FBI Guns Down Trump-supporting Senior Citizen for Making Threats on Facebook
Craig Deleeuw Robertson didn't need to die.
Last Wednesday at 6:15 in the morning, an FBI SWAT team descended on the home of Craig Deleeuw Robertson in Provo, Utah. It appears that the agents and Robertson engaged in some kind of standoff. The FBI agents, dressed in full tactical gear, at one point tossed what appears to be a smoke grenade into Robertson’s home.
Neighbors recorded some footage but they did not record, however, the moment when FBI agents shot Robertson dead on the sidewalk outside his home. His body lay there for hours.
Robertson was 75 years old.
He came to the FBI’s attention by posting daily threats and violent fantasies against Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats on his Facebook page. He also posted photos of himself with guns along with the threats.
This was not smart. If Robertson had instead voted to invade Iraq, passed an executive order stripping Americans of their jobs for not getting vaxxed, or engaged in insider trading through contacts in Congress then the FBI wouldn’t have given him a second look and Robertson would have been praised as an upstanding member of Our Democracy.
Instead, Robertson is dead and noted war criminals George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama are free men. The Rule of Law, etc.
I have a number of questions about the Robertson shooting. First, why did Facebook allow him to post near daily death threats for months? The Daily Mail (the only journalistic publication with a competent account of what happened) included a bunch of screenshots they were able to secure from his account before it was deleted after the shooting.
But Robertson had been known to the FBI and Secret Service for months, since at least the spring. Meanwhile, on Twitter, I once posted a tweet that argued that executing pedophiles would reduce instances of pedophilia. I was immediately banned for seven days for inciting violence.
It is an odd facet of this case that raises potent questions: did the FBI and Facebook allow Robertson to keep posting in order to provide justification for killing him? Did the FBI instend to make Robertson into an example?
If true, it would not be the first time the American government has participated in or planned a false flag operation. Real journalists with real skepticism of our national security apparatus would ask those question to those in power.
Regardless, there was no reason for Robertson to die. The FBI did not need to send in a SWAT team to grab this guy in an early morning raid. Robertson was 75-years-old. Yes, he owned guns and yes, he made threats against political leaders, but, there is also no mention of Robertson having any kind of criminal record.
The circumstantial evidence indicates that Robertson was full of Boomer bluster. “Talking shit” and “doing shit” are two totally different categories.
Don’t get me wrong, in a decent country individuals wouldn’t be allowed to make specific threats against others no matter who they were. But also in a decent country, the FBI wouldn’t send in a bunch of agents to gun down a senior citizen when other alternatives were available. That is coward behavior.
Robertson was full of piss and vinegar but he wasn’t a loner. He regularly attended a local LDS church. He had several children. It would have been relatively easy for government agents to take him into custody out in public without need for a standoff.
In March, FBI agents had talked to Robertson directly about his posts. Robertson denied they were threats and told the officers to get a warrant. This means law enforcement had been able to talk to the man without needing to shoot him at least one time prior to the eventual raid.
The FBI almost certainly could have contacted church and family members to help them communicate effectively with Robertson and deescalate the situation. Local police could have handled the entire matter without any need for the feds to get involved.
There is precedence for this. In 1999 a Texas State Trooper caught John Joe Gray driving a vehicle with an unregistered concealed handgun. Gray refused to turn over the firearm, fought the State Trooper (eventually biting him), and then refused to turn up to his trial for felony assault.
Instead, Gray hid out on his 40 acre Texas ranch. He and his sons patrolled the property with semi-automatic rifles and threatened to kill any police officer that set foot on the property to take Gray into custody. The local sheriff decided not to try and raid Gray’s land. He deemed (correctly) that it simply wasn’t worth it.
For the next 15 years, Gray and the Sheriff of Henderson County, Texas engaged in the longest armed “standoff” in American history. In 2016, the local DA finally dropped the charges against Gray, though it seems no one told him or the Sheriff for another year.
In all those 15 years, no one died, the government was not overthrown, and the taxpayer didn’t have to spend a dime putting anyone in prison. For what it is worth, I think the whole thing was stupid to begin with. The idea that an otherwise law-abiding American citizen, however apparently “kooky,” needs to have a license to carry a firearm is idiotic. John Joe Gray, at least in this matter, was in the right.
The John Joe Gray case provides a helpful blueprint for how to deal with “fringe” rightwing anti-government figures—in 9 times out of 10 the best policy is to do… absolutely nothing.
A kooky guy wants to stock up on guns and insists he’s a sovereign citizen? Just leave him be. A cult settles in Waco, Texas on a compound and preaches that the end times are coming? Ignore. A quasi-hermit in Idaho has an illegal sawed off shotgun in his remote cabin? Don’t care.
A random overweight Boomer posts bullshit on Facebook about killing the President? Nab him at the Wal-Mart while he’s picking up his Ambien prescription and tell him to knock it off. Assuming, of course, you even need to do that.
The time to send in SWAT is when you are dealing with drug dealers, cartel members, and murderers, i.e., people who have committed real crimes instead of just blathering and hiding out in the woods.
The truth, however, is that the American government doesn’t really care about crime. Sure, the state will occasionally deal with the criminal underclass when absolutely pressed to do so. But our leadership class, itself filled with criminals like Joe Biden, has little interest in preserving law and order. In fact, the American ruling class loves criminals. This is why George Floyd became a martyr but Donald Trump is treated as Hitler reincarnate.
The liberal regime views white middle class Trump supporters as a far greater threat than the human traffickers and drug dealers pouring across our southern border. The truth is that the latter class imports voters for the Democrats and the former do not. No one can accuse the Left of misunderstanding the friend/enemy distinction.
But this state of affairs is utterly rotten. It resulted in the brutal massacre of nearly 80 women and children at Waco, Texas and the murder of Vicki Weaver (while she was holding her infant) by FBI snipers at Ruby Ridge. And, just this last week, it resulted in the unnecessary death of a geriatric shitposter who almost certainly could have been arrested without any need for blood to be shed.
Our regime treats ordinary Americans as the worst kind of criminals and ignores real crime. Washington DC acts as a tyrannical occupation power in its dealings with these ordinary people. The unnecessary killing of Craig Robertson merely serves as one more example of the folly and brutality of the modern liberal state.
Great post and great thoughts.
I don't think the left-wing passion for enforcing the obscure is a bug though, it seems to be a feature. They seem to enjoy watching innocents get slaughtered like this guy, and LaVoy Finicum, as an example.
The left would punish uttering the phrase 'illegal alien' with greater sanction than the illegal alien.
For “them” he did need to die. Just like the others you described. Their religion requires it.
For anyone with any sense he did not need to die.
They’re also keeping all the murderers, rapists, and monsters alive in jail for later when they need them. It’s been done before. Slow leaking them out to do their work. All under the guise of compassion and their fake justice, which is not justice at all.