in, as some outlets have reported, that would have likely escalated the FBI’s use of force.
“This was already going to be considered a high-risk arrest,” Schmae said. “If he, in fact, had a weapon, he would have been given commands to drop that weapon, and if he didn’t comply then that’s going to be a deadly force situation for sure.”
If Robertson wasn’t armed, that would change the situation, said Greg Skordas, a longtime Salt Lake defense attorney and former prosecutor.
“If they enter the house and he’s got his feet up and he’s drinking coffee, they have no right to shoot him,” Skordas said. “He has to be an immediate threat to them for them to use deadly force. He has to have either drawn a gun or ... done something that gave officers fear for their lives, for the lives of others at the moment they pulled the trigger.”
Those are the crucial details that will determine whether the shooting was justified, Skordas said. But in order for agents to obtain a search warrant and arrest warrant from a judge, they “no doubt obtained at least probable cause” with some type of evidence along with the social media posts.
“Maybe he’s got a registered firearm, maybe he purchased some things, maybe they talked to others who said, ‘Hey, you need to take this man seriously,’” Skordas said.
Huber, who prosecuted cases of threats against the president and other high-ranking officials, said the FBI must take threats of violence seriously, and even more seriously when they’re made against the president. He said federal authorities had little choice but to act with Biden coming to the state.
“Do we sit back and not do anything? Well, no. You’ve got the president landing the same day. The president’s coming to town. This guy’s threatening the president. He’s got guns. You’ve got to neutralize that threat,” he said.
Skordas said the risk was too much to not take action.
“The FBI’s hands were completely tied. It was a lose-lose for them,” he said. “They risk there’s going to be a shootout, or they do nothing and they risk there’s going to be an assassination attempt on the president. I think they took the high road.”
Tragedy of political hate, extremism
Wednesday’s shooting was a tragedy, Burbank said, not only because a man lost his life, but also because it reflects what can happen when extremism infects U.S. political rhetoric.
“That’s central to this tragedy,” Burbank said. “And it’s happening again, right now as we speak in this country. The rhetoric, the hatred in the country ... is going to result in the loss of life somewhere in our country, if not at this very second or an hour from now.”
Burbank said hateful and even violent rhetoric has “been around forever,” but it’s “gotten worse” in recent years. When he was Salt Lake City’s police chief, “I never received more death threats than when I would make statements contrary to, you know, gun interests. ... I got more death threats from good gun-toting Utahns than you could imagine.”
“Why are we tolerating this? This should be absolutely out of bounds,” Burbank said, calling for civil political discourse. “When it degrades into ‘I’m going to kill you or kill somebody,’ and we somehow think that’s appropriate, boy that’s really disappointing.”
Schmae and Burbank said the FBI is not a political entity, and they work hard to separate politics from facts.
“I’ve seen them in action. The FBI is not operating from a political position. And somehow we need to overcome (that assumption),” said Burbank, who has served as a chairman of FBI task forces. “The FBI acts on information that they have available in front of them as far as violations of the law. ... This is not an agency that is moved by political motivations.”
Schmae said allegations by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the FBI has been “politicized” and “weaponized” against them are concerning because it “undermines trust in the FBI.”
“That’s not why (Robertson) was shot,” Schmae said. “I have no doubt that he was shot because he was not compliant during the arrest and he took some action that threatened the lives of the agents.”
To neighbors that were shocked and questioned the FBI’s use of force against the elderly man, he said they should ask themselves how they would have liked agents to respond if they were receiving the same types of threats.
“Let’s say your neighbor was making threats against you, saying, ‘I want to come shoot you. I’m going to shoot you in the head,’ that same kind of language,” Schmae said. “Would those neighbors then have been thinking, ‘Oh that’s fine. No biggie.’ I’m pretty sure they would have been (angry) with the FBI or the police if they didn’t respond to that.”
It’s not surprising that neighbors who knew Robertson as a seemingly harmless “teddy bear” would be shocked by what happened, Schmae said, noting it’s not uncommon for school shooters to be described as quiet or sweet kids. The nature of Robertson’s threats were not only graphic but specific.
“Obviously, Mr. Robertson had another side to him,” Schmae said. “To me, it seemed like he had this simmering rage.”
Huber called it an “ugly” day for Utah. He said he hopes that there are not more Utahns out there who get so wrapped up in their political beliefs that they would turn to violent behavior. “My concern is whether this is the tip of the iceberg.”
